Captions for Instagram Reels (Free, In-Browser)

Drop your video or audio file here

or click to browse

Supports video and audio files up to 2048MB

About Captions for Instagram Reels

Meta's own guidance for Reels is to keep text out of roughly the top 14 percent and the bottom 35 percent of a 1080x1920 frame, where the profile, audio, description, and the like and share column sit. The style presets here are the same on every route, so for Reels pick the middle position, which keeps the text in the band nothing else covers, and a pill background that reads on a phone rather than in a desktop preview at 100 percent zoom.

Meta does not see your Reel while you do this. The transcription and the burn-in both run inside this browser tab. The first time the page loads it downloads the Whisper model (about 290 MB on desktop, about 150 MB on phones) and caches it for later visits. Your Reel is never part of any request.

When this fits

Batch content production

When you create five Reels in a session and queue them in a scheduler, burning captions in advance is faster than re-entering the Instagram editor for each one.

Cross-posting from TikTok

A TikTok with built-in captions loses them on export to Reels. Running the captioning here once produces a file that posts cleanly to both platforms.

Reels Ads

Paid Reels content rendered through Ads Manager often strips opt-in captions. Burned-in captions survive the ad delivery pipeline because they are pixels, not metadata.

Carousel and longer Reels

Reels now run up to 3 minutes, which makes captioning more useful, not less. The inline transcript editor handles longer content without the timing drift that affects in-app captioning.

How to add captions to an Instagram Reel

1 Drop your Reel

Upload your 9:16 video file. The bytes go into browser memory; no Meta request is made.

2 Transcribe and review

Wait for Whisper to finish, then scan the transcript for words to fix. Click any segment to jump the video to that moment.

3 Pick a style and the middle position

The style presets are shared across every route. For Reels, choose the middle position so the text stays clear of Instagram's top and bottom UI bands.

4 Export the captioned MP4

Click Burn in. The output is an MP4 ready to upload to Instagram with captions visible on every frame they appear in.

Frequently asked questions

How is this different from Instagram's built-in caption sticker?

Instagram's built-in caption sticker only works on content you create inside the Instagram app. If you edit in CapCut, Final Cut, or any third-party tool, you cannot use the sticker. This page bakes captions into the file before upload, which works regardless of which editor produced the source video.

Does Meta see the Reel while you transcribe?

No. The transcription runs locally in this browser tab against a Whisper model that downloaded once on first use. Your video file is never part of a network request. Open the Network panel in DevTools during a run and the only traffic is the app itself, the cached model, and small anonymous usage events that carry no media.

Where should captions sit on a Reel?

Meta recommends keeping text out of about the top 14 percent and bottom 35 percent of a 1080x1920 frame. The position options here are top, middle, and bottom. Middle is the safe pick for Reels. Bottom lands inside Instagram's UI band, so only use it after checking the preview.

Can I export captions as a separate file for Reels?

Reels does not accept SRT or VTT uploads from outside the app, so a separate caption file is not useful for this platform specifically. The burn-in path is the only path that survives the upload. The SRT and VTT exports are still available if you want them for archive or for other platforms.

Will Instagram's auto-captions double up with the burned-in ones?

They can. Instagram's auto-captions are a per-post setting, not something it decides by looking at the frame. When you publish a Reel that already has captions baked in, turn the auto-caption option off in the post settings so the two do not overlap.

Captions for Instagram Reels