replacing DaVinci Resolve (Studio)
Video editing and color grading — DaVinci Resolve (Studio) pricing: Free / $295 one-time. Below: 2 free, self-hostable open source projects that cover the same ground, ranked by real GitHub adoption.
There are 2 open source DaVinci Resolve (Studio) alternatives tracked on this registry, against DaVinci Resolve (Studio) pricing of Free / $295 one-time. The most-adopted is Shotcut with 15,230 GitHub stars under GPL-3.0, written in C++. Together the set has 20,931 stars across 1 language and 1 licence. All 2 are free to self-host with no licence fee, and 2 of 2 received a commit in the last 90 days. 2 head-to-head DaVinci Resolve (Studio) comparisons are available.
Shotcut is a free, open-source, cross-platform video editor written in C++ and released under the GPL-3.0 license. It lives in the Qt and MLT ecosystem, using Qt for its application and user interface and MLT as its multimedia authoring framework. It provides regularly built binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows, and is positioned as an open alternative to Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve (Studio).
GPL-3.0 · C++ · DaVinci Resolve (Studio) vs Shotcut →
Kdenlive is a free and open-source video editor written in C++, released under the GPL-3.0 license, and developed as part of the KDE ecosystem. It builds on the MLT framework for its editing and playback engine, uses Qt and KDE Frameworks 6 for its graphical interface, and draws on frei0r for video effects and LADSPA for audio effects. The project lives within KDE's development infrastructure, with its primary repository hosted on KDE Invent and a GitHub mirror maintained for visibility, and it is distributed through the official kdenlive.org website.
GPL-3.0 · C++ · DaVinci Resolve (Studio) vs Kdenlive →
A free, open source, cross-platform video editor
Professional video editing without the price tag
last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked
Shotcut is the most-starred open source alternative to DaVinci Resolve (Studio) in this registry, with 15,230 GitHub stars. 2 alternatives are compared here in total.
Yes. Every project listed on this page is open source and free to self-host — there is no licence fee. Some projects also sell a managed hosted version, but the self-hosted path costs nothing.
Compare licence terms, community size (stars), primary language and release activity. A fast-moving project with a compatible licence and an active maintainer base matters more than raw star count when you are committing to a migration.