11 Best Alternatives to Final Cut Pro for Any Budget

Final Cut Pro is a pro-level nonlinear video editor that is loved by most professionals for its rich set of features, tools, attractive filters, and effects. However, many users report the same shortcomings, including a rather high cost ($299.99), confusing UI, and lack of a Windows version. That is why worthy alternatives to Final Cut Pro are in increasing demand.

These apps like Final Cut Pro can be used on various devices and operating systems. I have described their functionality in detail so that you can choose the product that suits you best in terms of interface, feature set, filters, animation capabilities, supported formats, and so on. Also, look out for additional options that can improve your user experience.

Verdict: Being the most similar product to Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro comes with the same amazing set of features and a range of supported formats. Editing video clips, supporting the most popular formats and high resolutions up to virtual reality, mixing frames in the desired sequence – all this and more is available to you with this Final Cut Pro alternative.

I like that the creative process is very simple, allowing you to seamlessly use your own videos and photos, as well as benefit from simple proxy processes.

Users also value Premiere Pro for its powerful color capabilities that allow you to precisely, quickly, and seamlessly set the colors and shades you want. Numerous integrations like Adobe Audition and Adobe Stock make this solution even more extensive and useful. Now you don’t have to leave the program to customize animation templates from After Effects, which is very handy. You can try the functionality of the program for free for 7 days or purchase it for $20.99/mo.

Verdict: The main advantages of Filmora are its extreme stability and high performance. It boasts a decent set of basic features, as well as brand-new options for grouping videos on the timeline, labeling ranges, and adding music and clips to an infinite number of video tracks.

I love that it has advanced features to enhance your audio, such as audio auto-sync, audio compressor, and noise elimination. When it comes to color grading, you can experiment with the various presets and color wheels available to deepen your footage.

You can also spruce up your project with animations and motion tracking. This is one of the few alternatives to Final Cut Pro that is not demanding on your hardware and is extremely easy to understand. You can use the free feature-limited version, or unlock the features for $29.99/mo.

Verdict: Vegas Pro is a top-shelf Final Cut Pro alternative Windows that comes with the same user interface and functionality for the same price. Enhanced with NVIDIA and Intel hardware acceleration, this product offers an exceptional clip editing experience. This full-featured video editor for Windows has everything you need to edit clips like a pro – improved functionality for working with music and clips, as well as exporting finished projects in high resolution up to 4K.

I love that Vegas Pro doesn’t sacrifice the quality of your videos, whether it’s 3D video or 4K. play around with the stabilization and motion tracking features to make a really top-quality video clip on a pro level. Users also appreciate the automatic subtitle generation option. You can try the program for free for 30 days or buy it for $12.99/mo.

Verdict: Among the Windows-compatible apps like Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve with its rich set of post-processing features is also worth mentioning. You can create a true video masterpiece by embellishing it with animations, visual effects, and title cards, fine-tuning its sound parameters, and even restoring images.

The developers took care of the smooth functioning of the program and divided your workspace into pages where you can work on different processes and edit up to 2000 tracks simultaneously with an uncluttered interface.

You can enjoy the program absolutely free of charge. To benefit from over 50 premium features, you can purchase DaVinci Resolve Studio, which comes with the DaVinci Neural Engine, additional Resolve FX, stereoscopic 3D, and more, for $295.

Verdict: As an open-source Final Cut Pro alternative, Blender focuses on improved animation capabilities and motion graphics and boasts more effects and compositing options than the free version of Final Cut Pro offers. Getting back to animation, there are onion skinning, modeling, and sculpting available here, with which you can decorate your video like a pro.

Besides the basic feature set, you can benefit from keyframing, particle modeling, motion tracking, and more. All this makes Blender an excellent choice for professionals and amateurs who want to create first-class videos without resorting to the use of additional programs. What’s more, the product is available to use for free.

Verdict: Windows Movie Maker is also very easy to learn, which is suitable even for beginners who can easily create their own eye-catching videos here. At the same time, it lacks the multi-track timeline, which often scares off inexperienced users.

I like that importing your own content is available here from both a computer and a smartphone. Trimming and splitting a clip, adding all sorts of transitions and special effects, inserting animation elements, as well as text – all this and more is offered to you by Movie Maker.

At the end of the creative process, you can save your project or immediately share it on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, and other platforms directly from the program.

Verdict: Camtasia is not a complete Final Cut Pro alternative, but its advantage is in the perfect combination of a decent set of features with ease of use. It allows for capturing your screen along with audio, capturing webcam video that you can then embed into your project, deep audio tuning to make your movie sound perfect, and adjusting pre-made animations to decorate your projects with.

Apart from the above, Camtasia also comes with a rich collection of assets including audio, icons, motion backgrounds, intro templates, etc. You can try the program for free or buy it for $299.99/per user, including 1 year of maintenance.

Verdict: Shotcut is a full-featured open-source and free Final Cut Pro alternative Windows. Its interface may seem a little complicated and inconvenient, but you can easily customize it. It offers a wide range of output formats for your video projects, but I miss sharing options for popular social networks and video hosting sites here. Shotcut is aimed at beginners, but there is a lot to learn here.

Thanks to multi-track audio mixing and color wheels, you can achieve perfect sound and color reproduction for your mini-movies. Among the additional features, you can find keyframes, transitions, and blur effects that you can decorate your projects with. All of these features and capabilities are available in Shotcut for free.

Verdict: Among the Windows-compatible apps like Final Cut Pro, which are suitable for users with no experience, I can highlight VideoPad. It features Video Maker Wizard, which allows you to quickly and seamlessly create video masterpieces by customizing ready-made pro-level templates.

In addition to the basic set of features, VideoPad offers stereoscopic 2D to 3D conversion, a rich selection of transitions and audio effects, voiceover options, and camera shake reduction that will take your video quality to the next level. You can use the program for free, as well as try out all its functionality in a free trial. To purchase the program, you will need to pay from $70.00/one-time.

Verdict: One of the lightest alternatives to Final Cut Pro supported by most operating systems is the free and open-source Avidemux. With it, you can merge, trim, and filter your clips quickly and seamlessly. Its basic functionality offers decent features that even a beginner can easily master. At the same time, the support for various video formats is simply amazing – MP44, MPG, AVI, OGM, MKV, FLV, and many others.

I love that there are so many options for filtering your projects, from adding subtitles to adjusting the overall audio volume, from deinterlacing to setting frame size and sharpness, etc. What’s more, here you can save your custom video storage and editing settings so you can use them whenever you need. The use of this open-source product is completely free.

Verdict: This full-fledged Final Cut Pro alternative is often used to convert audio and video files. Converting any type of media, ripping CDs & DVDs, creating ISO images, and more is available to you with Format Factory. Here you can also split and merge your files, and set the format and size of your final project.

I like that the interface is conveniently divided into sections where you can merge video, and audio, rename files or change their data in batches. Here you can also directly copy audio to your sound file, as well as copy unprotected DVDs to video. This is very handy for those who are going to play videos on smartphones and other devices that support 3GP and other similar formats. Using Format Factory is free.

The main disadvantage of the program is incompatibility with Windows. At the same time, it will be difficult for users without experience in working with such resources to master it. Some also complain that they don’t have enough audio effect samples and search strings when importing. Also, this tool is not available for free.

Among all the worthy alternatives to Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro remains the leading one, providing the same set of clip editing features. The developers created their product with user-friendliness in mind, giving free rein to your imagination while reducing all inconveniences that can interfere with the creative process. The tool comes with improved functionality, including optimized color grading, an enhanced timeline, better content management, and more.