FilmCraft
The free alternative toPremiere Pro
FilmCraft is an open source rewrite of Premiere Pro (which Adobe now simply calls Premiere), built from scratch by the ArtCraft team. You find the panels, workspaces and shortcuts your hands already know: source and program monitors, a multitrack timeline, three-point editing, every trim, Lumetri-style grading with scopes, over 90 effects, keyframes, audio mixing and SRT captions. MIT or Apache 2.0 license, free on Mac, Windows and Linux, with no account. The catch: it is an alpha released at the end of September 2026, which the team itself rates 56% ready for real projects. It cannot open .prproj files yet (you go through an XML export) and has no plug-ins.
Versus Premiere Pro: the match
Price
FilmCraft
€0, on every platform
Premiere Pro
€27/month, one year commitment
Account and sign in
FilmCraft
No account, no cloud, everything stays on your machine
Premiere Pro
Adobe account required
Premiere projects
FilmCraft
No .prproj: import as XML, AAF or OpenTimelineIO
Premiere Pro
Its native format
| VS | FilmCraft | Premiere Pro ↗ |
|---|---|---|
| Price | €0, on every platform | €27/month, one year commitment |
| Account and sign in | No account, no cloud, everything stays on your machine | Adobe account required |
| Premiere projects | No .prproj: import as XML, AAF or OpenTimelineIO | Its native format |
| Plug-ins and generative AI | Neither for now | Plug-ins, and 25 AI credits a month |
| Maturity | Alpha, released in September 2026 | Over 30 years of development |
How to install it (even from zero)
The simplest path: download FilmCraft from its official page. It installs like any other app and works with no account. The prompt below has Claude pick the right file for your machine and check the download.
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Paste this prompt into Claude (Code or Desktop)
It detects your system, downloads the right version and checks it has not been tampered with:
Je veux installer FilmCraft (le logiciel de montage vidéo open source qui reprend Premiere Pro, dépôt GitHub officiel storytold/filmcraft, site getartcraft.com/apps/filmcraft) à la place d’un abonnement Premiere. Guide-moi pas à pas et pose-moi des questions si besoin. Repère d’abord mon système (macOS, Windows ou Linux) et mon processeur (Apple Silicon, Intel, x64 ou ARM). Télécharge ensuite la dernière version publiée dans les releases du dépôt storytold/filmcraft, ou sur la page officielle getartcraft.com/apps/filmcraft, en prenant le fichier qui correspond : l’image disque universelle sur Mac, l’installateur .msi sur Windows (x64, ARM64 ou 32 bits), l’AppImage, le paquet .deb, le paquet .rpm ou le Flatpak sur Linux. Vérifie l’empreinte SHA-256 du fichier avec le fichier SHA256SUMS.txt publié avec la même version, et arrête-toi si elle ne correspond pas. Installe l’appli et vérifie qu’elle démarre. Si elle ne s’ouvre pas sous Windows, suis la section de dépannage du README. Si macOS bloque l’ouverture, explique-moi comment l’autoriser dans Réglages Système, sans désactiver la sécurité de mon Mac. Rappelle-moi que FilmCraft est encore en alpha : je garde mes projets Premiere et mes rushs d’origine, et je travaille sur des copies. Si j’utilise Claude Code, propose-moi aussi d’installer l’outil en ligne de commande filmcraft-cli de la même version et de brancher son serveur MCP (filmcraft-cli mcp), pour que tu puisses monter à ma place. Pour finir, aide-moi à exporter une séquence courte de Premiere en XML (format Final Cut Pro 7) et à l’importer dans FilmCraft, puis dis-moi ce qui passe et ce qui manque. Review the GitHub repository and check whether it is safe to install given my machine and my infrastructure. Ask me as many questions as possible, using widgets, to clarify my request and be as precise as you can.
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Import a real sequence
The best test: a sequence from your own work, exported from Premiere as XML. You see right away what comes through (cuts, transitions, keyframes) and what is missing.
- 3
Keep Premiere for big projects
With heavy 4K footage, your plug-ins or a client project, Premiere is still ahead. For your short videos, try FilmCraft for a week before you renew your subscription.
Paste this prompt into Claude (Code or Desktop)What you actually do with it
Your editing without a subscription
Multitrack timeline, three-point editing, trims, transitions and titles: your everyday videos, without the €27 a month.
Your Premiere sequences come through
It imports sequences exported as XML, AAF or OpenTimelineIO, with their transitions and keyframes. You do not start from scratch.
Claude edits for you
Over 650 commands, driven from the command line or through its MCP server: your agent cuts, grades, mixes and exports just like you.
Project health, at a glance
Before installing an open-source tool, one question matters: is the project alive? These scores are computed from public GitHub data. They are not made up.
77/100
GoodHealthy, followed project: a good everyday choice.
- Activity
- 100
Is the code moving? (commits in the last 30 days)
- Maintenance
- 100
How fresh is the latest update? Fresher is better.
- Community
- 87
Stars and contributors: people around means help and fixes.
- Maturity
- 40
Project age. Old enough to be solid, still alive.
- Momentum
- 57
Current pace versus its usual pace: speeding up or dozing off?
The repo in numbers
- GitHub stars
- 16.8k
- Forks
- 7k
- Contributors
- 132
- Commits
- 2.5k
- Project age
- 0.1 yrs
- Last commit
- today
- Size
- 33.9 MB
- License
- Apache-2.0
Built with
- Rust 98.8%
Scores computed automatically from the GitHub API (last-30-days activity, update freshness, community size, project age). Refreshed daily.
Loucash’s take
6/10
After PhotoCraft, the same team released the same thing for Premiere. The panels, workspaces and shortcuts are Premiere’s, so you start editing at once: timeline, trims, grading, effects, mixing, captions, it is all there. And everything is written from scratch, down to the video codecs. What may bite: it is an alpha, released at the end of September. The team itself rates it 56% ready to replace Premiere on real projects: it does not open .prproj files, has no plug-ins and still struggles with heavy footage. For your short videos, it is worth a try. For a client project, keep Premiere for now.
It’s for you if: You edit your Reels, vlogs or YouTube videos, you pay for Premiere mostly for the timeline, trims, grading and captions, and you want to stop the subscription. If you live on plug-ins, heavy 4K footage or client projects in .prproj, keep Premiere for now.
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