tondi vs Ascynd
Last checked 18 October 2026. Ascynd's prices and limits are theirs to change; if something below is out of date, tell support@tondi.app and it gets fixed.
Both do the whole job on your own machine — transcription, picking the moments, captions, export — with nothing uploaded and no minute meter. Ascynd runs on Windows, Linux and any Mac; tondi is a Mac app for Apple Silicon. The rest of the difference is price, captions, aspect ratios, and what happens when Ascynd's beta ends.
The short version
Pick Ascynd if you're on Windows, Linux or an Intel Mac, you want it free while the beta lasts, or you want the crop to follow the speaker.
Pick tondi if you have an Apple Silicon Mac and want a free plan with no end date, a lower paid price, word-timed captions and every aspect ratio without an upgrade, and an app signed and notarized by Apple.
Side by side
| tondi | Ascynd | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | On your Mac. Nothing is uploaded. | On your machine. Nothing is uploaded; their server sees licence checks, updates and anonymous crash reports. |
| Platform | macOS 13+, Apple Silicon (M1 or later). No Intel, no Windows. | Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux, one licence for all three. |
| Pricing | Free, or Pro at $10 / month (yearly plan available). | Pro at $17.99 / month or $169 / year. One tier; everything is included. |
| Free tier | 3 clips per video, unlimited videos, small watermark. No end date. | Everything is free during the open beta, no watermark. No free tier is listed for after it. |
| Clips per video | Up to 10 on Pro (3 on Free). | Unlimited clip detection. |
| Aspect ratios | Vertical 9:16, Square 1:1, Portrait 4:5, Horizontal 16:9 — every plan, several per run. | Landscape to 9:16 with speaker tracking. Exports “for TikTok, Reels, Shorts & LinkedIn”; other shapes not stated. |
| Vertical reframing | The whole frame, over a blurred copy of itself. No speaker tracking. | Auto-reframe that tracks the speaker. |
| Captions | Word-timed, six fonts, your colours, burned in — every plan including Free. | Static captions on Creator. Word-by-word subtitles, 5 styles and emphasis detection on Pro. |
| Pacing | Optional tightening cuts filler words and long pauses — every plan. | Automatic silence and filler removal — every plan. |
| How clips are chosen | A scoring system — hook words, emphasis, numbers, speech rate, audio energy. Not a language model. | Engagement scoring on every clip, shown as a score. |
| Works offline | Yes, once the 484 MB model is downloaded. | Yes, after the first sign-in. |
| Batch | Yes on Pro — queue several videos. | Not stated on their site. |
| Signed by Apple | Yes — Developer ID team DHN5QUUM7B, notarized. | Not stated on their site. |
Ascynd figures from ascynd.io/en/pricing, their Mac page and their on-device page as of the date above. tondi figures are from tondi.app/pricing and tondi.app/requirements.
Where Ascynd is better
- It runs on more machines. Windows, Linux, and Intel Macs, which tondi doesn't support at all. One licence covers all three.
- It is free right now. Everything is unlocked with no watermark while the open beta runs. After it, Pro is $17.99 a month or $169 a year against tondi at $10 and $100.
- It cuts dead air for you. Ascynd removes silences and filler automatically. tondi does not — it cuts at whole sentences and leaves the pauses inside them alone, so tightening a rambling answer is still a manual job afterwards.
- The crop follows the speaker. Ascynd's auto-reframe tracks whoever is talking. tondi keeps the whole widescreen frame over a blurred background.
- A score you can see. Ascynd shows an engagement score on every clip. tondi ranks clips internally and doesn't show a number.
Where tondi is better
- A free plan that doesn't end. Ascynd's free access is a beta period; their pricing page lists no free tier after it. tondi Free has no end date — 3 clips per video, unlimited videos, small watermark.
- It costs less. tondi Pro is $10 a month or $100 a year. Ascynd Pro is $17.99 a month or $169 a year once the open beta ends.
- Word-timed captions on every plan. On Ascynd, word-by-word subtitles and caption styles are Pro features at $17.99 a month. On tondi they are on Free.
- Every shape, every plan. Square, 4:5, 16:9 and 9:16 from one run. Ascynd's site describes landscape-to-9:16.
- Signed and notarized by Apple. macOS opens tondi without a warning, under a Developer ID you can check. Ascynd's site doesn't say either way.
- Batch mode. Queue several videos on tondi Pro. Ascynd's site doesn't mention it.
What buying into an open beta actually means
Ascynd is in open beta, and everything is free while it lasts. That is a genuinely good offer and the main reason to try it today. It also means the thing you would be committing to is not quite the thing in front of you.
Three facts, all from their own site, that are worth holding together:
- The price is not live yet. Pro is listed at $17.99 a month or $169 a year for after the beta. Nobody is paying it at the moment, so there is no track record of what you get for it.
- No free tier is listed for afterwards. If you build a workflow around the free beta, the published plan for when it ends is a paid subscription.
- The system requirements are not published. Their site names Windows, macOS and Linux but gives no minimum versions, so you cannot check an older machine against it without installing.
None of that makes it a bad choice — betas are how software gets built, and a free one on three operating systems is a real offer. It does mean "it's cheaper" is not something anyone can say yet, in either direction. Compare it against tondi's $10 a month if you want to compare prices people are actually paying today.
When cross-platform settles it outright
This is the strongest thing Ascynd has, and it is worth being plain about how often it decides the whole question.
tondi is an Apple Silicon Mac app. Not Intel, not Windows, not Linux, and there is no build planned that changes that. So if a single person who needs to use the tool is on a Windows machine, an Intel Mac or a Linux box, the rest of this page is academic — Ascynd covers all three on one licence and tondi covers none of them.
That comes up more than you would think in a team: one editor on a PC, a producer reviewing on an old Intel MacBook, a studio that standardised on Windows years ago. It is also the reason tondi has no team story worth telling for mixed shops. Where tondi fits is a Mac-only setup, and the requirements page states the limits rather than burying them.
Accuracy, and whether you get to choose it
tondi exposes transcription quality as a setting — three tiers, each one a different model that downloads once and is then kept:
| Tier | Downloads once | Reach for it when |
|---|---|---|
| Fast | 145 MB | Clean single-speaker audio, or a quick look at what it would pick. |
| Standard | 484 MB | The default, and right for most recordings. |
| Best | 1.5 GB | Accents, crosstalk, technical vocabulary, a difficult room. |
Ascynd's site does not mention an accuracy or model choice. That may mean it picks one for you, which is one fewer decision to make and perfectly defensible.
Both run on your machine. Here is how to check
Ascynd says transcription, moment detection, engagement scoring, reframing, caption rendering and export all run in a native process on your own machine, and that its server sees licence checks, updates and crash diagnostics. tondi contacts its server to sign in and check a Pro subscription, and fetches a transcription model once. On privacy the two are genuinely close, and this page is not going to manufacture a gap.
If it matters for your footage, do not take either description on trust — turn the Wi-Fi off and make a clip. Whatever still works was never using the network. That one test tells you more than any comparison table, this one included.
What it costs over a year
| Over a year | tondi | Ascynd |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 — 3 clips per video, watermark, no end date | $0 during the beta, no watermark; no free tier listed after it |
| With word-timed captions and caption styles | $100 / year (Pro) — or $0 on Free with 3 clips per video | $169 / year (Pro) |
| Cheapest paid plan | $100 / year | $169 / year — the only paid plan |
Common questions
Which one is more private?
They are close. Both transcribe and score on your own machine and never upload video. Ascynd contacts its server for licence checks, updates and anonymous crash reports; tondi contacts its server to sign in and check a Pro subscription, and for nothing else. Neither sends the transcript anywhere.
Does tondi track the speaker like Ascynd?
No. tondi renders the full frame over a blurred background, so nobody is cropped out but nobody is followed either. For a single presenter facing the camera the result is the same; for a wide two-shot, Ascynd's crop will look tighter.
What happens to Ascynd's price after the beta?
Their pricing page lists a single Pro tier at $17.99 a month or $169 a year once the beta ends, with no free tier shown. That may change — check the link under the table.
Can I run both?
Yes. Both work from a file on your machine and neither needs a card to try. Drop the same video into each and compare the clips — that is the only comparison that settles it for your footage.
Should I wait until the beta ends before deciding?
If you only want to try it, there is no reason to wait — it is free right now. If you are choosing a tool to build a workflow on, the thing you cannot check yet is what the paid product is like, because nobody is paying for it. That is an argument for trying both and keeping your options open rather than for waiting.
Does tondi remove silences and filler words?
No. tondi cuts on whole-sentence boundaries, so a clip starts and ends where a sentence does, but it does not tighten the pauses inside one. If de-umming is the job you most want automated, Ascynd does that and tondi does not.
What does tondi do that Ascynd's site does not mention?
Four aspect ratios from a single run rather than vertical alone, a choice of transcription accuracy, batch queueing on Pro, and a published account of how moments are scored. Absence from their site is not proof a feature is missing — it may just be undocumented — so check anything that would decide it for you.
Also compared: Opus Clip and Reelify AI.