Twelve Labs

Twelve Labs

Verified
4.6
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Updated October 26, 2026

Revolutionizes video understanding with AI, enabling natural language search and content generation.

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Key Takeaways

What it is
Revolutionizes video understanding with AI, enabling natural language search and content generation.
Pricing
Freemium
Best for
  • Natural Language Search
  • Content Generation
  • Video Classification
Rating
4.6/5

What is Twelve Labs?

Twelve Labs is a pioneering force in the field of artificial intelligence, specifically focusing on multimodal AI technologies that possess the remarkable ability to understand videos much like humans do. This cutting-edge tool is designed to transform how businesses and individuals interact with video content, offering capabilities that range from searching for specific moments within massive video libraries using natural language to generating insightful text about video content. Aimed at a wide array of users, from content creators and media professionals to educational institutions and large enterprises, Twelve Labs simplifies the complex task of video analysis and manipulation, making it more accessible, efficient, and scalable.

Twelve Labs stands out with its unparalleled ability to understand and process video content at a human-like level. The tool's integration of natural language processing for video search and analysis is a game-changer, enabling users to interact with video content in ways that were previously unimaginable. Its scalable architecture ensures that organizations of any size can benefit from advanced video AI capabilities, making Twelve Labs a versatile solution across industries.

Twelve Labs excels in revolutionizing the way we interact with video content, providing tools that are not only highly accurate and reliable but also incredibly user-friendly. Its unique approach to video understanding, combined with the ability to search and generate content using natural language, positions it as an indispensable tool for a wide range of users. Whether it’s for media management, content creation, or educational purposes, Twelve Labs offers an unmatched advantage in video analysis and processing.

Who is Using Twelve Labs?

Media Companies

Enhancing content discovery and management within extensive video archives.

Educational Institutions

For research and educational purposes, enabling a new level of interaction with video content.

Content Creators

Streamlining the process of video editing and metadata generation.

Marketing Agencies

Leveraging detailed video analysis to create targeted advertising campaigns.

Uncommon Use Cases

Legal professionals using video search for evidence in case preparations; health organizations analyzing video content for patient care tutorials.

Key Features

Natural Language Search: Allows users to find precise moments in videos using simple, conversational queries.
Content Generation: Generates accurate and detailed text descriptions, summaries, or metadata for videos.
Video Classification: Automatically categorizes videos into predefined or custom categories quickly and efficiently.
Scalability: Built to handle video libraries of any size, from terabytes to exabytes, without compromising performance.
Customization: Offers the ability to fine-tune the AI models with specific data, making it highly adaptable to various domains and content types.
State-of-the-Art Models: Uses the latest advancements in AI research to provide superior video understanding capabilities.

Rating Breakdown

4.6/ 5.0
accuracy
4.8
ease of use
4.5
features
5.0
speed
4.7
support
4.5
value
4.3

Pricing Plans

Free

Free

  • Up to 10 hours of indexing
  • Video indexing: Free
  • Embedding Infra Services: Free
  • Search API usage: Free
  • Input video: Free
  • Output Text: Free
  • Video hours usage: 600 minutes
  • Index access: 90 days since creation
  • Duration per index: 10 hours
  • Volume per index: 100 videos

Developer

  • Up to 10k hours of indexing
  • Video indexing: $2.50 / hour
  • Embedding Infra Services: $0.09 / hour
  • Search API usage: $4 / 1000 queries
  • Input video: $1.75 / hour
  • Output Text: $7.5 / 1M tokens
  • Video hours usage: Unlimited
  • Index access: Unlimited
  • Duration per index: 10,000 hours
  • Volume per index: 100,000 videos

Enterprise

  • Unlimited indexing hours
  • Video indexing: Custom
  • Embedding Infra Services: Custom
  • Search API usage: Custom
  • Input video: Custom
  • Output Text: Custom
  • Video hours usage: Unlimited
  • Index access: Unlimited
  • Duration per index: Custom
  • Volume per index: Custom

Which Twelve Labs plan should you pick?

Start with Free for evaluation and prototypes, upgrade to Developer for ongoing pay-as-you-go usage, and choose Enterprise for custom limits or deployment requirements.

Free

Good for testing and building with up to 600 minutes of shared video usage and limited index retention.

Developer

Good for launching applications that need unlimited video-hours usage, larger indexes, and pay-as-you-go API access.

Enterprise

Good for organizations needing custom limits, committed-use contracts, or private and self-managed deployment options.

Twelve Labs Use Cases

Media automation and content creation

Use video understanding to automate trailer and highlight creation and analyze large content libraries.

Outcome: Faster content delivery with lower operational complexity and cost.

Conversational content discovery

Search and reason across video archives using natural-language questions and grounded moments.

Outcome: Editors and teams find relevant footage faster.

Sports highlight creation

Search sports footage for moments such as emotional celebrations and game-winning shots.

Outcome: Less manual searching and faster production of fan content.

Security video analysis

Search footage, reconstruct incidents across cameras, and detect behavioral anomalies.

Outcome: Faster evidence review and improved incident investigation.

Semantic video search

Index video libraries and retrieve specific scenes or moments using text or image queries.

Outcome: More precise discovery and reuse of archived video.

Workflow Ideas with Twelve Labs

Analyze and structure uploaded video

  1. 1Upload a video as an asset
  2. 2Submit an analysis prompt
  3. 3Return generated text or structured JSON with timestamped results

Build a searchable video archive

  1. 1Upload videos and create an index
  2. 2Search the indexed content with text or image queries
  3. 3Retrieve the relevant moments and timestamps

Create a multimodal knowledge agent

  1. 1Upload videos and images to a knowledge store
  2. 2Ask Jockey a question spanning the stored content
  3. 3Receive an answer with grounded, cited moments

How Twelve Labs fits into your stack

API Access

Offers robust API support for integration into existing systems and workflows.

Cloud Flexibility

Can be deployed on any cloud, self-hosted cloud, or on-premise, ensuring compatibility with various IT environments.

Custom Model Training

Users can fine-tune models with their own data, enhancing the AI’s effectiveness within specific contexts.

Security Standards

Preparing for SOC2 and ISO 27001 compliance, guaranteeing a high level of data protection and privacy.

Pros

  • +Time-Saving: Drastically reduces the time required to search and categorize video content.
  • +High Accuracy: Recognized for its exceptional performance and accuracy in video understanding.
  • +User-Friendly: Designed with a straightforward interface for ease of use, regardless of technical expertise.
  • +Privacy and Security: Ensures data security and privacy with enterprise-grade protection measures.

Cons

  • βˆ’Learning Curve: New users may need time to fully grasp the breadth of features and best practices for utilizing the tool effectively.
  • βˆ’Customization Requirements: While highly customizable, achieving optimal performance may require fine-tuning, which could be a complex process for some users.
  • βˆ’Pricing Transparency: Detailed pricing information is not immediately available, requiring potential users to contact the company for specifics.

Limitations & when to consider alternatives

Known limitations

  • Free usage is cumulative. The Free plan provides 600 minutes shared across indexing, analysis, and segmentation; the allowance does not reset when content is deleted.
  • Free indexes have retention and size limits. Free indexes are limited to 10 hours and 100 videos, with index access limited to 90 days since creation.
  • Video analysis duration limits. Synchronous analysis supports videos up to 1 hour; asynchronous analysis supports videos up to 2 hours.
  • Upload size limits vary by content type. Examples include 32 MB for images, 200 MB for local documents, 4 GB for public video URLs, and 512 MB for public document URLs.
  • Some embedding limits are unpublished. The documentation states that request limits for document embedding are not published.

Look elsewhere when

  • You need a native mobile app.
  • You need a browser extension.
  • You need a dedicated desktop application.
  • You need a general-purpose code-generation tool.

How to Use Twelve Labs

  1. 1

    Explore the extensive documentation and tutorials available on the Twelve Labs website, designed to help users get started and maximize the tool's capabilities.

Who is Twelve Labs For?

Product managers

The Playground is designed to help product managers explore and test Twelve Labs capabilities.

Developers

Developers can use the REST API, Python SDK, Node.js SDK, and API quickstarts to build video applications.

AI enthusiasts

The Playground provides a hands-on environment for experimenting with video intelligence features.

Media organizations

Twelve Labs supports media automation, content creation, video search, and archive workflows.

Sports and entertainment teams

The platform is documented for content discovery, sports highlight creation, archive search, and short-form summarization.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Twelve Labs offer a free plan?

Yes. The Free plan provides up to 600 minutes, or 10 hours, shared across indexing, analysis, and segmentation.

What can Twelve Labs analyze?

The platform analyzes visual content, sounds, spoken words, and their relationships in videos.

Can Twelve Labs process images and documents?

Yes. The platform supports uploads of images and documents including PDF, text, and Markdown files.

Does Twelve Labs provide an API?

Yes. It provides REST APIs plus Python and Node.js SDKs for search, analysis, embeddings, and related workflows.

Can Twelve Labs fine-tune models?

Yes. Twelve Labs says it can fine-tune models for business requirements and domain-specific needs.

Does Twelve Labs support multiple languages?

Yes. Its models support multiple human languages, including 36 languages in addition to English for specified Marengo 3.0 search operations.

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