Price: iMovie Is Free
iMovie costs nothing, but the same isn't true for Final Cut Pro. To use the latter, you can either pay a one-time fee of $299.99 or subscribe to Apple Creator Studio ($12.99 per month or $129 per year). A subscription includes all-but-necessary companion apps for Final Cut Pro: Motion (for 3D modeling and animation) and Compressor (for batch output and transcoding in multiple formats). These apps otherwise cost $49.99 each. Creator Studio also bundles other pro-minded Apple software, including Logic Pro and Pixelmator. Note that Final Cut Pro for the iPad requires a separate $4.99-per-month subscription if you don't sign up for Creator Studio.
Winner: iMovie
Platform Support: Both Are Apple-Only
Whereas iMovie is available on recent iPads, iPhones, and Macs, Final Cut Pro is available only on iPads and Macs. Interestingly, the ancillary Final Cut Camera app for iPhones lets you record pro video. If you need to work on Android, ChromeOS, or Windows devices, you have to consider alternatives.
Winner: iMovie
Basic Video Editing: Similar Timelines, But Final Cut Goes Deeper
Both apps feature what Apple calls a trackless timeline, meaning there's no header for clip lanes. As a result, you can freely move clips back and forth and up and down. You can join, split, and trim clips, and add transitions between them. A big difference is that iMovie allows only two layers (the equivalent of tracks in other video editing software), whereas Final Cut Pro doesn't impose any such limitations. The latter can thus accommodate more complex effects. Final Cut Pro also supports three-point editing, making cutaway edits easier.
Winner: Final Cut Pro
Interface and Ease of Use: iMovie Caters to Beginners
Guiding budding video editors is iMovie's forte. Its Trailers and Storyboards features, for example, show you how to put together impactful videos, providing tailored slots for shot type (such as a close-up or group shot) and shot length. The app then adds appropriate background music, title frames, and transitions. All this support helps prevent beginners from making a mess of their video productions or getting lost in the process.
Although Final Cut Pro is more intuitive than other pro video apps, such as Adobe Premiere and DaVinci Resolve, it still doesn't offer a lot of hand-holding. You're pretty much on your own to make sense of the blank black panels that greet you and the Events, Libraries, and Projects hierarchy. Still, Apple's online resources are helpful, as are a multitude of independent YouTube tutorial videos.
Winner: iMovie
Importing and Organization: Final Cut Is Far More Versatile
Final Cut Pro shines when it comes to media organization, especially since most of the work is done automatically. For example, it auto-tags media based on featured objects and actions, its folder, the number of people present, the shot type, and technical details (such as the frame rate). You can also add keywords, notes, and ratings. The app also supports Roles, which are color-coded labels that indicate whether media is dialogue, music, a title, or something else. Finally, you can create custom sub-roles, such as intro, b-roll, and so on.
iMovie aims to help you create short, simple videos, so it lacks most of the organization power of Final Cut Pro. You don't get keyword ratings, keyword tagging, or Roles, but you can mark media with a Favorite or a Reject flag. iMovie integrates with Apple Photos for media organization, and, like Final Cut Pro, sorts clips into Libraries and Events.
Winner: Final Cut Pro
Advanced Video Effects: It's No Contest
iMovie might surprise you with some of the cool things it can do with your videos. Its chroma key (or green screen) tool works well, and you can add up to one picture-in-picture (PiP) overlay. Speed changes and freeze frames are easy and effective to implement. The app provides strong control over color, and standout effects include Duo-Tone, Sci-Fi, X-ray, and several black-and-white and retro looks. A limited but appealing set of transitions is available to you. iMovie doesn't have keyframe, motion tracking, or multicam editing capabilities, however.
Final Cut Pro has all of those capabilities and many more. You get more than 200 customizable video effects in groups such as 360-degree, Basics, Color, Comic Looks, Light, Looks, Masks and Keys, Reframe, Stylize, Text Effects, and Tiling. Color editing is much more detailed, and the app features the AI-powered Enhance Light and Color effect, which evens out harsh lighting and gives clips a more natural look. Final Cut lets you use Adjustment clips, similar to Photoshop's adjustment layers, to apply an effect to all tracks below it. You get over 100 transitions, and the Modular transitions give you control over position and motion. Final Cut's Magnetic Masks let you apply motion tracking to automatically selected objects and people, too.
Winner: Final Cut Pro
Titles and Text: You Get More Options With Final Cut
iMovie provides an attractive set of title styles, and you type and edit text directly in the preview window. Many titles include smooth in‑and‑out animations, and you can adjust alignment, font, and size options. The app even includes the classic Star Wars–style scrolling text.
But Final Cut Pro offers hundreds of animation templates and fun 3D title options. It also has an AI-powered automatic caption feature, though it doesn't support text-based editing like Premiere and PowerDirector.
Winner: Final Cut Pro
Audio Editing: Pros Have A Clear Choice
Final Cut offers far more editing options, including advanced noise reduction tools, full multitrack editing, compression and limiting, parametric EQ, and support for surround sound. It also ties in with Logic Pro for even deeper audio workstation capabilities. iMovie offers just the basics, including simplified noise reduction and EQ presets. It also lets you detach audio from your clips and add background music.
Both programs integrate with your Apple Music library, but Final Cut includes royalty-free music cues and a huge library of sound effects. The pro-level app can plug into third-party commercial music catalogs, and its new Beat Detection feature adds vertical lines to the timeline to help you align cuts with music for impact.
Winner: Final Cut Pro
Collaboration: Teams Should Choose Final Cut
You don't get true collaboration features with iMovie. Your options are essentially to send a project file to someone or copy your Library to USB storage.
Final Cut Pro integrates with Frame.io and other remote collaboration tools via plug-ins and provides shared storage. That said, both Adobe Premiere and DaVinci Resolve still have the edge when it comes to collaboration, especially since they work on more platforms.
Winner: Final Cut Pro
Output: Neither Is Great By Itself
iMovie makes it easy to share your video creations via email, but it can't directly upload to social platforms like some other consumer video editors, such as PowerDirector. You can specify the video quality and resolution at export time, but not the bit rate or frame rate.
Final Cut also has somewhat limited output options, unless you send your project to Compressor. The companion app gives you excellent control over formats, output targets, and settings. But with the video editor alone, you can choose audio roles and stems, codecs (including ProRes and HEVC), and color spaces (including HDR).
Winner: Final Cut Pro
Performance: Surprisingly Close
Both Apple apps offer impressively quick rendering speeds. For testing, I have each program join seven clips at various resolutions, ranging from 720p to 8K. I then apply cross-dissolve transitions between them. I note the time it takes to render the project to 1080p30 with H.264 and 192Kbps audio at a bit rate of 15Mbps. The output movie is just over five minutes in length. I run multiple test runs and take the harmonic mean (which minimizes the effect of outliers) on a 2020 MacBook Air with an M1 processor and 8GB of RAM that runs macOS Tahoe. Final Cut Pro came out on top, with iMovie falling to third place behind PowerDirector. The two Apple apps are still quite close, however.
Winner: Tie