# How KitCut compares

Updated 2026-09-27. Web page: https://kitcut.ai/docs/compared

A KitCut film is not generated as video. Claude writes it as a program: every drawing, camera move, word on screen and cue in the music is code, timed to the narration. KitCut then renders it to video. That one difference explains most of what KitCut does well and most of what it doesn't do.

## KitCut vs AI video generators

AI video generators (Sora, Veo, Runway, Kling and similar) turn a prompt into moving pixels. KitCut instead has Claude write the film, and the film is drawn from what Claude wrote.

| | AI video generators | KitCut |
| --- | --- | --- |
| What the model makes | pixels, a clip at a time | a program: drawings, animation, text, sound cues |
| Length | usually seconds per clip, joined by hand for longer pieces | one film of 5 seconds to 8 minutes, planned and written as a whole |
| Words on screen | often misspelled or warped | typed as text and drawn in a font, so spelled exactly as written |
| Your logo or product | re-imagined by the model, often changed | the picture you attached, placed as it is |
| The same character across scenes and films | hard to keep; it drifts between clips | a drawn character is code, kept and reused as it is in later films |
| Picture timed to speech | within one clip at most; a narration across a longer piece is lined up by hand | every change can hang off a spoken word of the narration, across the whole film |
| Narration, music, sound effects | some make sound with each clip; a narrated, scored piece is usually put together with other tools | written, recorded and mixed as part of the film; subtitles included |
| Story and structure | prompt-to-clip | a director's pass first (style, voice, music), then the script, then review of its own stills |
| Style | photoreal or painterly motion | hand-drawn line animation, or painted stills animated with camera moves |

**What KitCut can't do that a video generator can:**
- photorealistic motion;
- real-looking people moving;
- live-action style shots;
- anything that needs generated video.

KitCut films are explainers, stories, ads, lessons and series in a drawn or painted look. See [What KitCut doesn't do](https://kitcut.ai/docs/not-supported.md).

**What that makes KitCut good for:**
- **Explainers and lessons,** where the words on screen must be right.
- **Product and brand pieces,** where the real logo must appear.
- **Series,** where the same characters, look, voice and music must come back.
- **Anything longer than a clip:** up to 8 minutes as one piece.

## KitCut vs using Claude Opus yourself

KitCut's films are made by Claude Opus 5.5. A person with Claude could ask it to write an animation directly. Doing that gets code; it doesn't get a finished film, unless the rest is built around it. KitCut is that rest:

| What a film needs | Running Opus yourself | KitCut |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Something to draw with | write or choose an animation library | a sketch engine made for this: hand-drawn "boiling" lines, a clean style, ten grounds, ready-made props, cameras, text, and pictures placed as prints |
| Instructions that make good films | write and refine your own prompts | direction and craft notes refined over many films, per look, sent with every film |
| A voice | set up text-to-speech, and time every word yourself | narration recorded, each word timed, and bad takes redone automatically |
| Music and sound effects | find or make them, then mix | an instrumental score on sampled instruments and synthesised effects, written for the film, with the music held under the voice and the sound mastered |
| Paintings (painted look) | set up an image model | an image model wired in, with repaints |
| Checking its own work | look at the output yourself | Claude renders stills and a motion check and fixes what it sees before the final render |
| Rendering | set up a browser, ffmpeg and fonts, and render at 60 fps | done: a 1920x1080, 60 fps (30 on Free) MP4 with subtitles |
| Keeping it safe and on track | watch the session | Claude works in a sandbox; every file is checked before each step; a film that runs out of time is finished or its credits come back |
| Characters for next time | save and re-supply them yourself | characters are kept per account or project and offered to the next film |
| Somewhere to watch and share it | host it | a page per film, a link preview card, the gallery, YouTube publishing |
| From any assistant | not applicable | the same films from Claude, ChatGPT, Grok or Meta AI ([Assistants](https://kitcut.ai/docs/assistants.md)) |
| Setup | Node, Python, ffmpeg, a browser, fonts, sound fonts, API keys | none: a browser and an account |
| What it costs | tokens for every turn; a film takes many turns and it is not known in advance | one credit per second of film, known before it starts; nothing is charged for a failed film |

**When running Opus yourself makes sense:**
- You want to change the code of a film yourself.
- You need a format KitCut doesn't make, e.g. vertical video.
- You want full control of every step.

**When KitCut makes sense:** you want the finished, narrated, scored film from an idea, in minutes, without building or running anything.