iMovie pricing

Is iMovie free?

Yes, completely. iMovie has no paid version and no in-app purchases. Everything in it is free on any Mac, iPhone or iPad.

On iPhone and iPad it includes Magic Movie, which builds a video from clips you pick, with titles, transitions and music, and it exports up to 4K.

What free leaves out

iMovie costs nothing, so the question is what it costs in time. Its App Store pages don't list automatic captions, pause removal or resizing for vertical, which are the jobs that take longest on a talking-to-camera video. You'd do those by hand or in another app.

The iPhone and iPad version was last updated in December 2024, while the Mac version is still updated regularly. For simple family and school videos that doesn't matter. For weekly social content it's a sign of where Apple's attention is.

Which should you pay for?

Pay for iMovie if you have an Apple device and want a free, no-strings editor for simple videos. It only runs on Apple devices, and its App Store pages list no automatic captions or pause removal, so talking videos take manual work.

Pay for Krafto if you film yourself talking and the editing is what you want gone: it makes the first cut from your clips, with the pauses and retakes out and the captions on. No free plan or trial, no phone app, and no template library: you film, Krafto cuts, and you check the result in a browser.

Where Krafto fits

Krafto works differently from every editor on this page: you upload your clips and say what you want, and it cuts the retakes and pauses, adds captions and hands you a first cut. You change things by asking, and the timeline is still there if you want it. It costs $25 a month. There's no free plan, so it only makes sense if editing is the part you want off your plate.