DaVinci Resolve vs Final Cut Pro on Mac: Which to Pick

DaVinci Resolve vs Final Cut Pro comes down to this: pick Resolve for a free start and color, effects and audio in one app; pick Final Cut Pro if you only use a Mac and want built-in captions and transcript search. This site makes ClipsPal, which is covered after the verdict.

DaVinci Resolve vs Final Cut Pro at a glance

Pricing: free version plus Studio vs Apple's one-time price

The free version of DaVinci Resolve edits and finishes up to 60 fps in resolutions as high as Ultra HD 3840 x 2160. It includes color grading tools and lets several people work on the same project at once.

Studio is the paid upgrade: $295 once, bought online from Blackmagic. It adds over 100 features, including the DaVinci Neural Engine, extra Resolve FX, stereoscopic 3D and support for up to 120 fps at 32K.

Final Cut Pro costs $299.99 as a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store. The other route is Apple Creator Studio, a suite that includes Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro and Pixelmator Pro. New subscribers get one month free, then $12.99 per month or $129 per year.

Mac performance and Apple silicon

Apple describes Final Cut Pro as having optimizations for the latest generation of Apple silicon. It works with ProRes, ProRes RAW, RED, XAVC, AVCHD, H.264 and HEVC, among other formats.

Blackmagic's Studio page says Resolve Studio is fully optimized for Metal and Apple Silicon unified memory GPUs on a Mac, with accelerated H.264 and H.265 hardware decoding and encoding. Resolve also imports a wide range of professional formats, from H.264 and H.265 to ProRes and Blackmagic RAW.

Both vendors build for Apple hardware.

Captions, transcript search and AI tools

Final Cut Pro creates captions by analyzing spoken audio. Transcript Search finds spoken phrases by exact match or by related words, and Visual Search finds objects and actions by typing what you want. For a talking-head video, that means captions generated from the speech and a way to jump to a line by what was said.

Resolve 21 adds IntelliSearch for fast content searching. Studio adds Neural Engine voice isolation, a music remixer and a dialogue separator. For removing silence in Resolve, see remove silence in DaVinci Resolve.

Export and delivery

Final Cut Pro exports for playback on Apple devices and for upload to platforms such as Instagram and YouTube. It can export audio stems and multiple versions of a finished video using roles, and it imports and exports XML.

In Resolve, quick export sits in the File menu of the Edit page. The Deliver page holds render presets, from a custom video clip to audio-only files.

Which one to pick by creator type

YouTube creator. Final Cut Pro if you work only on Mac and want captions and Smart Conform for vertical versions. Resolve if color grading or Fusion effects are part of your look.

Founder with talking-head videos. Final Cut Pro for built-in captions and Transcript Search. Free Resolve if you want to keep software cost at zero.

Course creator. Resolve if you edit on both Mac and Windows, because the same app runs on both. Final Cut Pro if you are Mac only.

Indie business. Resolve's free version to start. Final Cut Pro if you prefer a single Mac purchase over a subscription. If both look like too much editor, see iMovie alternatives for Mac.

Looking to move away from one of them instead? See the Final Cut Pro alternatives and DaVinci Resolve alternatives pages.

Cutting takes before either editor

ClipsPal is a desktop editor for multi-take talking-head footage: it cuts failed takes and silences from a raw recording, then gives you a multi-track timeline to finish by hand. It runs on macOS 14 or later, on Apple Silicon or Intel, and on Windows 11 x64 in beta.

The edit opens as a timeline in DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro, so it can sit before Resolve. It is a one-time lifetime license, $49 to $99; see pricing.