LazyReel / compare
Cardboard is an agentic editor: describe what you want and an AI director assembles a first cut in the cloud. LazyReel aims at the same outcome from the opposite direction - Auto-Edit produces a finished draft in one pass, but every decision it makes is visible in a transcript you can edit, and the whole thing runs on your Mac. Your footage never uploads, transcription works offline, and there are no render credits: bring your own AI key and heavy use costs you provider rates instead of a subscription tier.
Download LazyReel for macOS, free
| Capability | LazyReel | Cardboard |
|---|---|---|
| Transcript-driven editing | Yes | Partial |
| Voice retakes in your own voice | Yes | Yes |
| AI captions / subtitles | Yes | Yes |
| Teaser / trailer generation | Yes | Partial |
| Offline editing | Yes | Partial |
| Bring your own AI key (unlimited) | Yes | No |
| Resumable / crash-safe export | Yes | No |
| Starting price | $7.99/mo | $20/mo |
| Runs on | Native Mac app, footage stays local | Browser, cloud-rendered |
Matrix reflects public feature pages as of July 2026. Spotted an error? support@lazyreel.app
If you want the first cut done for you but would rather keep your footage local and edit the result by hand, yes. Auto-Edit gives you the one-pass draft; Composer then lets you change any cut by editing the transcript.
No. Transcription runs on-device with Whisper and rendering happens on your Mac. Only optional AI metadata - transcripts and prompts - ever leaves the machine, and on your own API key it does not even do that through us.
LazyReel is also included with Setapp, the Mac app subscription - if you already subscribe, LazyReel costs you nothing extra.