Best Visual Effects (VFX) Software for Startups
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Compare the Top Visual Effects (VFX) Software for Startups as of August 2025
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What is Visual Effects (VFX) Software for Startups?
Visual effects (VFX) software, also known as video effects software, enables video editing professionals to edit and enhance videos in order to add or remove special effects, credits, animations, visual details, and more. Compare and read user reviews of the best Visual Effects (VFX) software for Startups currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.
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1
Adobe After Effects
Adobe
Create cinematic movie titles, intros, and transitions. Remove an object from a clip. Start a fire or make it rain. Animate a logo or character. With After Effects, the industry-standard motion graphics and visual effects software, you can take any idea and make it move. Animate titles, credits, and lower thirds. Start from scratch or with presets available right from the app. From spin to swipe to slide — your text is on the move. Combine videos and images to create anything you can imagine. Choose exciting effects from hundreds of options, remove unwanted objects or people, and create VR videos to drop your audience right into the action. Set anything in motion with keyframes or expressions. Or use presets to kick-off your designs for unique results. Create compositions in Premiere Pro. Use Dynamic Link to eliminate intermediate rendering between applications. Import from Photoshop, Illustrator, Character Animator, Adobe XD, and Animate.Starting Price: $54.99 per month -
2
Adobe Creative Cloud
Adobe
Creative Cloud is a collection of 20+ desktop and mobile apps and services for photography, design, video, web, UX, and more. Now you can take your ideas to new places with Photoshop on the iPad, draw and paint with Adobe Fresco, and design for 3D and AR. Join our global creative community — and make something better together. Explore your creativity with desktop and mobile apps including Photoshop, InDesign, and Premiere Rush. Access thousands of fonts for your projects right within your Creative Cloud apps. Showcase and discover creative work. Save, browse, and share assets from libraries right inside your Creative Cloud apps. Create and customize your own portfolio website. Get 100GB of cloud storage for file sharing and collaboration. Work better together with tools for sharing, reviewing, and commenting. Photography, video, design, UI and UX, 3D and AR, and social media. Creative Cloud has everything you need, wherever your imagination takes you.Starting Price: $19.99 per month -
3
Blender
Blender Foundation
Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and 2D animation pipeline. Cycles is Blender’s built-in powerful unbiased path-tracer engine that offers stunning ultra-realistic rendering. Blender’s comprehensive array of modeling tools make creating, transforming and editing your models a breeze. VFX professionals say: “Probably the best tracker in the market”. Blender includes production ready camera and object tracking. Allowing you to import raw footage, track the footage, mask areas and see the camera movements live in your 3D scene. Eliminating the need to switch between programs. Thanks to the high quality rigging and animation tools, Blender is being used for numerous short films, advertisements, TV series and feature films now. -
4
DaVinci Resolve
Blackmagic Design
DaVinci Resolve is an all-in-one post-production software that integrates professional editing, color correction, visual effects, and audio post-production into a single platform. Its intuitive interface makes it accessible to beginners while offering advanced tools for professionals, making it the go-to solution for filmmakers, television editors, and content creators. DaVinci Resolve is known for its Emmy-winning color grading capabilities and industry-leading audio processing with Fairlight. The software includes dedicated workspaces for each task—editing, color grading, visual effects, and audio—enabling users to seamlessly switch between tasks. Its powerful features are enhanced by AI tools and real-time collaboration capabilities, allowing teams to work simultaneously on the same project without the need for complex file transfers or conversions.Starting Price: $295 -
5
VEED
VEED.IO
Create videos with a single click. Add subtitles, transcribe audio and more. Keep your content, logos, color palettes and bespoke fonts all in one place. Increase productivity with your own personal Brand Kit. Create workspaces to keep your content organised. Collaborate on projects in the cloud, and design your own workflows. Perfect for sharing files and reviewing projects. Let us help you build your audience, increase engagement, and develop your video editing skills. A proven framework for growing your online presence.Starting Price: $12 per month -
6
HitFilm Pro
FXhome Limited
HitFilm Pro is the top choice for artists and video editors worldwide. No need to jump from video editing software to VFX software and back again – HitFilm gives you editing, compositing, titling and 3D tools in a single product. You have everything you need to make videos in one place. Our video editing software is industry-leading, with powerful chroma key, particle and text tools – not to mention the world’s biggest VFX software toolkit. We also work with the biggest names in the industry to bring professional technology and creative tools to you, including Foundry’s 3D camera tracking, Boris FX’s pro titling tools and support for VideoCopilot’s After Effects plugins. Let our powerful video editing software take you where you want to go, faster. From industry-standard video editing tools to our own unique technology, HitFilm Pro’s video editor gives you everything you need to create dynamic, snappy edits.Starting Price: $349 per license -
7
VivaCut
VivaCut
VivaCut is a professional creative video editing software. Designed to meet the needs of global young users of social media for personalized creation. Helps users shape unique video styles and leads the trend of social media. Super useful in producing creative dynamic effects, instead of just applying templates. The characteristics of VivaCut include intuitive and easy-to-use drag-and-drop editing, and unlimited audio and video tracks, so that you can operate video segmentation, trimming, speed shifting, reverse playback, and scale adjustment in multiple tracks in real-time. Intuitive keyframe tools are used to adjust the motion, selection, scaling, transparency, and other parameters of each element in animation. The smoothness of the whole animation can also be enhanced through a flexible curve adjustment. Comparable with the post-synthesis effect of blockbusters. You can shoot green screen videos by yourself, and use the simple drag-and-drop keying technology.Starting Price: $3.49 per month -
8
HitFilm
FXHome
HitFilm is free video editing software with professional-grade VFX tools and everything you need to make awesome content, films or gaming videos. Perfect for beginners, film students, gamers, YouTubers, or any creative without a budget. You got talent and the drive, so we give you what you need, free video editing software. Why? Because you shouldn’t have to pay to play. And that way, we get to be a part of your origin story — which is pretty awesome. Get access to the world’s most powerful free video editing and VFX software for Mac or PC. Join our growing community of 6 million filmmakers and content creators today. Wanna level up your skills? Masterclass editing and VFX tutorials are made for every brand of hero. Create your own 3D shield-wielding super-soldiers or plunge your audience into the Wild West with a sci-fi twist. We bring opportunity and equality to the creative industry. Together with our community, we develop powerful accessible tools, training, and support. -
9
Avid Media Composer
Avid
Media Composer is always getting better with new features and improvements. And with your active plan, you get them as soon as we release them. See what's new in Media Composer. Discover new timesaving features and usability enhancements that enable you to edit faster with less stress. From accessing clip details and commands in bins with ease, to creating rolling credits, personalizing your interface with a new skin and highlight colors, and generating IMF supplemental packages for easy delivery to OTT streaming services, Media Composer keeps getting better. The next-generation Avid Media Engine gives you more power and speed, so you can stay focused on what matters most—your story. Experience the collaborative, efficient workflows top video professionals rely on. Expand your production team and jumpstart new projects in moments with a fully-featured virtual cloud editing suite—including cloud-optimized Media Composer software and Avid NEXIS storage.Starting Price: $23.99 per license -
10
Alight Motion
Alight Motion
Be part of the movement with Alight Motion, the world's first professional motion design app for smartphones and tablets. Create videos with professional-quality animation, visual effects, motion graphics and more! Alight Motion supports multiple layers of graphics, video, and audio, as well as a library of vector shapes, and custom vector and freehand illustrations. Combine building blocks from our library of over 100+ customizable effects to create an infinite variety of unique and sophisticated professional visual effects to precisely suit your needs and express your creativity. Alight Motion has everything you need to produce professional-quality results right on your phone or tablet. 100+ basic effect building blocks that can be combined to create sophisticated visual effects. Animation easing for more fluid motion, pick from presets or build your own timing curves. Export MP4 video in H.264 and HEVC, GIF animation, PNG sequences and more. -
11
Natron
Natron
Natron is a powerful digital compositor that can handle all of your 2D/2.5D needs. Its robust OIIO file formats and OpenFX architecture is what make Natron the most flexible open source compositor for the visual effects community. Its interface and functionally are the same across all platforms such as MacOS, Linux and Windows. Natron has a powerful keying, roto/rotopaint, 2D tracking tools that are staple for all current film production project that requires visual effects. On the surface Natron has a powerful GUI interface that is a flexible and intuitive multi-platform node based engine. Natron may seem to be a simple compositing application but it does have layers of complexity that will allow your creativity to reach new heights. Natron has flexible Roto and Rotopaint tool-set that can generate unlimited layers of masks, mattes and shapes. -
12
VideoPad
NCH Software
VideoPad Master's Edition for Windows can create movies and edit videos of many different formats including avi, wmv, .3gp, wmv, divx and more. Create videos or movies easily with the intuitive user interface. Simply drag and drop video clips. Choose from over 50 visual effects and transitions including chroma key or green screen technology. Fine tune color and visual effects. Show your friends by burning to DVD or uploading to YouTube.Starting Price: $69.95/one-time/user -
13
Lightworks
LWKS
LWKS, established in 2020, LWKS is a new creative technology company developing software for content creators and distributors in the media and entertainment industry, including the popular and multiple award-winning Lightworks and QScan products. Lightworks is a non-linear editing system for editing and mastering digital video. For over 30 years, Lightworks has helped every type of video editor and creator imaginable, from Oscar-winning Hollywood legends to YouTubers. QScan, everything you need to automate your media QC. The professional automated media QC platform that takes all the effort out of ensuring video files meet international delivery standards.Starting Price: $9.99 (Create), Pro $23.99 -
14
Red Giant Complete
Maxon
Get up-to-speed with all the latest features in Red Giant Complete. Trapcode brings the power of 3D particle systems right into After Effects. Use particle emitters to create fire, water, smoke, snow and other organic visual effects, or create technological marvels and user interfaces with immortal particle grids and 3D forms. With a subscription to Red Giant, get even more 3D geometry input options thanks to Cineware .c4d file import. Use Cinema 4D files (including animation) in particle systems or as 3D models in After Effects. Magic Bullet is a set of plugins for color correction, finishing and film looks. With powerful real-time color grading tools, video denoising, and cosmetic retouching, you’ll have everything you need to make your footage look great, right on your editing timeline. Universe is a set of video transition and effects plugins for editors and motion graphics artists.Starting Price: $49.91 per month -
15
Autodesk Flame
Autodesk
3D visual effects (VFX), finishing, and color grading software. Flame® 3D VFX and finishing software provides powerful tools for 3D compositing, visual effects, and editorial finishing. An integrated, creative environment means faster compositing, advanced graphics, color correction, and more. Extract mattes of the human body, head, and face with AI-powered tools for color adjustment, relighting, and digital cosmetic and beauty work. Isolate skies and salient objects quickly for grading and VFX jobs. Edit, composite, and color correct in one environment, without toggling between software. Create and iterate quickly for more productive client sessions. Tools for fast and interactive visual effects finishing and 3D compositing. A timeline-centric, fully compatible assistant station for Flame. A fully compatible creative assistant station for Flame in collaborative VFX workflows. Real-time color grading software for creative look development.Starting Price: $331.11 per month -
16
3ds Max
Autodesk
3ds Max offers a rich and flexible toolset to create premium designs with full artistic control. Create massive worlds in games. Visualize high-quality architectural renderings. Model finely detailed interiors and objects. Bring characters and features to life with animation and VFX. The built-in Arnold renderer provides a rich experience and can handle your more complex characters, scenes, and effects. Save time with centralized creative tools for interactive light mixing, color correction, and lens effects on the rendered image. Work faster with an artist-friendly user experience and intuitive controls. Iterate and produce high quality renders and variations faster. 3ds Max lets you scale your workflow with automation, allowing you to spend more time on creativity. Use 3ds Max as a compute engine to scale content production. Extend built-in workflows with accessible APIs.Starting Price: $215 per month -
17
V-Ray
Chaos
Chaos® V-Ray® is a 3D rendering plugin available for SketchUp, 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, Rhino, Revit, and more. It is widely used in architectural visualization, advertising, and visual effects for film and television. With V-Ray, artists and designers can explore and share their projects with real-time ray tracing and render high-quality visualizations. V-Ray has a large community of users and is recognized for its incredible versatility. V-Ray has been honored with a Sci-Tech Academy Award® and an Engineering Emmy Award® for bringing fully ray-traced photorealistic CGI to the film and television industries. For more information, please visit chaos.comStarting Price: $60 per month -
18
Nuke
Foundry
For over 20 years, Nuke has empowered teams to work together to get pixel-perfect results, fast—all without sacrificing creativity and quality. Whether your focus is on blockbusters, short-form or binge-worthy episodic content, Nuke’s power, flexibility and robust toolset empowers whole teams to create the best content, with the same tools used by leading studios. Watch what studios all around the world say about Nuke. The tools to get the job done, no matter how you're working. Advanced node-based compositing, 3D tracking and model building, conform and review... the Nuke range scales to suit your needs. The Nuke family offers unparalleled power and performance to meet the needs of modern production work. Nuke’s node graph and resolution-independent processing mean the scope of work you can handle is unmatched. Easily collaborate with others, whether you’re sitting side by side or across the globe. Work fast with Nuke’s cutting-edge toolkits, GPU acceleration and fluid workflows.Starting Price: $5,248 -
19
Boris FX Sapphire
Boris FX
Sapphire plug-ins let you create stunning organic looks unmatched by any host native effect tools. Key features include over 270 effects and 3000+ presets, a powerful effect and transition builder, and integrated tracking and masking with the academy award-winning mocha. Sapphire’s superior image quality, control, and render speed offers massive time-savings — allowing creatives to focus on what matters most, delivering an impact that keeps audiences coming back. Mac users with Sapphire 2021 will rejoice with the introduction of Metal GPU acceleration for over 60 Sapphire effect. Dramatic speed gains can be achieved with Metal acceleration in Sapphire; S_Rays renders over 4x faster with metal than CPU only. Performance can vary depending on GPU specs, host application, OS version, and individual Sapphire effects, but on average Sapphire 2021 with Metal acceleration renders 20% faster than CPU only.Starting Price: $47 per month -
20
Boris FX Silhoutte
Boris FX
Academy and Emmy Award-Winning VFX Tools Silhouette is a best-in-class, GPU-accelerated compositing application, delivering the industry’s most robust non-destructive paint and roto tools to feature film and visual effects teams. Since 2005, Silhouette has made its mark on Hollywood’s biggest film and TV shows including Avatar, Black Panther, Stranger Things and many more. Silhouette is officially recommended by the Netflix Post Technology Alliance in the VFX category. The artists tool for Roto, Paint & Tracking. Silhouette 2020.5 goes beyond traditional roto and cleanup as a professional stereoscopic enabled node-based compositing system with 146 nodes designed for every finishing task. Silhouette is available as a standalone application for macOS, Windows, and Linux with floating license options for enterprise. New Silhouette Paint plug-in! Our paint tools have now been streamlined into a multi-host plug-in supporting Adobe and OFX hosts, free for all Silhouette 2020 owners.Starting Price: $94 per month -
21
Boris FX Optics
Boris FX
Optics is the definitive digital toolbox for photos. Created by professional feature film VFX artists, Optics is designed to simulate optical camera filters, specialized lenses, film stocks and grain, lens flares, optical lab processes, color correction as well as natural light and photographic effects. Take your images to the next level, try Optics. Available now as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, as well as a standalone application for macOS and Windows. Apply Optics and choose from 160 filters and thousands of presets. Optics provides everything you need to creatively enhance and improve photos using a staggering amount of filters and presets. Color grade your image using film style controls or go from reality to sci-fi with incredible lighting effects. All filters can be limited to a portion of the image using sophisticated but simple to use masking controls. A layering system to apply multiple filters, a built-in paint system for touch-ups,Starting Price: $7 per month -
22
Boris Continuum
Boris FX
Meeting tight turnarounds just got easier. The post-production industry’s most complete plugin collection delivers nearly 350 creative effects in 20 categories, 4000+ presets, built-in Academy Award-winning Mocha planar tracking and masking, a beat reactor that drives VFX to music, and the FX Browser. Busy editors and artists rely on continuum to get the job done. Continuum 2021 is the biggest release in its storied history with 80+ new effects, 1000+ new professionally-designed presets, 3 new Unit categories, major additions to particle illusion, a new keying effect, improvements to Mocha’s planar tracking, and more. The Cinematographer’s Toolkit gives artists access to 80 new effects, 3 new Continuum Units, and 1000+ new presets that pay homage to the bygone era of shooting on film. The built-in FX Editor makes it simple to browse the presets and create your own custom presets directly inside the interface. Recreate classic Hollywood looks in just one click.Starting Price: $27.75 per month -
23
INSYDIUM Fused
INSYDIUM
INSYDIUM Fused contains all of our plugins and products in one complete collection. Everything you need to create stunning particle effects, realistic terrains and fulfil modeling tasks through to the final render. Plus, all our available 3D resources, hours of training, technical support, and content repository files. Get your copy of INSYDIUM Fused, which includes X-Particles, the ultimate particle engine for Cinema 4D, TerraformFX, Mesh Tools, Cycles 4D and much more. An essential component of an artist’s toolkit, X-Particles is the solution to satisfy all your particle needs, cloth, smoke, fire, fluids, grains and dynamics. Designers can switch effortlessly between motion graphics and VFX, within a unified system. Create outstanding ParticleFX from solar systems, FUI, holograms and medical visualizations to abstract artwork. Multiple options to combine emitters and modifiers, gives you a range of possibilities.Starting Price: $188.34 per 3 months -
24
Notch
Notch
Trusted by the world’s biggest artists, brands and events, Notch is the first tool that enables you to create interactive and video content in one unified real-time environment. The workflow you always wanted: Create, simulate, render, composite, edit, and play: always in real-time, always working on the full and final result. Create interactive and generative content and live video effects in a powerful, easy and stable workflow. Export and play back with the media servers you already use. Create VR experiences with our NLE workflow. Content that’s both directed and interactive, with a powerful and flexible real-time visual engine. A node-based interface that’s familiar and intuitive to explore, allowing limitless possibilities simply by connecting logical building blocks. Timeline and animation editing, compositing and grading, all in one environment, designed with narrative in mind.Starting Price: $136.07 per month -
25
Ziva VFX
Ziva Dynamics
Ziva VFX is changing the way 3D characters are brought to life for films, games, and interactive experiences. With Ziva's intuitive toolset, artists can replicate the effects of physics and simulate any soft-tissue material, including muscles, fat, and skin to create blockbuster-quality assets with ease. Ziva VFX lets you simulate the materiality of any soft tissue, using intuitive parameters and real-world units. Everything was purpose-built for creature work. Ziva Anatomy Transfer tools let you replicate, warp, and retarget creatures rapidly, so you can adapt and multiply your existing creatures for infinite hero-quality characters. Character alterations can be applied retroactively at nearly anytime. Simply adapting the underlying anatomy of your characters will allow you to react faster to changes and last-minute decisions. Use multiple material types, producing robust motion even under large deformations, StVK, NeoHookean, co-rotational, anisotropic.Starting Price: $50 per month -
26
PartyNow
Pixocial
PartyNow is a powerful video editing app that combines multiple stunning video effects and cinematic techniques to help you unleash your creativity and stand out on social media. Have fun shooting head, turning masterpieces with electronic filters, time freeze effect, space brush, and cinematic techniques! Share what you recorded in easier, cooler ways! Retro filter specially created by frontline MV colorist, a mind-blowing retro electronic filter. Time freeze effect to release your superpower. Stop time and level up your short films like a pro. Speed graph to change the speed, interpret the movie language, an easy-to-use professional-grade function.Starting Price: Free -
27
Riveo
Riveo
Riveo by Forge and Form is a video and FX composer for iPhone and iPad that combines professional-grade tools with intuitive controls to let creators build highly polished visuals directly on mobile. It offers fluid simulations, responsive motion effects, layered custom filters, and “Future Text” with bevels, gradients, realistic shadows, and reflections. Transitions are reinvented beyond simple cross-fades, and a suite of pro tools enables remapping time, color tweaking, and detailed keyframe animation with both slider simplicity and advanced control. Features include AI-generated subtitles and masking, text animations, 4K output, 60fps support, filters, stickers, voice recording, GIF creation, precomposing, RGB curves, built-in music, custom shapes, stock footage, AI images, mesh gradients, and speed editing, all previewable via camera integration. Templates and AI enhancements streamline creation while maintaining flexibility for bespoke design.Starting Price: Free -
28
AVS Video Editor
AVS
Trim, cut, split, merge, rotate, mix videos. 300+ innovative effects, transitions, overlays. Edit and save video in all popular formats (MP4, DVD, AVI, MOV, VOB, WMV, MKV, FLV, WEBM, etc.) Process video in any resolution HD, Full HD, 2K Quad HD, 4K Ultra HD and DCI 4K. Open, modify and save video using popular codeсs H.264, H.265 (reading only), MPEG-4, etc.Speed up HD video editing due to the integrated video cache technology. Use new automatic presets for powerful computers. Transfer video from DV/HDV cameras, webcams or VHS cameras. Record media files from your PC screen. Give a new life to old VHS tapes. Cut out a particular scene or remove shaky and unnecessary parts. Split videos regardless of both the video size and formats. Join as many video files as you want. Fix up any white balancing issues and color mismatches with color tuning. Fix a shaky footage with video stabilization. Use chroma key effect to change your background.Starting Price: $39 per user -
29
3DEqualizer
3DEqualizer
3DEqualizer4 is the dominating 3D tracking solution in today's vfx world - merging live action footage with digital visual effects at highest quality possible. It is a cornerstone of modern post production business and used by virtually all of the major players around the globe working in this field. Many of those companies rely on 3DEqualizer since its very first version which has been introduced over 20 years ago - some of them exclusively! But this is just the tip of the iceberg. 3DEqualizer is widely being used throughout the entire vfx industry, which means if you go to the box office today to watch the latest visual effects driven blockbuster movie, you will most likely be entertained by the help of our work! The best product is nothing worth without reliable support - this is even more important for professional clients. The things we learn, while using 3DEqualizer under real production conditions, makes us understand our client's demands much better.Starting Price: €129 per month -
30
Trapcode Suite
Maxon
Trapcode Suite brings the power of 3D particle systems right into After Effects. Use particle emitters to create fire, water, smoke, snow and other organic visual effects, or create technological marvels and user interfaces with immortal particle grids, text and 3D forms. Combine multiple particle systems into one unified 3D space and design emitters that emit full emitters for creating visually stunning results. With GPU acceleration, Trapcode plugins help you get beautiful results fast. Trapcode Suite includes a physics engine with powerful behaviors, forces and environmental controls. Particular brings particles to life with new flocking/swarming and predator/prey behaviors, and adds more realism with combined bounce and air physics. Particular and form both include the ability to create organic fluid simulations where particle systems interact with beautiful results.Starting Price: $49.91 per month