Clipchamp review

Windows 11 ships it, the browser still runs it

Clipchamp began in Brisbane in 2014, joined Microsoft in 2021, and now does two jobs at once. It is the official video editor shipped with Windows 11, taking over the lineage that ran from Movie Maker through the Photos video editor, and it is still a standalone browser app at app.clipchamp.com that runs in Edge or Chrome on any operating system.

The editor itself is a timeline, not a template wizard: multiple tracks, trimming, transitions, text, a stock library, screen and webcam recording, and a set of AI features that are genuinely on the free side, including subtitles, voiceovers, silence removal and image background removal. Nothing about it is deep. Everything about it is quick, which is the point.

We rank it fifth because of a single number. The free tier is unusually clean, and it stops at 1080p.

For the person who needs a 1080p cut by lunchtime

• Windows 11 users who want to trim and caption something without installing anything at all
• Anyone on a Chromebook, a work laptop with locked-down software installs, or a machine too weak for a desktop NLE
• People who already pay for Microsoft 365 and did not realise Clipchamp premium came with it
• Social and internal video where 1080p is the delivery spec anyway
• Not anyone who needs a 4K master, and not macOS or Android users who want a real app

Free at 1080p, and the prices we could and could not read

Free means free here in the way people hope it does: unlimited exports, no watermark, no export counter, free stock, free filters and effects, and the AI subtitles and voiceover tools included rather than teased (as of July 2026). What it does not mean is 4K, premium stock, the brand kit, or cloud backup for your projects.

Above free, Microsoft's own Clipchamp product page carries clear figures for the bundled routes. Microsoft 365 Personal is $99.99 a year or $9.99 a month, Family is $129.99 a year or $12.99 a month for up to six people, and on the business side Clipchamp Editor Standard is $3.00 per user per month and Editor Premium, which is where 4K UHD export lives, is $7.00 per user per month, both billed annually.

The one price we cannot give you is the standalone personal Clipchamp Premium subscription. It exists, it is bought through the Microsoft Store, and no Microsoft or Clipchamp page we could read prints a figure for it. The pricing page compares free against Microsoft 365 instead, one support article says only that the currency and price shown are the ones for your region, and the Store listing renders client-side. A specific monthly figure circulates widely for it. We are not repeating a number we could not source.

4K is the paywall; 1080p is the limit

Everything else on the free tier is generous enough that the resolution cap does all the work. If your deliverable is 1080p, you may never notice a limit at all. If it is 4K, you are paying, and the cheapest verified route to it is a Microsoft 365 subscription or the $7 business tier.

Three smaller limits sit behind it. Premium stock, premium filters and effects and the single brand kit are paid, so a free Clipchamp project leans on your own footage. Cloud backup for projects is paid and, unusually, is the one premium feature Microsoft says its own 365 subscribers do not get. And the account requirement tightened after the acquisition: the Windows app now signs you in with a personal or family Microsoft account and no longer accepts Google, though the browser version still takes Google, an email link, or an email and password.

The last limit is platform. There is a browser version, a Windows app and an iOS app, and that is the list. No macOS app, no Android app, no Linux app, so a large share of users are browser-only whether they like it or not.

Correcting the watermark myth, then our recommendation

Before the verdict, the correction: Clipchamp free does not watermark your exports, and it does not cap how many you make. Microsoft's page says unlimited watermark-free exports and Clipchamp's pricing page says exports are up to 1080p with no watermarks. Both claims to the contrary are leftovers from the Creator and Business plans that were discontinued in November 2022.

So, would we send you here? Yes, if 1080p is enough and you value not installing anything, and especially if you already pay for Microsoft 365, in which case the premium features are already yours. If you need 4K without paying, CapCut offers it on its free tier with its own caveats, and Kdenlive and Shotcut have no resolution ceiling at all. The full ranking is on our free video editing page.