the map / step 3, make

Video

Two different things live here. Editors that use AI to cut, caption and clean up video you already shot. And generators that make short clips from a sentence.

The first is useful today for almost everyone. The second is fun, costs real money to do well, and still gets hands, faces and physics a little wrong.

Our picks

checked sep 2026. we say what each one is bad at on purpose.

Start herehas a free plan

CapCut

good at: Edit video you shot on your phone. Auto captions, cut the silences, resize for any platform.
bad at: Free features move behind the paywall without warning, and it wants a sign in for everything.

web · iPhone · Android · desktop app

Open CapCut ↗

Best freehas a free plan

Google Veo (inside Gemini)

good at: The most realistic short clips right now, with sound, from a sentence, inside the Gemini app you may already have.
bad at: A few clips a day, most of them on the paid plan. Eight seconds each, and no editing afterwards.

web · iPhone · Android

Open Google Veo ↗

Step uphas a free plan

Runway

good at: Make short clips from a sentence or bring a still image to life. The tool a lot of small studios use.
bad at: Expensive per second of video, and hands, faces and physics still go wrong.

web · iPhone

Open Runway ↗

Try this first

Open CapCut, paste this in, and change the parts in brackets. That is the whole first step.

Describe a five second clip

copy it, paste it into the tool, change the parts in [brackets]

A slow push in on a kitchen table in morning light. A coffee cup steaming, someone's hands opening a notebook. Five seconds, calm, no text on screen.

Go deeper

8 min read

The companies and their models

Who makes what, what each is known for, and which one is on your phone. Written for September 2026, and dated on purpose, because this changes monthly.

7 min read

How the money flows

Why the free tier exists, why prices keep falling, what the enormous numbers in the news mean, and the one habit that protects you from all of it.

Do something with it

The fastest way to learn a tool is a real job.

Say who you are and we hand you one, in about ten minutes, with the prompt written.

Pick who you are