editing · ByteDance
You’re creating on CapCut, which means…
You still own your videos. You just can't control what CapCut does with them.
CapCut gives you a different contract depending on where you are. This page reads all 2; every clause below says which one it comes from.
What they own
Nothing. CapCut says it straight out: “We don't own your User Content.” Your videos stay yours.
What you own
The copyright. You can post the same video anywhere else, sell it, or license it. CapCut can’t stop you. You’re also the one who has to clear any music or clips you didn’t make yourself.
What you don’t
Any way to take back what you gave them. Uploading gives CapCut permission to use your video. That permission has no end date and no cancel button. They can hand it to other companies too — the terms name affiliates, agents, partners, and “other connected third parties”. Deleting your account doesn’t undo it.
What they can do with it
Copy it, change it, cut it into something new, publish it, share it, and store it — without asking you, crediting you, or paying you. They take your username, your photo, and your face on the same deal.
The clauses
The grant
CapCut Terms of Service — User Content ↗
We don't own your User Content. If you are the owner of the intellectual property rights in content you create or share on the Platform, nothing in these Terms changes that.
By submitting User Content via the Services, you grant TikTok USDS Joint Venture and our affiliates, agents, services providers, partners and other connected third parties an unconditional, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully transferable, sub-licensable, perpetual and worldwide license to use your User Content.
Perpetual
There is no end date and no way to withdraw it. Deleting the video ends your copy, not their licence.
Sub-licensable
They can pass the right to someone else, who can pass it on again. You will not be told who.
Royalty-free
Every use above is free. If your work makes money for a partner downstream, none of it is owed to you.
What the licence lets them do
CapCut Terms of Service — Scope of licence ↗
This license to your User Content allows us to modify, adapt, reproduce, make derivative works of, display, publish, transmit, distribute and/or store your User Content for the purposes of operating, developing and providing the Services, subject to your Platform settings.
Derivative works
Your edit can be cut into something else. That is the clause that matters if your footage is the raw material for someone's product.
The one limit
"subject to your Platform settings" is the only brake in the sentence, and it is set by settings they control.
Your face, on the same terms
CapCut Terms of Service — Name and likeness ↗
You further grant us and our affiliates, agents, services providers, partners and other connected third parties a royalty-free fully transferable (including sub-licensable), worldwide license to use your username, image and likeness to identify you as the source of any of your User Content, including for use in sponsored content.
The one nobody reads
This is a separate grant from the one covering your footage, and it covers you rather than your work.
Sponsored content
The sentence does not stop at crediting you. Your name and face can be used in advertising, on a licence that is royalty-free and sub-licensable.
Deleting your account
CapCut Terms of Service — Account deletion ↗
Please be aware that once you choose to delete your account, you will not be able to reactivate your account, retrieve any of your account data, or any of the content or information you have uploaded, created, edited, shared, received from other users or are otherwise associated with your account.
One-way door
Leaving costs you the archive and does not reclaim the licence. You lose your copy; they keep theirs.
The other agreement
CapCut Creator Terms of Service — Name and likeness ↗
You further grant us an unconditional, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully transferable (including sub-licensable), perpetual, worldwide license to use your username, profile image and likeness to identify you as the source of any of your Creator Content and for the Purposes, except as otherwise set forth in Section 14.
A separate contract
CapCut has two agreements. This one covers people in its creator programme, and it is stricter than the main terms.
Irrevocable
The main terms never use this word. This one does — and it attaches to your face and name, not your footage.
The 2 agreements
Due Dilly reads the paperwork and reports what it says. This is not legal advice.