Final Cut Pro for Windows free trial

Apple’s Final Cut Pro is a very powerful video editing package for the Mac, but unfortunately, there isn’t a Final Cut Pro X Windows edition or a Final Cut Pro for Windows 10. That’s where the best Final Cut Pro alternative for Windows comes in: there are lots of good programs like it, delivering all the features you need to produce visually stunning videos, and they’re often cheaper too.

Quick summary

This application is a perfect choice for hobbyists and novices who want to produce pro-level videos with little effort. It has all the key features required for video editing – Chroma key, motion tracking, object animation, etc.

Premiere® Pro is a robust and powerful video editing solution. It’s probably the closest Final Cut Pro Windows equivalent, but unfortunately, that means it has a big price tag too. Also, you should prepare for a steep learning curve.

Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering, and encoding tasks. If you’re not going to make a movie and okay with having just 3 features, this one will do.

Final Cut Pro alternatives for Windows: Comparison table

Here’s a quick guide to the top Final Cut Pro alternatives for Mac, Windows, and Linux in 2022. Some of these are free, some are paid for, and some are freemium with a free core app and paid-for upgrades that expand the range of available features and tools.

We’ve reviewed each of the programs listed here – scroll down and you’ll see everything you need to know. We’ve also created a guide to choosing the best Final Cut Pro alternative on Mac, PC, or Linux that covers the key things to think about. You’ll find it immediately after the video editor reviews.

For more experienced editors

Editor's choice

For beginners and experienced users alike

For power users and production jobs

Final Cut Pro alternatives free download for Windows: Freeware

If you’re looking for an alternative to Final Cut Pro on the Mac or a Windows program with similar features as Apple’s video editor, the following options include key video editing tools that you can use for free.

Shotcut

Best for: More experienced editors

Price: Free

OS: Windows, Linux, macOS

Review by TechRadar: 4 stars

Shotcut could charge a lot for this app, but instead, it’s freeware and open source. It has wide format support, including 4K and ProRes, has a straightforward timeline editor, and is packed with filters, transitions, and colour processing options. It’s a really impressive package.

Pros:

• 4K support

• Extensive feature set

Cons:

• A little overwhelming for beginners

• Occasional delays on changing effect parameters

Download Shotcut

DaVinci Resolve

Best for: Colour correction and audio post-production

Price: Free

OS: Windows, Linux, macOS

Review by PCMag: 4 stars

The free DaVinci Resolve has always been an impressive editing package, but the latest version is even better thanks to the addition of collaboration features previously only available to Studio users. It’s a bit scary for beginners but it’s an excellent solution for visual effects, motion graphics, colour correction, and audio post-production, and it’s a good free alternative to Final Cut Pro.

Pros:

• Heavyweight editing, effects, and audio production

• Now has collaboration features too

Cons:

• A bit scary for beginners

• One for the experts

Download DaVinci Resolve

Avidemux

Best for: Quick and simple editing jobs

Price: Free

OS: Windows, Linux, macOS

Review by TechRadar: 4.5 stars

Avidemux is a simple and effective video editor with three key features: cutting, re-encoding, and filtering. It’s very user-friendly and includes a decent range of tools, and while it’s no substitute for a high-end video editing package, it’s a useful utility.

Pros:

• Easy to use

• Cuts, filters, and re-encodes

Cons:

• Can be a little slow

• Limited feature set

Download Avidemux

HitFilm Express

Best for: Free visual effects

Price: Free (some features at extra cost)

OS: Windows, macOS

Review by TechRadar: 4.5 stars

Hitfilm Express isn’t the easiest package to pick up and use, but there’s a good selection of tutorials online if you Google, and once you’ve got the hang of it, it’s a very powerful program. It comes complete with an excellent collection of visual effects, and you can extend it with lots of pro-level features for a relatively low fee.

Pros:

• Genuinely pro-level software

• Regularly updated

Cons:

• Needs fairly powerful hardware

• Quite a steep learning curve

Download HitFilm Express

Blender

Best for: Creating 3D objects and animation

Price: Free

OS: Windows, Mac, Linux, Steam

Review by G2: 4.5 stars

Blender is open-source software for 3D graphics that covers every step of the process from modelling to rendering, composition, and even videogame creation. It’s absolutely terrifying if you haven’t used 3D software before, but the online documentation and tutorials are very good, and there’s a huge online community happy to help too. If you’ve always wanted to make your own CGI, then it’s hard to beat Blender, not least because it’s free.

Pros:

• Incredibly powerful

• Incredibly flexible

Cons:

• Incredibly intimidating at first

• Not for everyday editing

Download Blender

Final Cut Pro Windows equivalent: Paid programs

There are lots of paid-for programs that offer similar features to Final Cut Pro. Some, like Premiere Pro, are designed for commercial production environments and have a price tag to match; others are for home and hobbyist use and are much more affordable. These are our current favourites on PC, Mac, and Linux.

Adobe® Premiere® Pro

Best for: Heavyweight projects in production environments

Price: From $20.99 per month

OS: Windows, macOS

Review by PCMag: 4.5 stars

Premiere Pro is the big beast of PC video editing and probably the closest Final Cut Pro Windows equivalent, and unfortunately, that means it has a big price tag too: it’s only available as a monthly subscription of £19.97 (which works out as nearly £240 a year unless you qualify for an educational discount) or as part of a bigger and more expensive Creative Cloud all-apps subscription. There’s a stripped-down version for creating online videos called Premiere Rush that’s half the price.

Premiere Pro is essentially Photoshop® for video, a heavyweight app that’s perfectly at home in production environments for TV and film. It’s rather intimidating for beginners, and it’s overkill for making the odd home video, but if you’re a video pro, this is a serious tool for serious work.

Pros:

• Does pretty much everything

• Supports all key formats and 8K video

Cons:

• It’s very expensive

• It’s overkill for most

Download Adobe® Premiere® Pro

Movavi Video Editor

Best for: Beginners and more experienced users alike

Price: From 59,900원

OS: Windows, macOS

Review by G2: 5 stars

Movavi Video Editor pulls off the difficult trick of providing a powerful set of video tools without being too intimidating for absolute beginners: Movavi reckons it takes no more than 20 minutes to get the hang of it even if you’ve never edited a video before. Its interface combines video previewing, timeline editing, and media library in a single screen, and it has all the important features: titles, filters, transition, green screen, image stabilisation, vertical video, Picture in Picture, and much more. It doesn’t require a massive PC or Mac to run it, and it supports every video format imaginable.

Pros:

• Really user-friendly

• Packed with powerful features

• Good tutorials

Cons:

• Trial version is limited

Cyberlink PowerDirector

Best for: Power users without big budgets

Price: $69.99 per year

OS: Windows, macOS

Review by PCMag: 4.5 stars

Cyberlink PowerDirector is well-liked by video pros. It looks rather like Final Cut Pro with its mix of media library, preview, and timeline editor in the same screen, and it’s packed with useful features, including LUT colour presets, motion graphic titles, transitions and particle effects, and a good audio library to add a soundtrack.

Pros:

• Lots of pro-level features

• Familiar editing interface

Cons:

• You rent it rather than own it

• Quite resource intensive

Download Cyberlink PowerDirector

VEGAS Pro

Best for: Professional users, 8K projects

Price: $399, or $14.99 per month

OS: Windows

Review by G2: 4 stars

VEGAS Pro is a heavyweight video package designed for professional users who might otherwise go for Final Cut Pro. You can work on projects up to 8K resolution with full HDR support, use nearly 600 video effects and transitions, carry out colour grading and balancing, and apply video stabilisation and motion tracking. It also includes Sound Forge Pro 14 for audio editing and restoration.

Pros:

• Incredibly powerful

• Great audio restoration

• Surround sound mixing

Cons:

• Overkill for smaller projects

Download VEGAS Pro

How to choose a Final Cut Pro alternative for Windows

There are five key things to consider when you’re thinking about choosing an alternative to Final Cut Pro.

• Operating system
  The OS you intend to use will limit some of your choices, so for example, the Final Cut Pro video editor is only available for Mac computers, while many of the quick and simple video editors are for Microsoft Windows 10 only. Although it’s sometimes possible to run Windows programs on the Mac using third-party software, we wouldn’t recommend it for video, which suffers badly from performance issues in emulation software. And sadly, the answer to “can you use Final Cut Pro on Windows” is “no”, because Mac software doesn’t run on Windows: although there are lots of people searching online for how to install Final Cut Pro on Windows 10, you can’t install it on Windows let alone run it.

• Budget
  Not all video editing software comes with a flat price: some of it is subscription-based, which on the one hand can save you money – you can subscribe until the project is finished and then unsubscribe – but can cost you a lot of cash if you’re going to be subscribing for a long period. It’s important to take that into consideration and to include subscription costs in your quote if you’re being asked to take on a project you’ll need to buy or subscribe to software for.

• Video formats
  Although it’s not the end of the world if your preferred program doesn’t import or export in a specific format – there are lots of converters out there, many of them free – it’s an extra step in your workflow that you’d be better off without.

• Your project(s)
  There’s no point getting a Hollywood-grade movie production studio if you just want to edit your home movie of your best friend’s wedding; similarly there’s no point going for a cheap and cheerful basic editor if you’re making a short film or promotional video.

• Your experience
  If you’re new to video editing, a pro-level program is likely to be very intimidating. It’s often better to get an app with a simpler user interface so you can concentrate on learning how to use its features rather than trying to work out what all the buttons and panels are for. However, it’s also wise to choose an app that can grow as you become more experienced: for example, you might not be needing more advanced editing features today, but what about six months from now? This isn’t as important with free apps, although if you switch to another app, you may need to learn a whole new way of working. But it’s crucial with paid apps: think about not just what you want to do today, but what you might want to do in six months or a year too.

Carrie Marshall is a writer, broadcaster, podcaster, and musician from Glasgow in Scotland. She has been writing and talking about PCs, Macs, and mobile for magazines, websites, and radio stations for 22 years, and she is the author of more than a dozen books on subjects ranging from PC building to internet safety. She’s a regular contributor to TechRadar, T3, MacFormat, and BBC Radio Scotland.

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* The free version of Movavi Video Editor has the following restrictions: a 7-day trial period, a watermark on the output videos, and, if you’re saving a project as an audio file, an ability to save only half the audio length.

Frequently asked questions

Can you get Final Cut Pro on Windows?

No, Final Cut Pro is only available for Mac, and you can’t get Final Cut Pro for PC. But you can find a similar video-making app for your PC, typically for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, or Windows 11.

Where can I get Final Cut Pro for free?

Apple offers a 90-day free trial of Final Cut Pro X. To download it on your Mac, go to the Apple website. There is no Final Cut Pro free download for Windows.

Visit the website to get a free trial      

How do I edit a video?

To edit a clip, you need a video-editing app such as Movavi Video Editor. Check out our tutorial on how to edit a video:

How to edit a high-quality video      

What is the best video editor for beginners?

• Movavi Video Editor

• Pinnacle Studio

• Apple iMovie

• Lumen5

• NCH VideoPad Video Editor

Find the complete list of the best video editors and video-editing tips for beginners in the article below:

Top 10 video-editing programs for beginners      

Have questions?

If you can’t find the answer to your question, please feel free to contact our Support Team.

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