A free Adobe suite? We tested the open-source Premiere Pro and After Effects clones

Checked on October 12, 2026: official GitHub repos, CineD's report, and our own test on an M2 Max Mac.

What is ArtCraft, and who made these Adobe clones?

One developer, his company, and an AI that wrote the code. Here is what CineD reports¹:

• Who. Brandon Thomas, former CEO of Storyteller.ai, the company behind FakeYou, with his studio ArtCraft.
• How. In Rust, with Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5, by his own account. CineD notes the AI's share of the code isn't independently verified.
• Why. Adobe's cancellation fee, which he calls a "dark pattern".
• Who pays. ArtCraft's paid business, an AI image and video generation service.

PetaPixel had already covered the launch on October 7³.

Which Adobe apps have a free clone?

Seven apps, one per major Creative Cloud program:

Sources142

• License. MIT or Apache-2.0, your choice: you can use, modify and redistribute them.
• Platforms. macOS, Windows and Linux, natively.
• Status. Alpha, by ArtCraft's own label.
• What's next. The site lists twelve apps, with Word, Excel and PowerPoint in its sights⁴.

What can FilmCraft, the free Premiere Pro alternative, do?

On paper, most of Premiere: the same panels, tools and shortcuts. According to its README⁵:

• Editing. Source and Program monitors, three-point editing, ripple, roll, slip and slide trims.
• Color. A Lumetri-style panel: basic correction, curves, color wheels, HSL secondary.
• Audio. Track mixer, automation, EBU R128 loudness meters.
• Formats. Its own codecs, no FFmpeg. Exports H.264, ProRes 422 HQ and DNxHR.
• Agents. More than 650 commands an AI can drive through an MCP server.

That's the team's own estimate, from October 10, against Premiere Pro 26.5.2.

Its gaps, per the README: speed on heavy footage, no plugins, no camera RAW.

What can EffectCraft, the free After Effects alternative, do?

The youngest app in the suite, and the most ambitious. According to its README²:

• After Effects basics. Compositions, layers, keyframes, Graph Editor, expressions.
• 306 effects. All 298 of After Effects', with their parameters, plus a few more.
• 3D. Classic 3D and Advanced 3D, cameras, depth of field, lights, shadows.
• Export. ProRes up to 4444 XQ with alpha, H.264, HEVC, AV1, Lottie.
• Scripts. An ExtendScript-style object model you can run from the command line⁶.

The README warns: nothing automatically compares its renders with After Effects' yet.

We installed them: how did our test on an M2 Max Mac go?

On October 12, on an M2 Max Mac (64 GB). Goal: render a real motion design scene, headless.

1. Download. EffectCraft 0.8.0 and FilmCraft 0.6.0, from the official releases. SHA-256 checksums matched the published ones.
2. Open. Gatekeeper accepts them: both apps are signed and notarized by Apple.
3. Write the scene as a script. A regular After Effects script (ExtendScript) describes the title, the cards and the camera.
4. Render headless. effectcraft-cli runs the script, then renders a ProRes 4444 with transparency, at 1080×1920.

The scene: a 3D title word by word, two image cards, a camera that orbits then moves in.

With depth of field and motion blur.

How long does an EffectCraft render take?

Fast in Classic 3D, heavy in Advanced 3D. Our numbers for 5 s of 1080×1920 video at 30 fps:

The Mac was busy with other work during the Advanced 3D runs: treat these as indicative.

What limits did we run into?

Real ones, for software born on October 1. The ones we saw ourselves:

• Depth of field in Advanced 3D. The title, sitting at the focus distance, came out blurred, with a halo. We turned it off.
• Advanced 3D is heavy. About three times slower than Classic 3D, and 6 GB of memory for 5 seconds.
• It changes every day. EffectCraft went from 0.6 to 0.8 between October 8 and 11: three versions in four days⁷.

Can FilmCraft open your Premiere Pro and After Effects projects?

No, not directly: both READMEs say so in black and white. What moves across is an interchange format, not your project.

• From Premiere to FilmCraft. Export your sequence with File > Export > Final Cut Pro XML in Premiere, then import it. AAF and OpenTimelineIO work too.
• What the XML carries. The cut, transitions, Motion and Opacity, speed changes and audio levels, according to FilmCraft. The list stops there.
• From After Effects to EffectCraft. Nothing for .aep files. Your ExtendScript scripts can run, and Lottie animations import.
• Third-party plugins. None: no After Effects plug-ins, no VST3, no OpenFX.

Is it legal, and is it really free of Adobe code?

Two different questions. Using free software under the MIT or Apache license is legal, and this isn't cracked Adobe.

• What the projects say. No Adobe code, icons, presets or LUTs. The work starts from public documentation and from how the apps behave.
• What isn't proven. The "clean room" method hasn't been independently verified, CineD points out.
• The real debate. The clones copy Adobe's panels, menus and shortcuts. In US law, interface behavior has long been hard to protect, CineD notes.
• Adobe. No public comment as of October 12, per CineD.

How do you install FilmCraft and EffectCraft without getting a fake?

Success attracts copies: on GitHub, about ten recent repositories carry the same names.

1. One source only. getartcraft.com or github.com/storytold, the official account. Never a link sent in a DM.
2. The right file. On Mac, the "macos-universal" .dmg. On Windows, the .msi for your processor.
3. The checksum. Compare it with the SHA256SUMS.txt file published with every version.
4. The signature. On Mac, check it once the app is installed.

Both checks, in Terminal:

shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/filmcraft-0.6.0-macos-universal.dmg

spctl -a -vv /Applications/FilmCraft.app

On our Mac, the signer was Learning Machines LLC (DJ6XS33FX8), not "ArtCraft".

Who are these free clones useful for today?

For testing and learning, not for client delivery: even EffectCraft's README says so.

• You're starting out with no budget. You learn panels and shortcuts close to Adobe's, for free.
• You code or automate. Everything is drivable: command line, MCP server, ExtendScript-style scripts.
• You edit on Linux. Premiere and After Effects don't exist there; these clones do.
• You edit for clients. Wait: no .prproj, no plugins, and it's alpha.

Need a free, mature editor today? DaVinci Resolve has a free version⁸.

We compare it with Premiere in Claude in DaVinci Resolve, and what about Premiere Pro.

Staying on Premiere Pro? Edit faster with Black Hat Editor Tools

If time costs you more than the subscription: BHE adds to Premiere Pro (Mac; Windows in closed beta).

• Derush. AutoCut removes silences, with a preview before it cuts.
• Animated captions. 50+ word-by-word styles, transparent background, placed on the timeline.
• Motion design. The agent animates a figure or a title on the spoken word: see Claude Opus 5.5 for motion design in Premiere Pro.
• Ask AI. You describe the edit, the Ask AI agent does it on your timeline, with your Claude subscription.

A sentence to type in Ask AI's Act tab, to get started:

Cut the silences in the sequence.

Pricing (details):

• Free. No card, account required. AutoCut and Ask AI aren't included.
• Essentiel or Pro. $15 or $40 a month. 14-day Pro trial, card required.
• Claude. Your Claude subscription, for Ask AI, isn't included.

See all the tools · start the 14-day trial · plugin install guide.

And these open-source 3D engines? We're studying them for 3D cameras in the plugin, with no date and no promise.

In short

• It isn't Adobe. Seven free, open-source clones written in Rust, with Claude according to their author.
• It's alpha. FilmCraft rates itself 56% ready for real work, EffectCraft 45% of the way.
• It already renders. Our 3D scene comes out as transparent ProRes 4444 in about 9 seconds (Classic 3D, GPU).
• Your projects stay with Adobe. No .prproj, no .aep.

Thinking about switching tools? Read switching from CapCut to Premiere Pro.

And if derushing is eating your evenings: remove silences in Premiere Pro.