Edit Square vs Remotion. Which is the better way to automate video?

TL;DR

Edit Square is the faster choice if you’d like your designers to build videos visually and your systems to render them through an API. There’s no code to write and no servers to run.

Remotion is a framework for React developers. It gives you full control in code, and you run the rendering on your own cloud account.

Overview

What is each tool built for?

Edit Square is a motion graphics editor that runs in your browser. You design and animate on a GPU-powered canvas where everything plays back live. When you’re happy, you turn the project into a template, and your team or your own systems make every version after that.

Remotion is a framework for making videos with React. Your developers write each video as components in code, preview it in a local studio and render it on infrastructure you look after.

Side by side

Edit Square vs Remotion: feature by feature

Let’s put the two side by side and pick a winner for each row.

Feature	Edit Square	Remotion	Winner
Who can make a video	Anyone on your team	React developers	Edit Square
How you design	Visual editor with a real-time canvas	React components in code	Edit Square
Getting started	Open a link. No sign-up, no install	Set up a Node project	Edit Square
Motion presets	Animate any layer in one click, then stack and tune	Write your own, or use community packages	Edit Square
Templates for your team	Any project becomes a form with a live preview	Build your own interface	Edit Square
Render API	Hosted. One request returns an MP4	No hosted API. You deploy your own	Edit Square
Rendering infrastructure	Ours. Nothing for you to run	Self-hosted on your own infrastructure	Edit Square
Custom logic	Expressions for linked properties, loops and maths	Anything you can write in React	Remotion
Player for your own app	Not available	Yes, a React player component	Remotion
Version control	Projects saved in the cloud	Code in your own repository	Remotion
Cost at very high volume	Credits by the second of render time	Your cloud bill, plus a licence	Depends on volume
Free tier	Free forever, watermarked 720p exports	Free for individuals and teams of up to three	Tie

Create

How does the editing experience compare?

Edit Square is built on the GPU, so everything happens in real time. You scrub, play and edit with instant feedback, and you can see exactly what you’re making as you make it.

Animations live on the timeline as chips you can move and trim. You can build a title in seconds by stacking a few motion presets, then open up the keyframes when you’d like finer control.

• Real-time canvas. Every effect runs on the GPU, so it updates the moment you change a value.
• Motion presets. Animate any layer in one click, then tune each preset until the motion feels like yours.
• Text animations. Full control over characters, words and lines, powered by a real text engine.
• Expressions. Link properties together and drive them with a line of code.

With Remotion, you describe your animation in code and check the result in a preview. That works well for developers, but it means your designers can’t make changes themselves.

Template

Which tool handles templates better?

Edit Square wins this category outright. You can turn any project into a template in three steps.

1. Create your variables. Link one or more properties to a variable. One colour can drive two layers, one text field can drive the headline.
2. Build your form. Choose which variables become fields. The form is all your team ever needs to see.
3. Anyone can render. Your team picks a template, fills in the form and watches the preview update as they type.

With Remotion, a template is a component that accepts data. If you’d like your team to fill in the details themselves, you’ll need to design and build that interface.

Automate

How does rendering through the API compare?

Edit Square has a hosted render API. You send the fields, we send back an MP4. It’s one request from your app, CRM or workflow tool, and our cloud servers handle the rendering.

Let’s say you need a welcome video for every new customer. Here’s what that looks like in each tool.

Next we’ll take a look at the data you’d send to our API. You name the template and pass through the values that change.

{
  "name": "Welcome - John Smith",
  "project_id": "proj_jd71dcg41pjy7rax1v2h4pvcmd7gtar9",
  "template_id": "tpl_8f2c1d4e6a7b9c0d1e2f3a4b5c6d7e8f",
  "values": { "customer_name": "John Smith" }
}

And that’s it! To track when your render is completed, you can set up a webhook and we’ll notify you of any changes. Take a look at our API docs for the full details.

Pricing

What are the pricing differences?

Edit Square is free to use for as long as you like. You get the full editor in your browser with no sign-up, and you only pay when you want clean exports, cloud storage or automation.

	Edit Square	Remotion
Free	Full editor, free forever. 720p exports with a watermark	Free for individuals and companies of up to three people
Designing	$25 a month, or $240 a year. Exports up to 4K with 5 GB of cloud storage	$25 a month for each person writing Remotion code, for companies of four or more
Automation	$60 a seat each month, or $600 a year. Template forms, the render API and 12.5 minutes of cloud rendering a month	$0.01 a render with a minimum of $100 a month, plus your own cloud bill

Note: exporting from the editor is free and unlimited on every plan. You only use cloud render credits for renders that run on our servers.

In code

What if you want full control in code?

Edit Square is a visual tool, and that’s what makes it quick for your whole team to pick up. If you’d like every video defined in React, reviewed in pull requests and rendered inside your own infrastructure, Remotion is the tool for that job.

You can also use both. Keep Remotion for videos that are generated from complex application logic, and use Edit Square for the branded videos your designers want to control.

Decide

Which tool is right for you?

Switching

Looking for a Remotion alternative?

If you’ve been using Remotion and find that every design change needs a developer, your rendering needs looking after, or your team keeps asking for a way to make videos themselves, Edit Square solves all three.

• Every change needs a developer? Your designers edit the template directly.
• Looking after rendering? Our servers handle it for you.
• Your team wants to make videos? Send them a form.

Our verdict

Edit Square is the more practical choice for most teams

For marketing teams, agencies and developers who need branded video at scale, Edit Square is the more practical choice. Your designers keep control of the design, your developers make a single API call and nobody has to look after a render server.

Remotion is still the right tool when your videos need to live in code. If that’s how your team likes to work, stay where you are.

If you’re on the fence, open the editor and rebuild one of your videos as a template. It’s free, there’s no sign-up and you’ll know within the first project whether it fits how you work.