Headliner does audiograms brilliantly — waveform animations, podcast clips, audio-first content. But if your Sunday service is on video, you need AI clip detection, automatic vertical reframing, and word-timed captions. That's Sermon Clips.
This isn't a "better or worse" story. Headliner and Sermon Clips solve different problems. Here's how to know which one you need.
Purpose-built for podcasters and radio ministries. Turns audio into shareable video content with animated waveforms, clip cards, and quote images. If your ministry distributes via podcast, Headliner is excellent.
Built for churches with video sermons. AI watches your recording, finds the most shareable moments, reframes them to vertical 9:16 with the speaker centered, and burns in word-timed captions — in the language the sermon was preached in.
Headliner was designed for audio. When you upload a video sermon recording, here's where it hits its limits:
You have to watch your 45-minute sermon and manually mark where clips start and end. Sermon Clips AI identifies the 3–5 most shareable moments automatically.
Headliner can export vertical, but you manually adjust the crop. Sermon Clips tracks the pastor's face and auto-adjusts the crop frame-by-frame so they're always centered.
Headliner captions are source-language only and need setup. Sermon Clips auto-detects the language your sermon was preached in and burns accurate word-timed captions into every clip — Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, whatever your pulpit speaks.
Headliner is a canvas tool — what you upload is what you get. Sermon Clips trims dead air, checks the actual frames so a title card never opens a clip, and generates a thumbnail for every clip.
With Headliner, every clip is hand-made. Sermon Clips takes the full service recording and returns finished vertical clips — typically ~5 per sermon — to your dashboard and email, ready to download and post.
With Headliner, every step is manual. With Sermon Clips, you upload once and finished clips come back cut, reframed to 9:16, and captioned — upload Sunday, post Monday.
Headliner vs Sermon Clips — every major feature
| Feature | Sermon Clips | Headliner |
|---|---|---|
| AI moment detection (auto-find best clips) | ||
| Automatic vertical reframing (9:16) | ||
| Speaker-tracking zoom | ||
| AI captions / subtitles | ||
| Caption style customization | ||
| Podcast audiogram / waveform video | ||
| B-roll auto-insertion | ||
| Motion graphics overlays | ||
| Color grading / correction | ||
| Music library (licensed) | ||
| Translation (30+ languages) | ||
| AI dubbing / voice sync | ||
| Direct social publishing | ||
| Free tier available | ||
| Built for video sermons | ||
| Built for podcast audio |
Headliner offers automated captions for audio-first content. Sermon Clips captions are word-timed and burned in automatically.
Headliner charges by the minute. Sermon Clips charges by the sermon.
5 min of content/month
1 hour of content/month — no AI features
3 hours/month — still no AI detection, no translation
⚠️ A 45-min sermon = 45 mins of content. Pro plan runs out after 1 sermon per month.
1 full sermon — all AI features included
Full features — cancel anytime
Full features — rate locked for life ($99/mo standard rate)
✓ Process 4 sermons/month on the Founding Pastor rate and you pay ~$6/sermon — less than a coffee.
Here's what Monday morning looks like at a typical 200-member church using each tool.
Headliner is excellent for podcast audiograms — turning audio clips into video cards with waveform animations. For churches that are audio-first (podcast, radio ministry), it works well. But for churches with video sermons who want AI clip detection, vertical reframing for Reels/Shorts/TikTok, and burned-in word-timed captions, Sermon Clips is the better fit.
Headliner has no AI moment detection (you choose the clip manually), no automatic vertical reframing for mobile, and no speaker-tracking. Those are all core features in Sermon Clips.
Headliner's Pro plan is $7.99/mo for 1 hour of content per month — but a 45-minute sermon uses almost all of that. Sermon Clips is $23.99/mo at the Founding Pastor rate (locked for life), or $9.99/week, with full AI features. At 4 sermons/month, that's about $6/sermon with AI doing all the work.
Headliner can export vertical video, but you have to manually crop and position content. Sermon Clips automatically reframes your sermon video to vertical (9:16) using AI that tracks the speaker's face, adjusting the crop in real time so the pastor is always centered.
Headliner supports automatic captions but only in the source language. Sermon Clips does not translate or dub either — instead it auto-detects the language the sermon was preached in and burns word-timed captions into every clip in that language, so Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, or Mandarin sermons get accurate captions with zero setup.
Process your first 2 sermons free — no credit card, no setup. See exactly what AI clip detection, vertical reframing, and captions look like for your church.
Also see: vs Choppity · vs OpusClip · vs SermonShots · vs ChurchSocial