Adobe Premiere Pro
Ranked 7 of 20 video editors by recommenders
Recommended as a capable, industry-standard video editor; critics most often cite crashes and subscription cost.
Recommended as a capable, industry-standard video editor; critics most often cite crashes and subscription cost.
42 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 25
- approval share
- 40%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Capable professional editing software
“There are excellent video editing tools: on the desktop from paid ones like Premiere to free (as in beer) ones like DaVinci Resolve”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support” “Davinci/Premiere is great software, but for beginners it is still a very high barrier to learn the software.”
Comment from 25 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: Palmier Pro – open-source macOS video editor built for AI” “even tho Premiere is great, it's Adobe so meh”
Comment from 9 Aug 2026 in “Which editing tool using in 2026?” Industry-standard, functional editing software
“this sort of automatically makes it the gold standard”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “State of Kdenlive” “It's not the standard because it's a joy to use, it's a standard because it's functional.”
Comment from 4 May 2026 in “Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Crashes and instability
“The frustration of Premiere's instability was the main thing that drove me to open-source software.”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “State of Kdenlive” “Premiere Pro kept crashing frequently and was a bit tedious to use for simple tasks”
Comment from 31 Aug 2026 in “OpenShot 4.0 – Open-source video editor” “It is also a lot less crash happy than premiere which I ditched for resolve”
Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “DaVinci Resolve 21” Subscription cost adds up
“then another $50/mo for Adobe Premiere + $20 extra for the 4K export option”
Comment from 25 Jun 2026 in “Apple announces significant price increases for MacBooks, iPads, more” “$264/year each for Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere, InDesign”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe” “Premiere is a (finicky) subscription based professional tool”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “State of Kdenlive” Distrust of Adobe as a vendor
“backed by cloud juggernauts that either asked already or will ask for a perpetual licence”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files” “Adobe has set themselves up for failure there, everyone wants an alternative”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Blender 5.0”
Other video editors people recommend
The four most recommended other video editors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DaVinci Resolve | 175 | 66 | 73% | 11 | 3 yrs14 owners | Approved |
| Kdenlive | 56 | 25 | 69% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Final Cut Pro | 25 | 23 | 52% | 9 | — | — |
| Mosaic agentic video editing | 25 | 13 | 66% | 5 | — | — |
| Adobe Premiere ProThis page | 17 | 25 | 40% | 10 | — | — |
What people said
39 of the 47 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“All the things you mentioned are applicable to Adobe (!) as well. Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere..”
“got so sick of Adobe Premier”
“One obvious problem with that was that it affected premiere.”
“After Adobe's licensing/subscription shenanigans”
“Premiere Pro kept crashing frequently and was a bit tedious to use for simple tasks”
“even tho Premiere is great, it's Adobe so meh”
“Davinci/Premiere is great software, but for beginners it is still a very high barrier to learn the software.”
“then another $50/mo for Adobe Premiere + $20 extra for the 4K export option”
“It is also a lot less crash happy than premiere which I ditched for resolve”
“Premiere is also far more stable on the Mac”
“Premiere also made me feel that way”
“Adobe really could do some amazing stuff with Premiere and After Effects.”
“I'm a Premiere migrant to Resolve (Studio) some years ago”
“I made the switch from premier to resolve a few years ago”
“It's not the standard because it's a joy to use, it's a standard because it's functional.”
“They are so bad. If you know, you know.”
“backed by cloud juggernauts that either asked already or will ask for a perpetual licence”
“$264/year each for Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere, InDesign”
“Resolve's training material is way better than Premiere's”
“this sort of automatically makes it the gold standard”
“premiere pro is still hugely unstable”
“Premiere is a (finicky) subscription based professional tool”
“The competition from Adobe crashes a lot, too.”
“The frustration of Premiere's instability was the main thing that drove me to open-source software.”
“did premiere for 2 years (awful)”
“I am always on the lookout for a tool that can replace Premiere”
“find Premiere/Final Cut overkill for basic tasks”
“vs adobe premiere for 22.99/month”
“Premiere for Video Editing”
“most modern video editors (Premiere, Resolve, Canva) strip out GPS metadata (Exif/XMP) upon export”
“if Adobe does not want to do an engineer's afternoon worth of work to link a C library into their executable”
“Adobe Premiere Pro complain about not knowing what that format is”
“switching from Premiere to Resolve for video editing”
“a huge difference in how FCP7 would allow capturing of discrete audio channels vs Premiere forcing an interleaved audio stream”
“Doing it myself with little effort using davinci or premiere takes ~30 minutes but the results are 5 times better”
“Scrubbing is the easiest part. Mouse over the clip, it starts scrubbing!”
“Resolve Studio vastly outshines Premiere IMO.”
“Adobe has set themselves up for failure there, everyone wants an alternative”
“There are excellent video editing tools: on the desktop from paid ones like Premiere to free (as in beer) ones like DaVinci Resolve”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.