If you are putting a video editor inside a web product, three questions decide most of the choice:
- Where does the export render? In your user’s browser, or on servers you pay for.
- How does the price scale? Per developer, per domain, per platform, or per render.
- What sits underneath? An engine the vendor owns, or a framework with its own license.
At a glance
| SDK | Where exports render | Published price | How it scales | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cutforge | User’s browser (WebCodecs + WebGPU) | €99/yr for 1 developer, €399/yr for up to 5 | Per developer, flat | Own engine with a Rust/WASM core. No domain, user or render limits. |
| Rendley SDK | User’s browser (WebGL), optional self-hosted server engine | Free with watermark; Pro $150/month | Per domain (Pro: 1 domain + 3 subdomains) | Captions, LUT filters, Lottie. |
| IMG.LY CE.SDK | User’s browser (WebCodecs), Node.js SDK for servers | Quote only, 30-day trial | By platforms, components and AI features | Web, iOS, Android, Flutter, desktop. Design and photo editing too. |
| Remotion Editor Starter | AWS Lambda by default, client-side optional | $600, plus a Remotion company license above 3 people | Remotion license per seat or per render | Built on Remotion, the videos-as-React-code framework. |
| React Video Editor (RVE) | Browser (WebCodecs), or server / AWS Lambda | $149/yr non-commercial, $299/yr commercial | Per team, yearly | Managed cloud rendering sold separately. |
| OpenVideo (formerly designcombo’s react-video-editor) | Browser (WebCodecs + PixiJS) | Free up to 3 employees, company license above | Quoted | Open repository, built on PixiJS. |
Remotion’s company license is $25/month per seat or $0.01 per render, with a $100/month minimum; its enterprise license starts at $500/month and includes the Editor Starter. Individuals and companies of up to 3 people use Remotion for free.
Building it yourself: open-source options
If you would rather own the whole editor, these give you the rendering layer and leave the UI to you:
| Project | What it is | License | Ships an editor UI? |
|---|---|---|---|
| WebAV | WebCodecs toolkit for creating and editing video in the browser | MIT | No: a canvas you can drag sprites on, no timeline |
| Remotion web renderer | Renders Remotion compositions in the browser with WebCodecs; stable since v4.0.491 | Remotion license (free up to 3 people) | No. Sends a telemetry event for every render |
| Browser Studio | Video editing library: tracks, text, filters, keyframes | MPL-2.0 | No, and still very early |
| ffmpeg.wasm | FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly | FFmpeg’s licenses | No. Runs on the CPU, so it is slower than hardware-accelerated WebCodecs, but supports many more codecs and filters |
| Tooscut | A complete browser editor app (Rust, WebGPU, WASM) | Elastic License 2.0 | It is an app to use or fork, not a component to embed |
Budget for the timeline, the preview player, audio sync, undo, export progress and browser quirks: that is where most of the work in a video editor goes, and it is the part Cutforge sells.
How to choose
- IMG.LY CE.SDK if you need the same editor on iOS and Android, or design and photo editing next to video, and a sales-quoted price works for you.
- Rendley if you need captions, a transition library or Lottie today, and a monthly per-domain price fits how you deploy.
- Remotion if your team wants to write videos as React code, or render data-driven templates on servers at scale.
- Cutforge if you want a timeline editor your users run on their own machine, at a flat yearly price that does not grow with users, domains or renders, and with no third-party framework license underneath.
What Cutforge does not do yet
Knowing the gaps up front saves you a trial:
- No captions or subtitle import yet. Text overlays with keyframed animation are there.
- No transition library beyond fades and crossfades.
- Web only. There is no native iOS or Android SDK.
- Codecs are whatever the browser decodes. H.264, VP8, VP9, AV1, AAC and Opus work; ProRes and DNxHD will not import.
What Cutforge does
A multi-track video and audio timeline with trim, split, duplicate, speed changes and zoom-aware snapping. Per-clip position, scale, rotation and opacity, with fades and crossfades. Color grading: exposure, temperature, tint, brightness, contrast, saturation, a curve editor, .cube LUT import and presets. Text overlays, picture-in-picture and keyframe animation with easing. A Web Audio mixer with per-clip volume and per-track mute and solo. Export to MP4 or WebM through WebCodecs, faster than realtime. Projects save locally (OPFS and IndexedDB), so nothing is uploaded.
For your product: theming and white-label branding, UI localization with right-to-left support, your own media library through assetProvider, and hooks that can veto or rewrite imports and exports. See the docs.
Head-to-head pages
- Cutforge vs Rendley SDK
- Cutforge vs IMG.LY CE.SDK
- Cutforge vs Remotion
- Evaluating Cutforge: network requests, maintenance, tests and limits
Sources
Checked on 30 September 2026, on each vendor’s own pages: Rendley SDK, IMG.LY pricing, IMG.LY video for web, Remotion license, Remotion Editor Starter, Editor Starter rendering, React Video Editor SDK, React Video Editor FAQ, OpenVideo repository, WebAV, Remotion client-side rendering, Browser Studio, Tooscut. If something here is out of date, email cutforge@maxenceleguery.net and it will be corrected.