Summary

• CapCut users should consider Veed, Adobe Express, Canva, Kdenlive, DaVinci Resolve, OpenShot, Filmora, or InShot.
• Veed offers an AI-rich experience, Canva is good for design layouts, Kdenlive is open-source, DaVinci Resolve is powerful and free.
• Filmora and InShot are similar to CapCut, offering mobile and desktop options; free options are available for all tools listed.

After months of controversy, the US briefly applied a ban on ByteDance apps — namely TikTok — which includes video-editing tool, CapCut. While CapCut has some questionable privacy, it is one of the best freemium video editing tools available for both mobile and desktop. Although ByteDance apps are available outside the US, with a huge proportion of US-based content creators using both CapCut and TikTok, it’s good to know where you can get freemium comparable video editing apps to replace such a great video editing tool.

8 Veed

Video editing for AI lovers

CapCut is well-loved due to its many AI tools within its easy-to-navigate mobile interface. Veed is a desktop and iOS phone app that can replace your desire to have CapCut's AI editing tools in the palm of your hand. Veed potentially offers a more AI-rich experience than using CapCut, but you’ll find similar results and tools.

Although Veed is available for free, you’ll have a better experience using one of its paid plans, including enhanced resolution and watermark-free export of your video — similar to CapCut’s offerings between free and paid plans.

You can edit your own footage in Veed, but its main selling points are generative AI and AI talking head models, including AI voices, which are always improving for more authentic results.

Veed is both a phone app and a browser-based tool — the browser version of Veed offers many more features than the phone app on the free plan. If you want to be able to edit and customize videos using more of Veed’s features, you should use the web-browser version of Veed.

7 Adobe Express

Adobe power at your fingertips

Adobe Express is both a phone app and a browser-based tool. Unlike most Adobe tools, you don’t need an expensive Adobe Creative Cloud subscription to use Express. It’s a freemium tool, but offers plenty available under its free plan. Express Premium is affordable, and having a subscription also gives access to Photoshop Express and Adobe Firefly AI tools.

Express isn’t solely a video-editing tool; It’s a photo, design, and video-editing tool. While this means it doesn’t have incredible power in its video-editing features, it does allow you to edit and create great graphic elements, photos, and other aspects to integrate into your videos. You can make fun videos in Express, which suffices for short-form video content.

You can add footage of any length to edit in Express. Using some Adobe Express add-ons, there are some great tools to enhance the editing tools closer to those available in CapCut. There are tons of audio add-ons, which include audio libraries or AI-based tools, as well as AI models or presenters, and much more.

6 Canva

Viral templates for simple videos

Canva is very similar to Adobe Expressin its offerings, although it’s more focused on design layouts rather than videos. Despite that, you can still use canvas as a short-form video editing tool, and similarly to Express, Canva’s Apps, like plugins or add-ons, also provide even more editing features and optional tools to integrate into your workflow.

Canva is available via the browser or apps for phones and tablets, allowing great options for on-the-go video editing, no matter where you are.

There are loads of native AI features in Canva; however, most of these relate to image creation or editing, rather than video editing. The future of Canva’s tools may invite more AI video editing features, though. Although there’s no specific length limit for imported video footage, Canva users are limited only to 1GB of video footage when uploading raw video to Canva.

You can use Canva stock videos in your videos made on Canva. Free users can use any Canva Free elements with no restrictions, but most elements and stock are watermarked only for Canva Pro users. There are also export restrictions for Canva Free users.

For short videos without many complexities, Canva is a fine video editor. But it isn’t the best option for complex video transitions or effects.

5 Kdenlive

Open-source video editing tool

Kdenlive is completely free due to its open-source nature; however, it doesn’t have support for mobile devices, so it isn’t quite the same as using CapCut on-the-go. Despite the lack of mobility, having a free and functional video editor with great community support behind it is an excellent tool in and of itself.

Kdenlive is a non-linear video editing tool, and although it doesn’t have many of the bells and whistles found in CapCut, you’ll learn a great deal of video-editing skills with this free tool. It doesn’t have built-in effects and filters, but they are provided by Kdenlive community users for use within the tool. There are effects for keyframes, tracking, masking, audio and video effects, and even speed-to-text options.

Primarily, Kdenlive is just a video-editor and not a special effects tool, so you’ll have to forego some of the more fascinating transitions or editing effects found in CapCut if you choose to use Kdenlive.

4 DaVinci Resolve

Powerful video editing for free

DaVinci Resolve is one of the best free video editing tools you can find that doesn’t limit its features. While you can purchase DaVinci Resolve Studio for $295, that’s a huge expense for hobby video editors or those not in the profession — although that cost is a lifetime license with all future upgrades included.

The free version of DaVinci Resolve is a fantastic video editor, nonetheless. It has export limits of 4K UHR (3840×2160), but if you’re using DaVinci Resolve to replace CapCut for editing short-form vertical videos, then most of its limiting free features won’t negatively affect your output due to the size and length of short-form content.

DaVinci Resolve is best used from a desktop, and it doesn’t offer a smartphone app, but iPad users can get DaVinci Resolvefrom the iPadOS App Store. Video editing from an iPad is best done on newer models with plenty of storage space and a large RAM, otherwise you may experience lagging and have a frustrating time.

You won’t find the trending features in DaVinci Resolve that you’ll know and love from CapCut. There aren’t any AI features at all, although the Studio version has a neural network in place, those features aren’t as snazzy as CapCut’s AI tools. DaVinci doesn’t offer native templates, but you can download or purchase them and other DaVinci Resolve plugins from third-party sites.

3 OpenShot Video Editor

Cross-platform and open-source video editing

Although OpenShot isn’t available on mobile devices, it is available on Windows, Mac, Chrome, and Linux operating systems as well as Cloud services with AWS, Azure, and GCP. This gives you some flexibility in how and where you can use OpenShot. It’s an open-source tool, which also means every feature is completely free of charge.

It won’t have the same development that CapCut offers, including a lack of trending or viral tools and templates. By using an open-source video editing tool, you’ll learn much more about video editing and development, thus increasing your skills more than if you solely used CapCut.

Unlike most open-source tools, OpenShot has a small handful of AI features: motion tracking, object detection, stabilization. Along with these, you’ll find great transitions and effects, including Blender 3D integration, and compositing and overlays.

2 Wondershare Filmora

AI-based video editing

Filmora by Wondershare may be one of the most similar tools compared to CapCut itself. It’s an AI-rich video editing tool, and it’s available on all the same platforms as CapCut: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and iPad iOS. However, Filmora’s Free plan doesn’t provide access to even half of the same tools available for CapCut Free users.

Filmora’s Free plan lets you use Filmora from a browser, and includes timeline editing, along with magnetic timelines and multi-camera editing. It also features keyframe animations and multiple tracking types, and plenty of color editing options. The creative tools available from the free plan include multiple thousands of effects and filters, transition types, title animations, and audio and media stock. It doesn’t include any AI features on the free plan.

To get similar benefits found in CapCup, Filmora users should get the Advanced plan for $60 per year. This includes 1000 AI credits per month, but there are ways to earn extra AI credits. Different AI features cost differing amounts of credits, so adding audio will take up more credits than generating an AI image within your video edit.

Filmora’s Advanced plan is $30 cheaper than CapCut Pro per year. But its free features lack hugely in comparison to CapCup’s free plan.

1 InShot

Mobile-only video editor

Although CapCup is available for multiple platforms, including desktop, mobile, and web browser, most users access it from mobile for editing short-form video content. InShot is a mobile and desktop video editing tool available for Android, iOS, and Huawei’s Harmony OS for mobile, and it has Mac and Windows desktop options. Its mobile version is similar to CapCut — InShot is also Chinese-owned, like CapCut’s ByteDance developer.

InShot offers an easy-to-navigate timeline editing tool. You can add keyframes for tracking items around the video, as well as using its bolstering audio and elements library. It offers auto-captioning, as well as blurring or pixelating to add anonymity to anyone’s faces in your footage.

You can do a lot within InShot’s free plan, but you’ll have to deal with watermarks on your exported videos. You can pay for ad and watermark removal without getting the rest of InShot Premium’s features. This is only $4. InShot’s premium version offers more features and is affordable at only $4 per month or $18 per year subscription plan. You can also get a lifetime license for $50.

You can benefit from InShot’s AI effects, auto-captioning, picture-in-picture editing, and animation tools, as well as a host of other features similar to CapCut’s offerings. You can also mask, blend, and freeze in InShot, which are cool features not often found in mobile editing tools.

There are plenty of great, free video-editing tools available

Whether CapCut remains banned in the US or it’s allowed to be used once more, you should always have a reliable backup for editing videos. Free options give you more last-minute insurance rather than expensive tools you may have to purchase at the last minute. The listed apps and tools all have free options, and most of them also have mobile options on top of desktop tools. Like with CapCut itself, upgrading to premium features usually results in better videos and editing tools, but with most of these tools, the free options suffice fairly well.