Filmora

There is only one thing to weigh: whether you are ready to pay. The editing is free, but with the watermark.

Who it is for. For anyone editing videos on a computer and wanting video and image generation in the same window rather than a separate tab: describe a scene and get a clip from Veo 3.1 or Sora 2 right on the timeline.

Who else. For anyone who wants to buy once: the $79.99 perpetual license has been available since 2020 without interruption. There is one catch: updates are only included within Filmora 15; the next generation costs extra.

Who it is not for. Not for anyone who needs it free and without a watermark: exports from the free version always have a watermark baked into the frame.

Good fit: section 3 takes you from download to your first export. If you are choosing between it and CapCut, see the decision guide in section 7.

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Three layers: regular editing, assistants on top of it, and generators powered by external models. Free access ends at the third layer, where every request costs credits.

Editing. Tracks, a magnetic timeline, multicam editing, keyframes, planar tracking, color grading with curves and LUTs. All this is in the free version and runs on the computer itself. Export up to 8K, and in generation 15 audio was rebuilt into a 32-bit pipeline, so a project from 15 opens in 14 only through a separate save.

Assistants. Speech-to-text subtitles in 27 languages, text-to-speech in 28, person cutouts, noise reduction, object removal, frame stretching, and AI video enhancement, including the Topaz Starlight model, with a toggle to process on your own computer. The AI Mate assistant inside the editor suggests and performs actions itself; the free version includes 15 chats per day. From this set, person cutouts, auto reframing, face blur, smart search, and color palette are free; the rest use credits.

Generators. Videos from a description or image are made by Veo 3.1 from Google and Sora 2 from OpenAI; images by Nano Banana Pro from Google. The vendor names the providers in its privacy policy, along with Gemini 3.0 and Kling 2.5 from Kuaishou. The version feed from April 2026 also announces Seedance 2.0 and GPT Image 2, but Filmora's policy does not include them, and the vendor does not explain this discrepancy. The full model list is in the questions below. The vendor has no proprietary generation model inside Filmora, and the slow queue without credits remains only for people who bought unlimited access in version 13.

What the vendor itself shows. The clip above the card is cut from the official Filmora channel's version 15.6 overview from Jul 10, 2026: a full editor window with export open, where the video is split into chapters with title cards and a timeline with an audio waveform runs below. Of the six channel videos we reviewed, this is the only segment longer than ten seconds with the full window visible; the rest are zoomed in or shot at an angle. Site footage shows the AI Mate assistant, the video enhancement panel, and subtitles; the App Store listing shows the mobile version. We did not test Filmora ourselves for this task.

Four doors: Windows, Mac, iPhone, and Android.

Step 1. Download the installer from filmora.wondershare.com filmora.wondershare.com.ru. Windows 7 or later is required, as is macOS 10.15 or later and 8 GB of RAM; the vendor requests 16 GB for 4K.

Step 2. Create a Wondershare ID and sign in: without signing in, the app edits as the free version, with a watermark on export. The paid version activates only through the internet; after sign-in, it works offline for 30 days, then asks you to sign in again. The vendor removed the key for offline activation starting with generation X.

Step 3. Your first export from the free version will have a watermark baked into the frame: buying a plan later will not clean the file, so you will need to reopen the project and export it again. AI buttons do not work without credits, and the free version includes no credits The filmora.ru site calls itself official, but the vendor does not link to it; instead of the editor, it has a 647 KB archive from April 2024.

Phone and tablet. The app is in the App Store under Wondershare's Shenzhen entity, version 15.6.90 from Aug 24, 2026, rated 4.65 across 4,529 reviews. In Google Play the package is the same. Filmora has no web version, the vendor sells browser editing under other names.

Steps checked Sep 7, 2026 against the vendor's site and help center and the App Store and Google Play listings

There are no Aren rankings for video editors, so only audience, company finances, and buyer ratings can be measured, and they differ twofold.

What this means. The vendor's own Filmora figures shift: on Nov 11, 2025, it wrote of a cumulative user base of nearly 400 million; a month later, the same 400 million became active. No figure has independent confirmation; the one solid number is 100 million Android installs. The company is public, has traded in Shenzhen since Jan 18, 2018, and in 2025, despite 6 % revenue growth, posted a loss for the second consecutive year while collecting 93 % of revenue overseas.

Ratings. The stores give it four-plus ratings. The BBB in Canada holds an F rating for the company over an unresolved string of complaints, Trustpilot gives 4.1 with 13 % one-star reviews, almost all about charges, and in January 2026 it hid the rating over review incentives. TechRadar's review from Jul 22, 2026 scores it 4.25 out of five and faults one thing: the free version gives no generation credits at all.

Demand. Its place among video tools is shown below the card title; the full tool ranking is on the main page.

Filmora has two storefronts with different prices.

Free. All editing is unlimited, but every export has a watermark. The free version provides no credits, while its unpaid AI buttons include person cutout, auto reframe, face blur, smart search, color palette, and 15 AI Mate chats per day. The editor has no trial period; "7 days free" on the storefront applies to the asset library.

English storefront. Basic is $49.99 per year with no credits and 1 GB of cloud storage, Advanced is $59.99 per year with 1,000 credits per month and 10 GB, and Perpetual is $79.99 one-time with 1,000 credits once. A monthly plan for $9.99 is in the page data, but the storefront hides it by default. The annual price has remained $49.99 since 2022; the perpetual price rose to $99.99 during that time and came back.

Credits. Subtitles cost 4 credits per minute, an image 10-80, voice cloning 100, and a video from a prompt through Veo 3.1 up to 450, so a thousand per month covers two such videos. Remaining subscription credits expire after 30 days. Top-ups: 1,500 credits for $9.99 per year, 2,000 per month for the same $9.99, then up to 100,000 for $399.

Three questions: who owns the result, where your clips go, and why the vendor has a poor reputation with money.

Whose output. Your own edit from your own footage belongs to you. The vendor contradicts itself on AI output: its generative AI terms assign all rights to you and explicitly allow sales, while the FAQ on the homepage calls AI images, videos from descriptions, and AI audio non-commercial due to the unclear status of training data. The same terms warn that results may match across different users and may not be protected by copyright.

Data. Descriptions, photos, videos, and voice for generation are sent to Google, OpenAI, and Kuaishou servers; the vendor names them individually and promises not to train its general models on this data. The policy mentions servers in China only for adjacent products from the same company, and does not specify where Kuaishou's servers are located. The agreement is with the Chinese Wondershare Technology Group under PRC law, with disputes sent to Shenzhen arbitration.

Money. The subscription renews automatically, you must cancel a day in advance, uncanceled renewals are non-refundable, as are used credits. BBB in Canada gives the company an F rating over an unresolved pattern of complaints; a California auto-renewal lawsuit filed on Feb 16, 2024 ended in a settlement on Jun 27, 2024 without assessing the practice on the merits, and in January 2026 Trustpilot hid Filmora's rating over incentivized reviews. The 10% storefront discount comes with a trial subscription to the library, which turns into $19.99 per month on day eight.

The 2022 scar. On the release day of Filmora 12, Dec 22, 2022, the vendor called the new version an "upgrade" and excluded it from lifetime licenses. Product ambassador Daniel Batal made a video about it and received a copyright complaint from the vendor; on Dec 31, 2022 the company apologized and offered a free transition or refund. The bad taste remains in reviews to this day.

The difference is not editing quality, but where you edit and how you pay: at a computer with a subscription or on a phone for free.

Different home. Filmora has been growing since 2010 as a desktop program for Windows and Mac, with the phone app as an add-on and a shorter list of languages. CapCut was born on the phone and lives on templates for short clips.

Different checkout. With CapCut, manual editing and watermark-free export are free; you pay for templates and generation. With Filmora the program stays free, but the export does not: without a plan, every clip carries a watermark. Filmora, on the other hand, has a perpetual license.

Over sixteen years, the amateur editor from Shenzhen gained the Filmora name, went public, survived the lifetime-license scandal, and turned into a storefront of third-party models with a timeline.