We kept guessing wrong about what creator tools cost, so we put the list prices side by side: editing, music, thumbnails, subtitles and AI video. These are prices as shown to a visitor in Greece in early November, so yours may be a bit different. Cheap starter stack: Editing: DaVinci Resolve free version, $0 Music: Epidemic Sound Pro, €179.88/yr (this plan also covers client work and ads) Thumbnails: Canva Pro, €110/yr billed yearly Subtitles: Opus Clip Starter, $15/mo for about 20 min of video a month Typical "pro" stack: Adobe Creative Cloud Pro (Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop and more): €975.24/yr Artlist Pro for music and SFX: €299/yr Envato Elements Core for stock footage and templates: €174/yr Runway Pro for about 2 min of AI video a month: $35/mo Descript Hobbyist for subtitles: $24/mo A few things that surprised us: CapCut Pro is monthly billing only and comes to €1,259.64 over 3 years. Premiere alone is €974.88 over the same 3 years, and DaVinci Resolve Studio is a one-time $295 (Final Cut Pro is $299.99 one-time, Mac only). Envato Elements Core (€174/yr) costs less than Epidemic Sound Pro (€179.88/yr) and also gives you stock footage. Whether you like the music is another story. Canva Pro is €12 a month or €110 billed yearly. That's €34 a year just for paying monthly. AI video credits per second vary a lot by model. Runway Gen-4.5 uses 12 credits per second, Pika 2.5 at 720p uses 4. Failed generations eat credits too, so real usage is usually higher than you plan. Curious what everyone's actually paying for. Is anyone still on a one-time license and happy with it? We built this calculator if you want to plug in your own numbers: https://tiersova.com/video-editing-software-cost-calculator   submitted by   /u/tiersova [link]   [comments]