is there an ai that can make instagram reels?

If you want it free with no watermark

Edits is Instagram's own video creation app for editing reels on your phone. Instagram describes it as a free video editor that exports in 4K with no watermark, with automatic captions you can customise and AI animation of images.

Edits is handy if you're staying inside Instagram, but plenty of people want to edit video somewhere else. Maybe on a laptop, maybe with a bit more help from AI. Then you'll want to see which AI edits video: Descript, CapCut, OpusClip and Adobe Premiere, from text-based cuts to auto captions and clipping, plus which three have free plans.

The catch is that it is an editor with some AI features, not a tool that makes a reel for you from scratch. You still shoot the footage and assemble the reel yourself. On Apple devices the UK App Store labels it Only for iPhone, so there is no iPad or Mac version, and Android users get it on Google Play, which shows in-app purchases.

If you have long videos to turn into reels

OpusClip is an AI clipping tool. You give it a podcast, a stream or a talk, and it turns the long video into several short vertical clips with AI captions and reframing. Paid plans can auto post to IG Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts. It runs in the browser.

The free plan gives you 60 credits a month at up to 1080p, but the clips carry a watermark, cannot be edited and stop being exportable after 3 days. That makes the free plan a way of seeing what it produces more than a way of publishing. The Starter plan, at $15 a month, removes the watermark and adds auto posting. Prices are in US dollars.

If your reels are mostly you talking

Descript is a video editor for Mac, Windows or the browser where you edit the video by editing its transcript, with an AI co-editor called Underlord. Cutting a clip works like cutting a sentence in a document, and its tools include Create Clips, Remove Filler Words and animated captions, which suit a talking head reel.

The free plan is small: 60 media minutes a month, 100 one-time AI credits and 720p export, and the pricing table lists watermark free export only on paid plans. Hobbyist is $16 per person per month billed annually, or $24 on monthly billing, and gives you 10 media hours and 1080p export without a watermark.

If you want a full editor plus AI video generation

CapCut is a video editor from Bytedance on phone, desktop and the web. It combines auto captions, background removal and text to speech with AI text or image to video, and the UK App Store says its AI video feature supports Seedance and Veo 3. You can try it online free with no credit card, and the CapCut listing names TikTok among the places to share.

The gap in our checking is that we did not check which features need a subscription. The UK App Store lists Standard at £10.99 a month, Pro at £21.99 a month and a yearly subscription at £99.99, so assume some of the AI tools may cost money until you have looked.

If you need a promo reel for a business

Launch Video Maker, which is our own product, covers a narrower job. It reads a business website, asks you to approve the facts, and produces a short motion reel with music, downloaded as MP4s for Reels, Shorts, TikTok and YouTube. There is no free tier: you pay once per video, from £9 for a 15 second Short, with a Reel at £29 and a Bundle at £49, prices including VAT.

It makes promo reels from a business website or facts you write, not reels from your own footage. If you want to talk to camera or clip a podcast, the tools above fit better.

When paying is worth it

Pay when a free limit gets in the way. For OpusClip that is the watermark and the 3 day export window, which the $15 Starter plan deals with. For Descript it is the 720p export, the watermark and the small pool of AI credits, which Hobbyist at $16 a month billed annually lifts to 10 media hours and 1080p watermark-free export. If neither limit bothers you yet, the free plans may be enough.

OpusClip's Starter plan is monthly billing only. Its Pro plan is $29 a month, and it drops to $14.50 a month only if you pay $174 for the year up front.

Descript prices are per person and in US dollars, so a team pays for each member. AI credits are limited too: 100 one-time on Free, then 400 a month on Hobbyist.

On Edits, the UK App Store labels it Only for iPhone, so iPad and Mac users are left out, while Android users get it on Google Play. Google Play also shows in-app purchases, so check what is free there.