Key Takeaways
- Premiere Pro and CapCut both offer great video editing features and can create landscape and portrait videos of all lengths.
- CapCut is widely available on various devices and operating systems, while Premiere Pro is limited to Adobe subscribers on Windows and macOS.
- CapCut offers a free version with a huge library of features, while Premiere Pro operates on a subscription model with a 7-day free trial and access to Adobe Creative Cloud apps.
Video production is rapidly evolving and your tools of choice matter. Premiere Pro and CapCut both provide great video editing features, but which works better for your video editing needs? Both platforms can create landscape and portrait videos of all lengths, have diverse platform availability, and offer many helpful tools. Let's pit them against each other to see which comes out on top.
Platform Availability
Depending on your operating system or device type, you might be limited in your options.
CapCut
CapCut is available to anyone who has access to a computer or handheld device. You can download the official CapCut app for both Android and iOS for mobile usage, which is great for social media video creators or content creators making videos on the go.
There's a CapCut app you can use on Mac and Windows, and if you're using other operating systems, you can edit videos in the browser version on CapCut's website.
Premiere Pro
Adobe Premiere Pro has no browser version and is only available to Adobe subscribers. This is the better option for more serious video editors looking for detailed video editing options.
You can download Premiere Pro for Windows and macOS. For Linux users, there is no official app; however, you can run a virtual machine to use Photoshop and other Adobe software on Linux.
Premiere Pro isn't available for Android or iOS. However, Adobe has a mobile video editor called Adobe Premiere Rush which is similar to Premiere Pro but better equipped for video editing on smaller screens with touchscreen capabilities.
Price
Do the platforms offer free versions, one-off payments, or affordable subscriptions? Consider your price point to see which platform is worth using.
CapCut
With CapCut's free version, you'll have access to a huge library of footage, audio, templates, and video transitions. And its vast library of features is updated regularly in line with the latest trends to keep you at the top of your video editing game. However, there are some features only accessible by upgrading to Pro.
CapCut Pro offers extra transitions, better templates, and a wider variety of tools and features. You can easily upgrade and choose between a monthly ($7.99) or yearly ($74.99) subscription, each starting with a 7-day free trial. You can also sign up for a one-off month, with no subscription, for $9.99.
Join CapCut Pro by selecting Join Pro on the desktop version or tapping Pro on the mobile version.
Premiere Pro
Adobe Premiere Pro is part of Adobe Creative Cloud, so it takes on Adobe's subscription model. You can subscribe to a single Premiere Pro plan or to Adobe's All Apps plan which includes all Creative Cloud apps. New users can get a 7-day free trial before committing to a subscription.
The All Apps plan includes over 20 Adobe Creative Cloud apps and costs $59.99 per month for a year's access. If you only want an Adobe Premiere Pro subscription, the single-app plan is $22.99 per month for a year's access.
Adobe Premiere Rush is free with other Adobe plans, but there's a premium version at $9.99 for extra tools and features.
Templates
Many people may want to edit videos from scratch, but for videos on social media, using templates is often preferred. Which of these video platforms provides a better range of video templates?
CapCut
With the same parent company as TikTok, CapCut is heavily influenced by the short-form video platform and trending social media videos. You'll find loads of trending TikTok video templates, AI templates, as well as image and audio templates. See our guide to creating short-form videos in CapCut to learn more.
You can't edit keyframes, timings, or other intricate aspects of CapCut templates; you can only edit placeholders within templates, such as images and text.
Premiere Pro
Premiere Pro offers limited video templates through an Adobe Stock subscription. These templates are less focused on trending video styles and more on video aspects that you can further edit yourself in Premiere Pro.
Templates include transition animations, animated backgrounds, motion overlays, and lower thirds—you can also make lower third designs in After Effects to then use in Premiere Pro.
Premiere Pro is heavily focused on creating original videos and provides a plethora of built-in tools to do so. You can edit the templates as you would edit original videos within Premiere Pro: placing, editing, and moving keyframes, as well as changing the colors of elements, removing elements, or duplicating them.
The available templates do not cater to social media trends and are limited to video features like intros, outros, and transition elements, to name a few.
Storage
Do these video editors offer cloud storage, and how much does it cost?
CapCut
CapCut offers tiers of cloud storage for your video projects, whether you create videos on desktop or via the app.
All CapCut users get 1 GB of lifetime storage for free. You can also purchase extra storage for around a dollar per 10 GB. On top of that, you can gain extra personal storage by completing tasks like inviting new users, exporting videos, and inviting people to your space. This storage is only valid for 45 days, though.
CapCut Pro users receive 100 GB of extra storage to store their video projects and assets. The mobile version also saves videos locally to your phone.
Premiere Pro
Premiere Pro’s storage is cloud-based, but with the option for saving locally. Whether you subscribe to the single-app Premiere Pro plan or Adobe All-Apps plan, you’ll get 100GB of cloud storage with your subscription.
AI Features
AI is at the forefront of visual editing. Which editor offers better AI features?
CapCut
CapCut offers many AI tools for both video editing and image editing, which are available for free with some Pro features. It also offers Magic tools which, although not entirely AI-based, offer similar features to the AI tools.
Some of the AI and Magic video tools are:
- AI story generator
- Long video to shorts
- Script to video
- AutoCut
- Background remover
- Magic eye-tracking effect
- Video upscaler and resizer
CapCut has plenty of AI image editing tools too, but they aren't present in the video editor.
Premiere Pro
Premiere Pro has AI tools relating to video visuals, audio, text, and much more. These features use Adobe Sense artificial intelligence technology which is built into most Adobe software.
Some of the major AI features in Premiere Pro are:
- Text-based editing
- Speech-to-text captioning
- Scene Edit Detection
- Auto-color
- Morph cut transitions
- Auto sound remix
- Auto frame resizing
Along with its AI features, you can also utilize other Adobe apps (and their AI features) to use in your Premiere Pro creations. You can use dynamic linking to integrate After Effects compositions into your Premiere Pro videos, for example.
CapCut vs. Premiere Pro: Which Video Editor Is Right for You?
If you’re used to Adobe software, you’ll have a lesser learning curve using Premiere Pro than a complete newbie. But CapCut’s user interface isn’t complicated to pick up. It has a relatively easy click-and-choose layout, whereas Premiere Pro has more in-depth menus and features to set up to achieve the same results.
If you're serious about being a video editor, creator, or producer, then the time spent learning Premiere Pro is worth it—you can create anything you can imagine. CapCut can offer many similar effects and results with less work.
