The best tool for video editing depends on a lot of factors: your technical ability and desire to learn, your budget, and the complexity of what you're hoping to accomplish. There's no one-size-fits-all video editor, but that's ok—the field is flooded with good options, regardless of your platform of choice or level of expertise.

In fact, some of the best video editing software is completely free, even if you're looking for more advanced features. And premium editors range from industry-standard editing suites used to produce blockbusters to "prosumer" tools at reasonable prices that justify their existence by saving you time and effort.

I've used all sorts of video editing apps over the past two decades—for throwing together personal passion projects, turning in assignments, and even producing video reviews of products with footage and audio that I produced myself. To update this article this time around, I found more than 90 video editors to put through their paces. Based on my experiences with the apps, these are my picks for the best video editing software across Windows, Mac, and the web.

At the very least, a video editor needs to be compatible with your source material and allow you to make basic edits like trimming and combining clips in a timeline. Some video editors will even perform these basic edits for you, allowing you to adjust things after the fact. More advanced features let you perform more advanced edits, like multi-camera editing, chroma keying (green screen), and intelligent background removal. I laid out the following criteria to make sure I was selecting the best video editing software for a wide range of users:

Basic editing. Every video editor needs a simple, easy-to-use interface for composing a simple edit on a timeline and shifting things around. This includes easy ingesting of content, the ability to quickly access tools like splice or turn off snapping, and ideally the ability to customize the interface and use keyboard shortcuts to speed up your workflow.

Advanced editing. While not all editing jobs need advanced tools, certain projects require features like chroma keying, object tracking, video stabilization and lens correction, multi-camera editing for quickly switching between perspectives, and color adjustment. More video editors are embracing AI with features like text-based editing, background removal, and generative tools. I kept my eye out for and played around with these advanced features as I was testing each video editor.

Efficiency. Video editing can be a resource-intensive task, so performance matters. Being able to adjust preview quality or easily create proxy files for fast editing is important, but so is optimization. Many web-based editors now let you start editing as soon as you've dropped your footage into the window, rather than waiting for the upload to complete. Similarly, I was looking for a range of options when it comes to exporting. And easy integration with other platforms was a huge plus.

Tutorials and assistance. The more advanced a video editor becomes, the more you'll need to tinker and learn. Good help content and video tutorials are important, but so is a healthy community producing YouTube videos, forum posts, and blog articles to help you learn quickly by doing. There's also something to be said for intuitive design, which can negate the need to ever go hunting for help.