Is CapCut Free? Watermarks, Limits and the 7-Day Trial (2026)

Yes, CapCut is free, with three conditions

CapCut is free to download and edit with on phone, desktop and web, and a video built only from free assets in the standard editor exports without a watermark.^[1] Free stops being free in three places. Templates add a CapCut ending clip, which you can delete before export. Any Pro-marked template, effect, filter, transition or sticker locks the export or watermarks it until you subscribe or remove the item. And the higher export settings belong to Pro: 4K and 60 fps on Desktop, plus mobile exports longer than 15 minutes.

For short social clips at 1080p, Free is enough. For long videos, 4K, premium templates or regular AI generation, plan on Pro. Free features can also move behind the paywall: Auto Reframe and BCD Studio music both launched free and became Pro features in April 2026. If a tool you rely on is labelled as a free preview, assume it may need Pro once the preview ends.

Where the watermark comes from, and how to skip it

CapCut does not stamp a watermark on every free export. The help center traces almost every watermark to two sources. The first is the template outro: most templates append a short ending clip with the CapCut logo on web, desktop and mobile, and some template layers carry a logo overlay too. Delete the ending clip at the end of the timeline, remove or replace the logo layer, and the export comes out clean. The second source is a Pro asset. Removing it is the only free fix.

Pro items carry a Pro icon in the top-left corner, and on CapCut Online a premium template shows a purple Pro badge. To export without paying, remove every marked item and reselect the cover if it used Pro material.^[2] On mobile, if you decline the Pro prompt, the app still exports, but with a CapCut watermark even at 1080p. Previewing locked items costs nothing. That is how many people end up with a draft they cannot export cleanly, and CapCut's watermark-removal tool will not rescue it: CapCut says the tool does not work on copyrighted or paid content.

AI-generated clips are a separate case. CapCut says its AI output carries visible AI labels, invisible watermarks and C2PA Content Credentials. That marking is separate from the export watermark that Pro removes from premium assets: an AI clip stays labelled as AI content by design, whatever plan you are on, while the template outro is just a clip on your timeline that you are free to delete before export.

The limits Free hits first

Resolution and length

The rules differ by surface. CapCut Desktop exports up to 4K at 60 fps, but it locks 4K, 60 fps and the No Watermark option for non-Pro users. On CapCut Online, help says free accounts may get watermarks or bitrate limits on 4K exports, and 2K or 4K appear only when the project was created at that resolution. On mobile, 4K depends on your phone, the source media, the region and app version 12.0 or later, and many mid-range Android phones stop at 1080p. 1080p is the safe free ceiling.

Length matters mainly on phones. Mobile exports longer than 15 minutes trigger the Pro prompt, and CapCut says the free limit varies by region, so a long tutorial or a full webinar recording is where most mobile users meet the paywall. Auto captions are free to start on CapCut Web, though some caption features may need Pro. Help recommends about 15 minutes of video per caption recognition and splitting longer videos into parts of 10 minutes or less. Text to speech is free in the browser tool.

Storage and AI

New spaces get little or no free cloud storage. Help says that since 25 March 2026 newly created spaces get a free quota of 0 GB, which CapCut Web may display as 1 KB, so new uploads need a paid plan; files already stored stay viewable and downloadable, and older accounts may differ. Tool pages that promise free gigabytes on signup are out of date. A new space also allows only one invited collaborator for free. Treat Free as a local editor. Keep your projects on your own drive.

AI is metered, not included. Some AI tools give free users a few tries, about 10 for some and 2 to 3 for others while they are in Beta, and some carry daily caps, such as 50 AI Background uses a day on mobile. When the free uses run out, the tool needs Pro. Credits do not get around that, because CapCut asks you to subscribe before buying credits. Seedance 2.5 video generation appears only on the paid cards of the pricing page, and CapCut rolled it out to subscriber accounts. Do not count on it for free.

The 7-day trial and other ways to get Pro at no charge

CapCut offers a 7-day Pro trial, but only in selected countries and regions, and only to accounts that never had Pro, past trials included.^[3] On mobile you need app version 8.20 or later, the store account is charged automatically after seven days unless you cancel, and Apple may limit you to one trial per lifetime. On the web, a payment method is required up front, with no charge until the trial ends. Windows users who never had Pro may also get a 7-day trial; it converts to a paid subscription unless cancelled before it ends, so check the billing period shown at checkout.

Cancel where you subscribed, in the App Store, Google Play or CapCut Web or Desktop settings, at least 24 hours before renewal; access continues to the end of the period. CapCut generally gives no refunds on subscriptions, which it treats as virtual goods, with appeals only for special cases such as double-billing, so a missed cancellation usually stays paid. Our guide on how to cancel CapCut walks through each store; set the reminder before the trial starts.

Two other routes give Pro time at no charge. The referral program grants 7 days of Pro for each friend who installs CapCut PC for the first time, up to 10 friends or 70 days, and invitees must redeem within 3 days of downloading. Students at partner universities in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan can get free Pro through Creative Campus, whose first wave began in November 2025 with schools such as The University of Manchester. The free premium features in CapCut for iPad do not help US users, because that Beta is not in the US App Store yet.

What paying adds, and when it pays off

CapCut's US pricing page lists Free at $0, Pro at $19.99 a month billed monthly per account, Ultra at $79 a month billed monthly per account and Teams at $12.49 per seat a month billed monthly for the default 2 seats.^[4] The page calls these figures reference only, and the final price, taxes and offers appear after sign-in and can differ by region, device and account; our CapCut pricing guide follows the changes. CapCut's US pricing page also has a Yearly tab, but like the monthly figures it is labelled reference-only and CapCut runs time-limited yearly offers, so we don't quote a yearly price; check the Yearly tab after you sign in.

Pro answers the paywalled limits above. It removes the watermark from Pro assets, unlocks all premium templates and effects, enables 4K and 60 fps exports on Desktop (on phones, 4K still depends on the device), adds 1,200 monthly AI credits and 1 TB of cloud storage, and works on Mobile, Desktop and Web. Subscription credits expire at the end of their grant period and never roll over. Ultra adds exclusive AI features and 8,645 monthly credits. Only heavy AI generators need it. For everyone else the question is how many months of Pro a year you really need.

A single month of Pro for one 4K or long project is $19.99 a month billed monthly, and twelve months billed monthly come to $239.88 a year billed monthly by our arithmetic, so subscribing only in the months you export Pro work costs less than staying on the monthly plan all year. Each month auto-renews unless you cancel at least 24 hours before renewal, resubscribing is at the current price, and when Pro lapses its subscription credits expire and cloud uploads stop until you are under the free allowance.

For two people, Teams at the default 2 seats comes to $24.98 a month billed monthly, against $39.98 a month for two separate Pro accounts. Teams needs at least 2 seats, and each seat gets Pro features and 1,200 monthly credits, but the 2,400 credits are pooled at team level and the two seats share one 1 TB team space, where two Pro accounts get 1 TB each. The Team Owner buys Teams, then invites the second person.

Free editors without the same conditions

Other editors set their free limits differently. Clipchamp's free plan exports without a watermark up to 1080p, with unlimited exports, AI subtitles and voiceovers, while its 4K export and brand kit come with Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions. DaVinci Resolve's free version exports up to Ultra HD 3840 x 2160 at 60 fps on Mac, Windows and Linux, but it is a desktop editor rather than a template app for quick phone clips. Filmora's free version adds a Filmora watermark to exports, and its paid plans remove it.

In our catalog, Descript's Free plan exports at 720p with a watermark and 1 media hour a month, VEED's Free plan has 720p, a watermark and 10-minute exports, and Riverside's Free plan also stops at 720p with a watermark. Against those caps, CapCut's free 1080p export without a watermark matches Clipchamp and beats the 720p plans, as long as you build from free assets. Canva Free suits design-first work, with 5 GB of storage and up to 20 AI uses a month. CapCut Free no longer gives new spaces any free cloud storage.

The bottom line

CapCut is genuinely free for short videos built from free assets at 1080p, and the watermark most people see comes from a template outro they can delete. It stops being free at Pro-marked assets, 4K and 60 fps on Desktop, mobile exports over 15 minutes, new cloud storage and regular AI generation. Use Free for social clips, start the 7-day trial only with a cancellation date set, and pay for single months when a project truly needs Pro, cancelling each one 24 hours before it renews, rather than keeping the monthly plan running all year.