9 Best Video Editing Software of 2026

CapCut is the editor we would suggest first to someone who wants to make short videos for TikTok, YouTube Shorts or Instagram without learning a professional tool. The free app on iPhone, iPad and Mac covers trimming, splitting, speed changes from 0.1x to 100x, transitions and a multi-track timeline, and CapCut states that beginners can get started in a matter of seconds. The automated tools do much of the slow work: auto captions turn speech into subtitles, text-to-speech adds voices in several languages, and background removal cuts people out of a scene without a green screen. Keyframes, chroma key, stabilization and optical flow slow motion are there when you want more control, and exports go up to 4K at 60fps. The downside is pricing clarity. The US App Store lists Standard at $9.99 a month, Pro at $19.99 a month and a yearly plan at $89.99, plus several other subscription items, so check which features sit behind each tier before paying.

Adobe Premiere for iPhone and iPad is Adobe's newer mobile editor, and Adobe pitches it as fast, free and simple enough for anyone to use. What makes it stand out among free apps is the absence of ads and watermarks, plus a timeline with unlimited tracks, so you can stack clips, titles, stickers and voiceovers without hitting a cap. Auto captions use AI speech-to-text, background removal takes one tap, and Lightroom presets give clips a consistent color look. Speed effects, reverse, freeze frames and keyframes cover most creator edits, and the app resizes projects for any aspect ratio before you post. Adobe also bundles a library of free images, sounds and video clips, and YouTube Shorts templates for people who need a starting point. The paid tier, $7.99 a month or $69.99 a year on the US App Store, matters mainly for the generative AI features. The limit is reach: there is no desktop version in this listing, so longer projects may outgrow it.

DaVinci Resolve gives away more than most companies charge for. The free version for Mac, Windows and Linux combines editing, color correction, Fusion visual effects with over 250 tools and the Fairlight audio workstation, and Blackmagic Design says it is used on more Hollywood films and TV shows than any other finishing tool. For beginners, the cut page is the friendly entry point: it is built for fast edits, with dual timelines, a voice over palette and a layout for vertical video. The challenge is everything beyond it. Color, Fusion and Fairlight are full professional pages, and that depth is why we score Resolve lower on ease of use than the phone apps on this list. The paid DaVinci Resolve Studio, shown at $236 instead of $295 on Blackmagic Design's site as we checked, is a one-time purchase that adds IntelliScript, IntelliCut silence removal, animated subtitles and Magic Mask upgrades. On Mac, the App Store build needs Apple silicon.

iMovie is the gentlest start in video editing for anyone in the Apple world. Pick an album and Magic Movies builds a finished video with titles, transitions and music, no editing required. Storyboards walk you through 20 popular video types with placeholder clips to fill, which works well for kids making a school project, and the trailer templates, 14 on iPhone and iPad and 29 on Mac, turn a weekend trip into a mock Hollywood trailer with credits. When you want more control, iMovie offers 8 themes, 13 video filters, green screen, picture in picture, split screen and more than 130 soundtracks that fit the length of your movie. It exports up to 4K at 60 frames per second on iPhone and iPad and can hand projects to Final Cut Pro on a Mac. The limits are the Apple-only platform and a smaller toolset than CapCut or Premiere mobile, with no auto captions among its listed features.

Clipchamp is the simplest choice for households that do not live in Apple's ecosystem. Microsoft describes it as an editor with beginner-friendly tools for free, and you sign in with a personal Microsoft account and start editing in the browser, with no payment or download. The free plan is more generous than most: you can export as many videos as you like in up to 1080p with no watermark, and it includes AI subtitles, voiceovers and silence removal along with trim, crop and resize tools. A built-in screen, camera and voice recorder helps with tutorials, school presentations and video messages. Premium features, including 4K exports, premium stock, premium filters and a brand kit, now come with Microsoft 365 Personal and Family rather than a separate plan. Microsoft lists Personal at $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year in the US. Clipchamp lacks the deeper timeline tools of Resolve or Final Cut Pro, but most family videos will not need them.

Final Cut Pro is the natural next step for Mac users who outgrow iMovie, since iMovie projects can be sent straight into it. The Magnetic Timeline keeps clips from overlapping or leaving gaps as you move them, which makes the jump to professional editing less painful than in most pro tools. Apple has added AI features that matter to creators: Generate Captions writes closed captions or animated subtitles from spoken audio, Magnetic Mask isolates people and objects without a green screen, and Smart Conform reframes projects for square or vertical delivery. Color wheels, curves, HDR tone mapping and noise reduction from Logic Pro round it out. You can buy it once for $299.99 on the Mac, or get it through Apple Creator Studio, which covers Final Cut Pro on Mac and iPad plus Logic Pro and other apps for $12.99 a month or $129 a year after a 30-day trial. The cost and the Apple-only platform are the main reasons to look elsewhere.

LumaFusion is for people who edit on an iPad or iPhone and want more control than the free apps give, without paying monthly. It costs $29.99 once on the US App Store and offers six video, audio or graphic tracks plus six additional audio tracks, with a timeline that works both track by track and magnetically. Green screen, luma and chroma keys, a stabilizer, color correction with LUT imports and video scopes make it a real editing tool, and the audio side includes voice isolation, parametric EQ and ducking so music drops under dialogue. Media can come from Photos, Frame.io or a USB-C drive. Apple named it App of the Year for 2021, and the Editors' Choice note says beginners can get the hang of its touch interface. The catch is that some advanced features, including Multicam Studio, speed ramping and FCPXML export, are $19.99 add-ons each or part of a Creator Pass subscription.

Filmora sits between the phone apps and the professional editors. It is a desktop-style editor with a timeline, but Wondershare focuses on making advanced tools accessible, and much of the work is drag and drop from a library of more than 15 million titles, transitions, stickers and templates. Auto captions add animated subtitles in one click, Auto Reframe resizes videos for each platform, AI Portrait Cutout removes backgrounds around people, and video denoising cleans up background noise. Multi-cam editing, planar tracking and keyframes are there for people who want to go further. Value is mixed. The US Mac App Store lists a Basic Annual Plan at $49.99 and a Lifetime License at $79.99, which is cheaper than most subscriptions over time, but it also sells effects subscriptions, cloud storage and AI credit packs as extras, so the true cost depends on which features you use. Check the plan details before you buy.

Descript takes a different approach from every other editor here: it transcribes your recording and lets you edit the video by editing the text, the way you would edit a document. Delete a sentence from the transcript and it disappears from the video. For talking-head YouTube videos, podcasts, lessons and interviews, that is far easier than trimming waveforms on a timeline. The AI tools fit the same kind of work. Studio Sound cleans up audio, Remove Filler Words cuts the ums, Create Clips finds short highlights, and Underlord acts as an AI co-editor. Remote recording sessions handle up to 10 participants. The Hobbyist plan costs $16 a month billed annually, or $24 monthly, and includes 10 media hours, 400 AI credits and watermark-free 1080p exports, while Creator at $24 a month annually adds 4K and more AI. The free plan is a trial more than a home, with 60 media minutes a month. Descript is not built for music videos or effect-heavy montages.