The best online video editors: no download required

Photography of laptop showing Kapwing, one of the best online video editors

(Image credit: Jon Stapley)

The best online video editors are an ideal solution if you have some simple video editing tasks and are short of hard drive space. When we think of video editing, we think of big and powerful computers, with industrial-sized fans roaring away in a desperate attempt to keep the inner workings cool. But time and tech marches on, and now it’s possible to edit, render and share video entirely online, with something as slimline as a Chromebook.

Now, here’s an important caveat. If you’re serious about video editing, you will have an easier time using one of the best editing computers and the best editing software. If you’re handling longform content and high-resolution video, these are a must – the tools we’ve included in this guide don’t even offer an option to render in anything higher than 4K. What we’ve collated here are ideal tools for more casual work, for cutting together quick clips for social media or similar tasks. If you just need a quick video editor that doesn’t require downloading and installing a huge piece of software, these are a great bet.

All the options we’ve included here offer a free tier, and then subscription tiers with more advanced features and functionality. If you’re dead set on not spending any money, check out our guide to the best free video editing software where we have a lot more options for the zero-budget crowd, and we also have a guide to the best video editing apps on mobile. For now though, let’s get stuck into the best online video editors.

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01. Adobe Creative Cloud Express

The best simple online video editor, especially if you already use Adobe

Specifications

Key features: Music library, voiceover record function, widescreen and square format

Price: Free / $9.99 per month

Watermark: No

Reasons to buy

Included in many CC subscriptions

Very easy to use

Reasons to avoid

Quite limited functionality

Can’t move music on timeline

If you already have an Adobe subscription of some kind, then there’s a good chance you can already access Creative Cloud Express’s video editor and start creating projects right away, as it’s thrown into a lot of subscription packages. If not, you can sign up for free – though paying monthly for a premium upgrade gets you a lot of handy features like 100GB of storage, compared to 2GB in the free tier, which you’ll chew through in no time if you’re making videos.

The browser-based video editor itself is basic, but pretty functional. As we noted in our review of CC Express, it’s hardly going to challenge any serious video editing software, but if you just need to string a few clips together with a little text and music, it’s about as easy as it gets. The drag and drop interface is immediately comprehensible, and there’s a handy library of stock music, with the additional option to upload your own. Also, there’s a one-click option to record voiceover and lay it over a clip. It’s a little annoying that you can’t move your music track around on the timeline though – your options for it are basically just on or off.

ClipChamp was acquired by Microsoft in 2021, and since then the tech giant has expanded the utility of the free version of the editor, to the point where it’s a compelling choice for anyone looking to quickly cut something together. The interface is a simple drag-and-drop, with a toolbar on the left-hand side that gives you access to a big library of stock assets – everything from music to video clips, GIFs and images. Free users will have the familiar Canva experience of needing to navigate around the premium-only assets, but there’s still a lot to choose from. You can also use your computer’s camera/mic to record your own clips right into the timeline, if you want.

Clipchamp only works in Chromium-based browsers – you’ll be fine with Chrome and Microsoft Edge, and probably okay with Opera or Brave, but Firefox die-hards will have to look elsewhere. Also, it’s worth noting that the editor is a tiny bit glitchy – I infrequently encountered a bug where all my clips would randomly be replaced with a black screen, though it was always fixable with a quick refresh. File exports on the free tier max out at 720p – if you want Full HD, you’ll need to sign up for one of the premium options.

Veed is another easy-to-use video editor. Sign up for free and you can get started immediately, with an intuitive drag-and-drop timeline. It works in most browsers, including Firefox, and offers a fair few useful features, including a well-engineered subtitle generator. You can add subtitles via text-to-speech, type them in manually and place each line on the timeline, or upload an existing subtitle file like an SRT.

There are some significant limits on the free tier of Veed. You can only upload clips up to 250MB in size, you’re limited to an export length of 10 minutes, and you have to have the veed.io watermark. Upgrading to the Basic tier clears a lot of these inconveniences out of the way, but if you’re prepared to pay $12 or so per month then you can get the much more fully featured Adobe Premiere Rush.