91,893 stars · MIT (read from /blob/main/LICENSE, plain unmodified text, "Copyright 2026 OpenCut") · v0.3.0 (2026-04-15; the GitHub page shows the date with no year and the year was settled by the ungh releases mirror) · Track this in Scout
A free video editor that runs in a browser or installs on a computer, built as an open alternative to CapCut.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons · install
What it is
OpenCut is a timeline video editor written for the web, with a desktop build alongside it. The project began in June 2025 and has collected 91,893 stars since, which is one of the fastest climbs in this archive.
What it is good for. Anyone who cuts short videos and does not want a subscription, a watermark, or an account. It is also for people who are uneasy about uploading unreleased footage to somebody else's computer: a local copy keeps the files where they are.
- MIT licence, read from the file at
/blob/main/LICENSE. It is the plain unmodified text and the copyright line is filled in: "Copyright 2026 OpenCut". Nothing restricts commercial use. - Three ways to run it from one codebase: a web version, an API, and a desktop build.
- Code was pushed on 24 September 2026, and the newest release is v0.3.0 of 15 April 2026. The release date has no year on the GitHub page; it was settled against the ungh mirror.
- The README has no
git cloneline at all, and no download link for a finished build. Setting it up means installing a tool calledprotoby piping a script from the internet into a shell, then running three separate development servers. - 276 open issues and 102 open pull requests, on a project fifteen months old.
- The README says a ground-up rewrite is in progress, with the new build going to a different address. So the code in the repository today is not the application the live site serves, and there is no published figure for memory or disk — video editing is heavy on both.
- mltframework/shotcut
A mature desktop video editor doing the same timeline work; GPLv3 rather than MIT, with installers for all three platforms and no browser version.
Track this in Scout - OpenShot/openshot-qt
The long-standing free desktop editor; easier to install than OpenCut and slower to render, with no web version at all.
Track this in Scout
bash <(curl -fsSL https://moonrepo.dev/install/proto.sh) proto use moon run web:dev # browser version, http://localhost:5173 moon run api:dev # API, http://localhost:8787 moon run desktop:dev # desktop build
