Kdenlive has no free tier, because there is nothing else to sell you
There is no Kdenlive free plan to read the small print on, because there is no paid Kdenlive. It ships under GPL-3.0-or-later with no watermark, no resolution or frame rate cap, no export counter, no account and no upgrade path, and the licence permits commercial use outright (as of July 2026).
That turns this page into a different question. Not what free holds back, but what free actually costs you: which platform gets the best-tested builds, who fixes it when it breaks, and where the money comes from when nobody is paying for licences. The current release is 26.04.3, out on 6 July 2026.
Facts checked July 2026
Kdenlive free plan at a glance
- Free plan score
- 83/100Strong
- Is it really free?
- Yes, genuinely free
- Paid plans from
- No paid plans
83 out of 100, joint highest in this category
83 ties Shotcut for the top free plan score of the thirteen tools we score here, and both sit six points above DaVinci Resolve, which we rank first. The inversion is deliberate. Resolve is the more capable application by a distance, and Kdenlive is the one with nothing at all attached to the word free, which is the only question this number is asking.
Two things keep it out of the eighties' upper reaches, and both are worth knowing before you download. Depth is real but finite: this is a very good timeline rather than a grading suite, so the point where you outgrow it is a set of scopes and a node graph. And we hold no user rating for Kdenlive anywhere, no Capterra profile and nothing publishable from the other venues, so a fifth of the score sits at the middle because we have nothing honest to put there. Shotcut lands level with it largely because Shotcut has been reviewed and Kdenlive has not.
83/100
Strong
No watermark, no cap, no account and no paid edition to be upsold into.
- Free plan generosity35% of the score
96/100
There is nothing to run out of: GPL-3.0-or-later with no watermark, no resolution or frame rate cap, no export counter, no account, no time limit and no paid edition anywhere above it (as of July 2026). The only thing you supply is the machine, and what it asks for is 64-bit Windows 10 or newer, macOS 13 or newer, or a Linux AppImage or Flatpak, which is a far lower bar than the discrete GPU Resolve wants.
- Feature depth for the category25% of the score
82/100
Judged against what this category gives away free, Kdenlive is second only to Resolve: a multi-track timeline with effect stacks, keyframes, proxy clips, audio mixing, colour correction and subtitles, on all three desktop platforms, with no feature held back for a tier that does not exist. What it is not is a grading system, so scopes and node graphs are where you outgrow it.
- Freedom and honesty20% of the score
95/100
The cleanest licence position in this category alongside Blender: GPL-3.0-or-later, commercial use settled by the licence itself, no account, no sign-in, no telemetry pitch and nothing that expires, with the project's legal side handled by KDE e.V. rather than a vendor with a price list. Two honest frictions that are not paywalls: the macOS builds are unsigned so Gatekeeper stops you once, and the project supports only the AppImage and Flatpak on Linux, with PPA support ended at release 24.02.
- What free users report20% of the score
50/100
We hold no rating for Kdenlive at all: no Capterra profile, and no G2 or Trustpilot figure for any tool in this category because both venues returned 403 to every request. There is nothing here to read a pattern from, so it sits at the middle and says so. The one thing we can report is what the project reports about itself, which is that it documents its crashes release by release rather than hiding them.
Scored July 2026. How we calculate the free plan score.
Nothing in the software is limited, so the limits are your OS and your save habit
No feature in Kdenlive is reserved for anyone, so every limit is about the platform you run it on rather than the tier you are on (as of July 2026).
- macOS trails. The builds are unsigned, so Gatekeeper tells you Apple cannot check the app for malware and you open it by hand the first time, and the Qt6 move pushed the minimum up to macOS 13 (Ventura). Linux is the reference platform and it shows.
- Windows needs 64-bit Windows 10 or newer, the project does not guarantee behaviour on server or embedded editions, and the installer wants administrator rights. The portable build does not, which is the way in on a locked-down work machine.
- Linux support has a stated boundary. AppImage and Flatpak are the only two packages the project officially supports, in its own words, and PPA support ended at release 24.02. Distro packages and the Snap listing may work perfectly and still sit outside what the maintainers commit to.
- Crashes are documented rather than hidden. Release 26.04.3 alone fixed a crash when recording without an audio device, a crash undoing a sequence created from a selection, and a crash on exit. That is a project being open about its bugs, not a project full of them, but save often. The build to avoid is the daily one, which carries the project's own warning that it can corrupt existing projects.
There is no support ceiling to hit either, because there is no support desk to hit it against. Free here means the forum, the bug tracker and the documentation, and the answer arrives when somebody volunteers it.
A ladder with one rung, funded by donations instead of licences
There is nothing to compare, which is the point. No pro edition, no cloud add-on, no store listing, no in-app purchase, no export credits, no seat count, no pricing page. The feature list you can see is the feature list you get, on Linux, Windows and macOS equally.
Two facts keep the word free honest here. The project's legal and financial affairs sit with KDE e.V., a registered non-profit in Berlin funded by donations and sponsorship rather than licence sales, so if Kdenlive earns its place in your work, that is where support goes. And GPL-3.0-or-later permits commercial use outright, so there is no personal-use trap of the kind several free Windows editors carry, and no moment where taking on a paying client obliges you to buy something.
What remains is a cost you pay in time. A dense editor with effect stacks, keyframes, proxy clips, audio mixing and a configurable layout takes a few evenings to feel natural, and nobody here is selling a shortcut past that.
Kdenlive
Free
The complete editor on Linux, Windows and macOS, free for personal and commercial use under GPL-3.0-or-later
You supply the machine. Windows needs 64-bit Windows 10 or newer, macOS needs 13 (Ventura) or newer, and on Linux the project officially supports only the AppImage and Flatpak builds
As of July 2026. Check current pricing on the Kdenlive pricing page.
Is Kdenlive really free? Yes, in the strongest sense we use
You can do the job this tool exists for, indefinitely, without paying.
Yes, with no caveat about money anywhere on the page. Open source under GPL-3.0-or-later, no watermark, no resolution or frame rate cap, no account, no expiry, commercial use permitted, and no paid edition that could one day take a feature back.
Who lives here permanently: Linux users, who get the reference platform and the best-tested builds. Anyone on a modest Windows machine who found DaVinci Resolve unusable and refuses to accept a watermark. Freelancers who need the licence question settled before they invoice. And anyone delivering above Ultra HD or at high frame rates, since Kdenlive caps neither and free Resolve caps both.
Who should think twice: macOS users, who are on the platform that trails and will meet the Gatekeeper message before they meet the timeline. Anyone who wants a support contract, because there is nobody to buy one from. And anyone learning their first timeline, who will find Shotcut's free plan puts fewer panels in the way.
Free Kdenlive alternatives covers the rest of the field, and the best free video editors ranks it.
Frequently asked questions about Kdenlive
Is Kdenlive free for commercial work?
Yes, and the licence settles it rather than a policy page. GPL-3.0-or-later permits commercial use, there is no personal-use restriction, no registration and no watermark, so client work is fine from the first export (as of July 2026).
Is Kdenlive Linux only?
No, and this is the most commonly repeated stale fact about it. The project's own download page offers a Windows installer and a portable build, plus separate macOS builds for Apple Silicon and Intel, alongside the Linux AppImage and Flatpak (as of July 2026). Linux is the reference platform, but the others are first-class downloads rather than community ports.
Which Linux package should I install?
The AppImage or the Flatpak. Those are the only two the project officially supports, in its own words, and PPA support ended at release 24.02, so any guide that tells you to add a PPA is out of date. Distro packages and the Snap listing may run fine, but they sit outside the maintainers' stated support boundary.
Where to go next
If this free plan does not stretch far enough, these are the tools we would look at instead.