I’ve been editing videos for over 7 years. Over that time, I have tried multiple editing software. I was predominantly a Final Cut Pro girl, but I dabbled in Adobe Premiere Pro, CapCut, and iMovie, and now I use DaVinci Resolve. But, is there an editing software that’s better than the rest?

Today I’ll be comparing the big 3: Apple Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere Pro against the following criteria:

1. Pricing
2. Capability
3. Accessibility

Pricing

The big 3 all adopt completely different pricing strategies. Final Cut Pro is a fixed price of £299, which you pay once and then never have to think about again. Recently, Apple introduced its Creator Studio, so you can now get Final Cut Pro on a £12/month subscription, but for the sake of this debate, we will go with the fixed price.

Adobe Premiere Pro has infamously stuck with its position as a subscription-based service, consistently raising prices over the years. At the time of writing this Blog post, the monthly cost for Adobe Premiere Pro is £66.49. Yes, that’s a month. In other words, £797.88 a year, meaning I would’ve paid nearly £6000 on my editing software ALONE in the 7 years in which I’ve been doing it.

Go anywhere, Reddit, X, TikTok, and you’ll find people complaining about Adobe’s high price point. Regardless, it is still widely used professionally and personally for video editing, so it’s clear that the price isn’t wholly for nothing.

DaVanci Resolve is free! They have DaVinci Resolve Studio which is a one-time fee of £225, but for most use cases the free plan will have everything that you need. A lot of editors, including me, are slowly transitioning to DaVinci Resolve. It is immensely capable and shares many features with Adobe Premiere Pro, but without the extortionate fee.

It’s very clear that DaVinci Resolve wins the price battle. Even if we were to consider the Studio version, it is still significantly cheaper than its two competitors.

Accessibility

Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve are accessible to practically anybody with a computer and a WiFi connection. They are not tied to a specific operating system, and so you can download and use them whether you use a Windows desktop or Apple laptop.

On the other hand, Final Cut Pro is tied strictly to the Apple Ecosystem, meaning you can only download and use it if you own an Apple device. This makes it inaccessible to a large chunk of the editing community, as unless you have an Apple product at your disposal, you’d have to purchase one in order to download Final Cut Pro, and we all know the significant impact that would have on the price ranking.

As of late 2025, you can now get Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro on iPads. This makes the softwares more accessible to an entire new community, who may not have access to a desktop. However, as all 3 have this feature, it doesn’t really help their ranking.

An important consideration for accessibility is the learning curve. Someone who has never edited in their life is likely to find it much harder to learn Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve than Final Cut Pro.

Final Cut Pro is often praised for its sleek, easy-to-understand interface. Somebody with no idea about editing would be able to get a good understanding of how to edit a video on the software within an hour or two. On the other hand, Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve take a lot more work.

As a former Final Cut user, I was really taken aback when I started using DaVinci. Whilst the overall rules and concepts were similar, I was so used to FCP-specific features such as the magnetic timeline, that it took me a while to adjust and get used to not having it. Outside of this, simply learning where everything is and how I add different elements to my timeline took a good amount of practice.

Whereas Final Cut Pro offers one environment to work with, DaVinci Resolve offers multiple. You have the simple Edit page, but you also have Fusion, a node-based compositing environment that I had NO idea how to use. Whilst my experience with Adobe Premiere Pro is slightly more limited, I know there is often a discussion of a similar steep learning curve.

In terms of tangible accessibility, DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere Pro are neck and neck. But in terms of accessibility to a range of skill-sets, Final Cut Pro perhaps takes the cake. For this reason, this round is a 3-way tie.

Capability

Off the bat, Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve are widely known as having more comprehensive, professional-grade capabilities. Features include:

• Industry Standard Colour Grading: DaVinci Resolve actually began as a colour-grading software, meaning it is the gold standard for complex projects, offering incredible flexibility. Adobe Premiere Pro offers more traditional colour-grading capabilities but still trumps the otherwise limited ones of Final Cut Pro.
• Motion Graphics: in Final Cut Pro, you have to go to Motion to create complex graphics. In Davinci Resolve and Premiere Pro, you can do this in-house with DaVinci’s Fusion page or Adobe After Effects.
• Audio Capabilities: DaVinci Resolve has a dedicated audio page, supporting up to 2,000 tracks and 3D audio.

For professional use, DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere Pro offer much more functionality for efficient workflows tailored to more complex projects.

HOWEVER. Final Cut Pro still has many strong capabilities. I would argue that 90% of projects can be completed in Final Cut Pro. Of course, it may take longer or be a bit trickier, but especially with the option for plugins and addons, Final Cut Pro isn’t as far behind in this race as you may think.

Final Cut Pro is unrivalled in its speed. You can often play 4K or 8K ProRes RAW footage in real time with minimal lag, and their previously mentioned Magnetic Timeline reduces the risk of clip collisions and enables compound clips, resulting in an overall cleaner experience.

FCP 11 introduced multiple AI features, such as Magnetic Mask and Voice Isolation, and also provided a much broader scope of work for users.

It’s difficult to crown a winner in this category, as each platform is better suited to a different editor. Whilst Final Cut Pro is quick and easy, DaVinci Resolve has a higher ceiling for technical complexity, and Adobe Premiere Pro is a market leader in AI integration, with new features such as Generative Extend, which lets you extend a clip by up to 10 seconds to fix pacing when footage is too short.

Perhaps I share the industry’s bias, but Adobe Premiere Pro likely wins this category by a yard or less. In truth, all three are becoming increasingly similar in terms of capability, especially with the rise of AI and its integration.

Which software is the best?

It seems to be a 3-way tie, with Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve just slightly ahead of Final Cut Pro. In truth, there is no ‘best’ editing software. It’s individual to each editor, and whilst one may work better with Premiere Pro, another may work better on Final Cut Pro.

Nowadays, it’s not even about capability that much, because all 3 can produce professional-quality products. It’s more about efficiency, productivity, and how each software tool adapts to new technological advancements to speed up the editing process.

Which is your favourite? Shoot me an email at jamie@withjamie.co.uk. We’ll have a chat.