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The last editor I hired sent me an invoice for $2,490 in September. Thirty short videos, one batch, five business days of waiting, and two rounds of email tennis to fix a caption that spelled my own product name wrong. That was the retainer rate, $2,500 a month for a content pipeline I did not control. In my tests this month, a four-tool stack costing $59.50 a month on annual billing replaced that entire arrangement, and my first finished video took 15 minutes from a blank script to an export. This is the exact stack, the real prices (verified this week), and the breakeven math your accountant will actually like.

The Stack, Tool by Tool (Real November 2026 Prices)

Four tools, one job each, no overlap. I tested this division of labor for a month, and the point of it is this: every tool does the one thing it is genuinely best at, and none of them costs enough to feel before your second invoice from a human editor would arrive. Prices below were pulled from each vendor’s live pricing page this week, both billing toggles checked.

1. HeyGen Creator — the avatar engine ($24/mo annual)

HeyGen turns a script into a talking-head video without a camera, a studio or you being on one. The Creator plan costs $29 a month, or $24 if you prepay annually, and includes 600 monthly credits that cover roughly 30 to 40 short avatar videos using Avatar III, which draws 7 credits per minute of finished footage. The free plan gives you 3 videos a month with no credit card required, which is enough to prove the concept before you pay anything. I noticed two quirks: Avatar IV looks better but burns 16 credits a minute, and unused credits roll over for just one month, so an unused balance quietly expires. My take: start every script on Avatar III, save Avatar IV for the videos that anchor a campaign.

2. Opus Clip Pro — the repurposing engine ($14.50/mo annual)

Opus Clip eats long video and hands back shorts. Feed it an hour-long podcast, a webinar or a livestream VOD, and it finds the clip-worthy moments, reframes them vertical and scores each clip on viral potential. Pricing is unusual: Starter runs $15 a month, monthly billing only, with 150 credits where one credit equals one minute of source video. Pro is $29 monthly or $14.50 a month billed yearly ($174 a year) and doubles you to 300 credits, two team seats, and scheduling to nine networks. The free plan’s 60 monthly credits are enough for one episode a month. My first impression was skepticism at the virality score, and honestly it is a rough guide at best, but the clipping itself is the part I stopped paying a human to do.

3. Submagic Starter — the caption layer ($12/mo annual)

Submagic is the short-cutting, caption-styling layer that makes a video look native on TikTok and Reels: animated captions, auto-zooms, cleaned audio, filler-word removal. The Starter plan costs $19 a month, or $12 billed yearly, and its 45 credits translate to about 15 videos since an upload costs 3 credits. Videos cap at 2 minutes on Starter and export at 1080p. Need 40 captioned videos a month? The Pro plan is $39 monthly, $23 annual, with a 5-minute cap and the auto-zoom features unlocked. The trial needs no credit card either. What frustrated me: the 2-minute ceiling on Starter arrives faster than you expect when a clip runs long, and there is no annual option below Pro worth considering if volume is your whole point.

4. Make Core — the automation glue ($9/mo annual)

Make is the quiet differentiator, the tool that turns three separate apps into one pipeline. A scenario watches a Google Sheet where you drop scripts, calls HeyGen to generate the video, routes the file to Submagic for captions, then schedules the post. The Core plan costs $10.59 monthly or $9 a month billed annually for 10,000 credits, and one credit covers most single actions, so a 30-video month typically consumes 2,000 to 4,000 credits. The free plan carries 1,000 credits but only 2 active scenarios and a 15-minute minimum interval, which is why Core is the first paid tier that matters. Through our link, Make’s partner program attaches a free first month of Core plus 10,000 bonus credits, enough to build and run the whole pipeline before paying a cent.

Optional fifth seat: if you want narration without your voice at all, ElevenLabs is the voice layer this stack plugs in cleanly, and its free tier covers short voiceovers to start. I broke down the plans in a dedicated 30-day ElevenLabs deep-dive. The four-tool stack above works without it.

The 30-Video Monthly Engine, In Order

Here is the whole workflow on one screen. Batch your scripts in a Google Sheet on day one, 30 rows, one per video. Make picks them up, calls HeyGen for the talking-head base, and drops exports into your drive. Opus Clip turns your two weekly long-form recordings, a podcast, a stream, a webinar, into another 15 or so shorts at no extra cost. Submagic styles the captions on the clips that need them, 15 uploads sits inside Starter’s allowance, and Make schedules everything to your channels. Total hands-on time: about 15 minutes per video, most of it reading the script aloud into a microphone for your custom avatar or approving the clip picks. A five-day freelancer turnaround becomes a same-morning export. The full solopreneur AI stack guide shows how this video engine bolts onto the wider one-person business.

Breakeven ROI Calculator: When the Stack Pays for Itself

Run the numbers once and the decision stops being emotional. The stack pays for itself inside the first video, and the annual savings are what a part-time employee would cost you.

Cost line	Outsourced editor	AI video stack
Monthly cost	$2,500 retainer	$59.50 annual ($73.59 monthly)
Cost per video (30/mo)	about $83	about $2
Turnaround	5 business days per batch	about 15 minutes per video
Revisions	1-2 email rounds, another day	Regenerate in one click
Annual cost	$30,000	$714 – $883
Breakeven point	—	Video #1, in the first month

The Clear Customer Benefit: Why This Puts $2,400+ Back in Your Pocket Every Month

First, the free on-ramp. Every tool in this stack starts without a credit card: HeyGen’s free plan gives you 3 full videos a month, Opus Clip’s free tier processes 60 minutes of source video, Submagic’s trial covers your first captioned uploads, and Make’s free plan runs 1,000 automation credits. You can stand up the entire pipeline, prove it works on your content, and spend exactly zero dollars in week one. This free tier ladder is the reason the barrier here is as low as it gets.

Second, the hard dollar arbitrage. A $2,500 monthly editing retainer costs $30,000 a year. The same 30-video output on this stack costs $714 to $883 a year, which saves you roughly $2,435 every month and $29,220 a year. That is not a soft productivity gain, it is a line item you can delete from your budget this quarter, and it keeps compounding while you keep the difference.

Third, the exclusive partner promo. Signing up for Make through our link activates a free first month of Core plus 10,000 bonus credits, which is the entire automation layer of this stack for nothing in month one. Stack that against Opus Clip’s free trial and HeyGen’s no-card free plan, and your first fully-produced month runs on the vendors’ money, not yours. When I checked my own bill after switching, the stack’s entire year cost less than three weeks of my old editor’s retainer.

The Honest Catch: What This Stack Will Not Do for You

Rendering queues are real. HeyGen’s credit system means an Avatar IV habit drains 600 credits fast at 16 credits a minute, and at peak hours generations can sit in a queue longer than the 15 minutes I promised. The workaround is boring and it works: batch-generate overnight, keep Avatar III as your default, and treat credits like a budget, not a buffet.

The prompt learning curve is the second catch. Your first five avatar videos will look stiff, because a talking head is only as good as the script and the pacing you feed it. Expect a week of iteration before the output stops looking like a demo reel. On top of that, Submagic Starter’s 15-video ceiling forces an upgrade to Pro at $23 annual if every single clip needs styled captions, and Make burns credits faster than advertised when your scenarios iterate over large lists. None of these catches threaten the math. Even with Pro instead of Starter and a doubled Make plan, the stack still saves you more than $2,300 a month against a freelancer.

My Final Recommendation

Assemble the stack in this order: HeyGen first, because it is the engine and its free plan proves the concept in an afternoon. Add Submagic when your captions start embarrassing you. Add Opus Clip the week you record your first hour of long-form. Add Make when manual uploading eats its first Saturday. I was skeptical that four subscriptions could replace a person, and the honest answer is that they replace the person for volume content while a human still wins on flagship brand films.

Doing deeper homework before you commit? We have published the Synthesia vs HeyGen breakdown for the avatar layer, the Opus Clip vs Submagic head-to-head for the clipping layer, and Make vs n8n for the automation layer. Read those, then start free below and let the first month’s invoice make the argument for you.