Video Editing API

An API for video editing takes a description of the video and returns the finished file. With Shotstack the description is JSON: clips, text, audio, transitions and timing on a timeline. You send it, the cloud renders it, and you get back a URL. It works as a video creation API as well as an editing one, built for programmatic video editing at scale.

Sign up and your keys are in the dashboard: one for the sandbox, one for production. New accounts get 10 free credits, valid for 30 days, with no credit card. Request API keys.

The sandbox has the same features and limits as production, except renders are capped at 10 minutes and carry a watermark. Sandbox renders are free; you need at least one credit in your account to use it.

300 Edit API requests a minute per key in production, including render requests, in a fixed 60-second window. Limits are the same on every plan.

Set a callback URL on the edit and the API posts to it when the render finishes or fails. Or poll the render endpoint, about every 5 seconds, until the status is done. Webhooks.

Yes. The same request works as an AI video editor API: put a prompt where a URL would go and AI video, images, voice and music are created during the render through the AI video generation API.

Yes. Connect Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or your own agent through the MCP server and CLI, or use Director, the agent built into Studio. Agentic video editing.

For rendering at scale, yes. You describe the edit in JSON instead of command flags, and Shotstack runs the servers, queues and scaling. Shotstack as an FFmpeg alternative.

On pay as you go the API stops rendering until you buy more credits; there is no overage charge. Subscriptions keep rendering and bill any overage at the end of the billing cycle. Pricing.

Yes. The infrastructure is built to render thousands of videos concurrently. The only documented limit is the request rate, 300 Edit API requests a minute per key, so batch your requests to stay under it.