A TikTok alternative that shows its work.
Short video, a real editor, and a For You that is not a black box. The weights are published, the dials are yours, and one switch turns the whole thing off.
If you want the format without the sense that the feed is optimising you rather than for you, the difference here is that the scoring is written down and you can move it.
Side by side.
| TikTok | Surf | |
|---|---|---|
| How it makes money | Advertising and commerce | Subscriptions |
| Ads in the feed | Yes | None, on any plan |
| Ranking weights published | Described, not quantified | Every weight, with numbers |
| Feed without ranking | A Following feed | One switch, in the main feed |
| Why a video reached you | General reasons | The actual signals, per post |
| Tune the ranking yourself | Limited | Ten sliders, or a sentence |
| Export without a watermark | No | Yes, on paid tiers |
| Pay to promote one video | Yes | Not possible |
| Editor built in | Yes | 77 panels, 51 AI tools |
Every row describing TikTok reflects publicly documented behaviour and can change. Where they do something well, it says so.
The editor is the app.
A real timeline in a browser tab: 77 panels, 27 AR lenses, 55 filters, 11 caption styles and 18 voice effects, with an editing agent you can talk to. Exports are clean and there is no render queue.
Inside the studio
Seven dials for the vibe.
Set how much heat, how much positivity, how much of the same format in a row. Past the third post from one author the rest are damped, and so is any single format taking over your slate.
See the weightsWhere TikTok still wins.
Surf is new, and the things it does not have are worth knowing before you move.
- The audience is not here yet. Short video lives or dies on reach, and a pre-launch network has little of it.
- There is no import for your videos, drafts or sounds.
- Shorts run to three minutes on every tier, including paid ones.
- Creator payouts run in the United States only for now.
Questions people ask.
- What are the actual ranking weights?
- 23 named signals feed the score. The heaviest engagement signals are a reply at 7.0, a repost at 5.0 and a quote at 5.0, against a like at 0.5. Your explicit feedback outweighs all of it: show more is +15, show less is -20, and not interested is -50. Every one of them is on the algorithm page.
- Is there a watermark on exports?
- Not on any paid tier. Exports come out clean, with your brand on them rather than ours, and there is no render queue between you and the file.
- How long can videos be?
- Shorts are up to three minutes on every tier. Posted video runs 2 minutes on Free, 5 on Sapphire, and 10 on Pro and Ultra. Upload quality goes 720p, 1080p, 4K, 8K across the four tiers.
- Can the feed stop showing me one kind of thing?
- Yes, in two ways. Not interested applies a -50 to that kind of post, which is the largest single weight in the system. Or write a standing rule in plain English and it holds until you switch it off.
More in the help center, the algorithm page, and the full comparison.