Both are professional editors. What decides it is how you pay, how deep the colour tools go, and which other programs you already use.
How do they compare at a glance?
| DaVinci Resolve | Premiere Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| How you pay | Free version with no time limit; Studio is one payment | Subscription through Adobe Creative Cloud |
| Platforms | macOS, Windows, Linux | macOS, Windows |
| Colour | Node-based colour page with scopes, power windows and tracking | Lumetri panel inside the edit |
| Audio | Fairlight, built in | Essential Sound inside Premiere; Audition is a separate app |
| Effects and titles | Fusion, built in | After Effects, a separate app linked to Premiere |
| LUTs | Any node; strength through Key Output Gain | Input LUT slot with no strength; Creative Look slot with Intensity |
| Learning curve | Steeper, because it is several programs in one | Gentler for editing, deeper once you add the other Adobe apps |
| Best for | Colour-led work, solo editors, anyone avoiding a subscription | Teams on Creative Cloud, motion graphics heavy work |
Everything below explains one of those rows.
Which one costs less?
Resolve, for most people. The free version has no time limit, no watermark on an ordinary export, and the whole colour page. Studio, the paid edition, is a single payment, and it adds noise reduction, delivery above UHD or above 60 frames a second, HDR delivery formats and the AI tools. The full list, row by row, is in DaVinci Resolve free vs Studio.
Premiere is subscription only. You pay for as long as you use it, either for Premiere alone or as part of the full Creative Cloud bundle. Check Adobe's own plans page for the current terms, since they change.
The subscription matters less if you already pay for the full Creative Cloud bundle, because Premiere is part of it. The photography plan, with Photoshop and Lightroom, does not include Premiere.
Which is better for colour grading?
Resolve, clearly. It began as a grading system, and its colour page is still the reason professional colourists use it. Nodes let you separate every correction, compare versions, track a window across a moving subject and apply the same grade to a group of shots. The order that makes it manageable is in colour grading in DaVinci Resolve.
Premiere's Lumetri panel puts colour inside the edit. It handles correction, a creative look and basic secondaries, and for a lot of online video it is enough. Where it gets awkward is LUTs: the Input LUT slot, meant for converting log footage, has no strength control, and people routinely load a conversion into the wrong slot. Premiere's two LUT slots explains which is which.
If you shoot log, plan for the conversion step either way. Log footage explained covers why your clips look grey before it, and both editors need a correct LUT or colour management setting to fix it.
Which is better for editing?
Closer than the colour question. Premiere has been an editing standard for a long time, its timeline is familiar to most editors, and text-based editing lets you cut an interview from its transcript. If you hire freelancers or hand projects to an agency, the chances are good they know it.
Resolve's Edit page does the same job with a similar timeline, and the Cut page adds a faster layout for quick turnarounds. The colour page is the part that takes time to learn, because nodes are a different way of thinking from a panel of sliders.
What about audio and effects?
This is where the two products are built differently.
Resolve puts everything in one program: Fairlight for audio mixing, Fusion for compositing and titles, the colour page, and the Deliver page for exports. One project, one file, no round trips.
Premiere handles everyday audio and titles itself and passes heavier jobs to other Adobe programs: After Effects for motion graphics, Audition for audio repair. They link to each other, so a change in After Effects shows up in the Premiere timeline. If motion graphics are a large part of your work, After Effects is the strongest reason to stay with Adobe, and it reads LUTs as well, as covered in LUTs in After Effects.
Which runs better on a Mac?
It depends on the machine more than the program. Resolve leans hard on the GPU and memory, and a colour-managed timeline on an older computer feels very different from the tutorials.
Both offer proxies or optimised media, which help more than switching editors. On a Mac, the free version of Resolve decodes and encodes H.264 and H.265 with hardware acceleration, so camera files open without trouble. On Windows and Linux the free version has codec limits that Studio removes.
If neither suits your machine, Final Cut Pro's colour workflow is the usual third option on a Mac, and DaVinci Resolve alternatives covers the lighter choices.
How do you choose?
| If you | Choose |
|---|---|
| Want to learn colour grading properly | Resolve |
| Do not want a subscription | Resolve |
| Edit on Linux | Resolve |
| Already pay for Creative Cloud | Premiere |
| Build motion graphics in After Effects | Premiere |
| Work with a team or agency that edits in Premiere | Premiere |
| Mostly cut talking-head and interview content | Either; Premiere's text editing helps |
| Find both too heavy for your Mac | Final Cut Pro |
If none of the rows applies, start with the free version of Resolve. It costs nothing to find out whether you like it, and the broader comparison of colour software shows where each tool fits.
What neither editor makes quick
Both programs assume the job is an edit. Converting a card of log clips, or giving a folder of stills and clips the same look before anyone cuts anything, still means a project, a timeline and a render queue in either one. Both also give every clip the same LUT amount unless you open the clips one by one.
BatchTone does that step on its own, without a timeline. Drop a folder of photos and clips in, choose one .cube, set a strength on any file that needs less, and export graded copies with names you set before the run. The audio is copied untouched and the originals are never modified. It has no timeline, no nodes and no masks, so it is a companion to whichever editor you pick, and it runs on macOS 12 or later on Apple Silicon. Batch applying a LUT to video shows what it reads and writes, and the seven-day trial has everything unlocked.
Common questions
Is DaVinci Resolve harder to learn than Premiere Pro?
For editing alone, slightly, mostly because Resolve contains several programs and its pages can feel like separate tools. The colour page takes the longest. Premiere is quicker to start with and gets deeper as you add After Effects and Audition.
Can you open a Premiere project in Resolve?
Through an exchange file. The usual route is to export the timeline from Premiere as XML and import it into Resolve, which brings the cuts across. Effects, titles and Lumetri grades usually do not survive and need rebuilding.
Do professionals use Resolve or Premiere?
Both. Most colourists work in Resolve, with Baselight at the high end, and plenty of editors cut in Premiere and send the finished edit to Resolve for the grade. Which one a studio uses usually comes down to its team and its existing software.
Do LUTs work the same in both?
The .cube file is the same, and both read it. Resolve lets you put a LUT on any node and lower its strength there; Premiere's Input slot has no strength, so a conversion goes in at 100%. Adding LUTs in Resolve covers the Resolve side.