Lightworks 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

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Overview
Pricing and Plans
Features
User Reviews

Overview

Lightworks

4.2

(34)

Pricing

Starting at $49.99 per month

About Lightworks

Lightworks is a video editing platform designed to help businesses develop and export video content across several platforms such as Vimeo or YouTube. Features include stereoscopic output, trimming, data backup, project archive and timeline rendering

Lightworks enables users to produce video content in multiple formats, collaborate with team members in real-time and share media, edits, or bins. Professionals can import a batch of files, render third-party FX or export documents while performing edits. With its GPU pipeline architecture, users can add various effects such as primary or secondary color correction, masking and blurring.

Lightworks is available on monthly and yearly subscriptions and also for a one-time fee. Support is extended via community forums, documentation and email.

Lightworks Screenshots

Lightworks Pricing and Plans

Starting price: $49.99 per month

Free Trial

Free Version

Lightworks Create

$49.99

per user, per month

Plan includes:

100's of Inbuilt Titles
4k Export
Access to Stock Music & Video
Advanced Titles
Cloud Editing & Collaboration
Social Media Export Templates
Transitions & Effects
Unlimited Project Spaces and Advanced Metadata

Lightworks Pro

$119.99

per user, per month

Plan includes:

100's of Inbuilt Titles
4k Export
Access to Stock Music & Video
Advanced Correct & Enhance Tools
Advanced Titles
Cloud Editing & Collaboration
Custom Output Formats
Export Exchange Formats and Advanced Metadata
Social Media Export Templates
Transitions & Effects

Popular features found in Video Editing
3D Video Editing
Audio Capture
Media Library
Split/Merge
Text Overlay
Video Capture
Video Stabilization
More features of Lightworks
Data Import/Export
Image Editing
Social Sharing
Supports HD Resolution
Video Editing

Lightworks User Reviews

Overall Rating

4.2

Ratings Breakdown

44%

12%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

3.6

Value for money

4.4

Customer support

3.8

Functionality

3.9

Shreyas B.

Verified reviewer

Computer Games

Self-Employed

Used monthly for less than 6 months

Review source

Reviewed September 2018

An amazing software to produce industry standard high quality videos.

in the big picture, it honestly is a great software for people looking to make YouTube videos or vlogs or short movies. It can definitely produce high quality stuff and you honestly don't need to learn a lot to use it. I mainly used it to edit my game play of the games I made in my company.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The thing I liked the most about lightworks is the small learning curve. After playing around for a few days I had complete control of the application. I used it to edit youtube videos for my game dev and it didn't fail me. Even the free version is very good and can be used by anyone. For quick and precise editing, this software is probably the only one that comes to mind.

Cons:

For people who might've been using Adobe's Premier, it may be a bit confusing at first, the keyboard keys but after a while it slides like a glove. Foe people looking to use the free version, the only downside might be that the max resolution produced is 720p but that's still pretty good too !

Lucas M.

Verified reviewer

Writing and Editing

Self-Employed

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed December 2019

A very able video editing tool, quite intuitive. Also has a free trial that can be renewed

I am a big fan of beginner-friendly creative tools. Lightworks allows me to make short advertisement videos for my freelance business, even though I have no formal education in video edition. It also allows me to create and edit those videos on a computer that is not a high-end machine by any means. I usually export my short videos (with a length of up to 2 minutes) to a YouTube-usable format, H264-720p, with no issues and little wait

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Functionality

Pros:

I consider Lightworks' interface to be quite intuitive, as I required almost no time to get used to it. I usually have no issues importing images, audio or other clips to a video project. Exporting also usually goes smoothly. I happen to have other video editing softwares installed, but very rarely had the need to use anything other than Lightworks.

Cons:

I have no complaints about Lightworks. Its frugal set of features - that for some other people could be a turn-off - was enough for the edition whole Hollywood movies such as Pulp Fiction and The Wolf of Wall Street, so a little getting used to it should go a long way, especially for most beginner video editors.

Dan D.

Verified reviewer

Music

501-1000 employees

Used monthly for free trial

Review source

Reviewed February 2022

Overtakes all audio settings on desktop - extreme PITA.

A lot of people seem to like this software, but the time I would have spent using it was spent troubleshooting my sudden and complete loss of audio. The time that this software would have saved me was made up for by the time I spent trying to work around the grayed-out IO hardware settings. The fact that a decision to lock the user out of audio settings in editing software can even be made in this day and age, is enough to call Lightworks a hot mess and move on.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I liked that the software was free, and got exactly what I paid for, minus most of my Saturday morning.

Cons:

The audio only exports through System Sound, which by itself is not bad. But who the hell wants to toggle between audio devices, let alone rearrange speaker cables in an audio rack, just to open a piece of software? Furthering my annoyance, was the fact that ALL software on my computer defaulted to System Sound upon opening Lightworks.

Reasons for switching to Lightworks

$$$

Benu B.

Verified reviewer

Used other for less than 6 months

Review source

Reviewed April 2018

Lightworks is to video what Gimp is to photos - powerful and free

Lightworks is free, capable, and flexible. For new editors, it's a good first step into the world of nonlinear editing, and it opens the door for Linux users to practice better digital creativity.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Lightworks is a capable, flexible, and valuable video editor that almost anyone can learn. The workflow is adaptable to most project types, and the system requirements are easily achieved. Should a user require more advanced features, there is a "pro" version the company sells for a reasonable price, but this is optional. The fact that users can learn and evaluate the software, without spending a dime, is a huge plus. Lightworks is also one of the few capable editors that has Linux support, so that is a huge plus. More Linux support is always a good thing, and this software opens up lots of value to those users. Overall, Lightworks is to video editing as Gimp is to photo editing. Anyone can pick it up and learn for free, and it helps build creativity and technical skill for a diverse userbase.

Cons:

The UI of Lightworks is archaic. This might seem like an arbitrary complaint, but for a video editing program the user needs clarity in what tools and windows are intended to do. Lightworks' iconography and relatively bright color scheme distracts from the work to be done. Also, Lightworks changes the mechanics of certain basic editing tasks, notably edit replace and ripple edit. My displeasure with the differences might just be my muscle memory from other programs, but these are fairly normal tasks that should be as easy/standard as possible. Perhaps for new users, there will not be much transition pain, but for seasoned editors, it may be a bother.

Carlos N.

Verified reviewer

E-Learning

201-500 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed April 2021

Very simple to use video editor

Very good experience, It does what I need and I managed to get it working without previous knowledge. The support in forums is very good.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Functionality

Pros:

I am not a professional editor, I use the software for academic purposes, basically editing Zoom recordings of university lectures. The software does what I need, trimming, adjusting audio, cutting video segments, with a low learning curve for somebody with almost no experience in video editing. It works fine, and it works in Linux.

Cons:

The free version offers limited options for exporting video, so I must use ffmpeg to get to the final version. The H264 codec is not optimized for long videos, so I use ffmpeg to recompress the result.

Kymahn C.

Verified reviewer

Computer Games

2-10 employees

Used other for less than 6 months

Review source

Reviewed March 2020

My Lightworks Review

Try it now and thank me later!

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Lightworks!....IS to me a lifesaver and is the first video editing software I used to edit my videos and I could tell you that it does a Nice job! I like how this app is easy to use-I only took me 5 minutes to know where everything is and what they do with out any help Costumer service if fire(GOOD!)...I told them about my email problem and they sent me the email(AFTER I TOLD THEM ABOUT THE PROBLEM)3 minutes after!...Which is pretty quick! Lightworks exports in HD 1080p and Higher Up to 4K!

Cons:

It is a little problem when logging-in!..Not much but they took a whole 3 days to send a simple email I needed to log-in!

Reasons for switching to Lightworks

I just wanted to switch

Verified

Reviewer

Hospital & Health Care

51-200 employees

Used other for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed December 2018

experience with lightworks

pretty positive, nothing outstanding or special

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Functionality

Pros:

pretty straightforward, easy to use, relativelt uncomplicated

Cons:

there were sometimes snags and complications

Adonay S.

Verified reviewer

Information Services

11-50 employees

Used monthly for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed September 2020

Awesome

Once we learn the use of the program and practiced a lot, we've been able to create very awesome videos with nice transitions and also, if you need some basic audio equalizations, those can be done from the program itself, no need to use an audio processor unless you need to perform a special operation with audio.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Functionality

Pros:

It has lots of features, from the most basic crops to highly advanced customizations. In the forum is possible to find additional effects that also look great and save time. There are lots of tutorials in their site about how to perform some of the most commonly used functions.

Cons:

Not sure if it's a con, but it has a very long learning curve since there are no menus to look for the different operations that could be done, many of them are done via keyboard shortcuts (can't compare with other software since Lightworks has it's own approach on edition: nodes instead of layers).

Kasey B.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

501-1000 employees

Used other for less than 6 months

Review source

Reviewed May 2018

Liked the product, but there was some issues

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

It was fairly easy to use, I was able to splice videos together and get some pretty nice transitions for the software. Conversion was pretty easy, and I was very happy with the layout and design.

Cons:

The biggest issue I experienced was that it didn't work with 4k MTS files. This was after splicing and cutting videos I had into one file. It didn't import the audio. I learned from their forums that this file was too new and not incorporated yet. It kinda put me in a pinch to find something else to spice my videos...