Uncut vs Palmier Pro
Two Mac video editors built for agents, compared on licence, price, agent setup and what each one does better.
Palmier Pro and Uncut are both Mac timeline editors that an agent can drive. Palmier is the more established product. Uncut is smaller, with its current source open and with no paid tier.
Uncut is free under the MIT licence and runs on Apple silicon Macs with macOS 13 or later. It needs Claude Code or Codex installed and signed in, plus ffmpeg, and it has no Uncut account or quota. Its limits are real too: it is a young project on a 0.x version, with a small community.
| Uncut | Palmier Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | MIT, current source public | GPLv3 through v0.7.6; later binaries are proprietary and their source is unpublished |
| Requires | Apple silicon, macOS 13 or later | Apple silicon, macOS 26 |
| App | Electron | Native Swift |
| Price | Free, you pay your agent's provider | Free; Pro $29 a month, Max $69 a month (discounted from $49 and $99) |
| Credits | None from Uncut; generators use your own keys | 5,000 a month on Pro, 12,000 on Max, for generation |
| Agent | Your Claude Code or Codex inside the app | Claude, Codex or Cursor over MCP, plus an in-app agent |
| External agents | No external MCP entry | Yes, local MCP server while the app is open |
| Review | A separate critic scores rendered frames | No equivalent described in its README |
| Interchange | SRT and WebVTT | Render or NLE XML export |
Where Palmier Pro is better
- Native Mac app. It is written from scratch in Swift, while Uncut is an Electron app.
- Generation inside the timeline. Seedance, Kling and Nano Banana Pro are available from the editor on paid plans, with no keys to manage.
- Any MCP agent. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and Claude Desktop can all connect. Uncut's agent runs only inside the app.
- Handing off to other editors. Its free plan lists NLE XML export. Uncut has no project interchange.
- Footage search. Its free plan lists local footage search. Uncut's media search covers metadata only.
- Reach. Its repo has about 14,700 stars, so far more people have tried it.
Where Uncut is better
- Current open source. You can read, fork and build what you run. Palmier's newest releases ship without published source.
- Older Macs. Uncut runs from macOS 13, and Palmier needs macOS 26.
- A built-in reviewer. A separate agent process scores rendered frames, and any blocker sends the edit back, for up to three rounds in a turn.
- Nothing to subscribe to. Generation uses your own OpenAI, Google and ElevenLabs keys at their prices. This also means you set those keys up yourself.
Which to pick
Pick Palmier Pro if you want a native app, generation with no key setup, or NLE export. Pick Uncut if you want an MIT codebase, run an older macOS, or want a critic in the loop.