Clipchamp pricing: free, and the real question is OneDrive
There is barely a price list to read. Clipchamp is free, Premium rides inside a Microsoft 365 subscription most readers of this page already have, and since a Windows 11 project has to live in OneDrive to stay editable, the number that actually matters is a storage one.
We compete at the edges, and we have not copied a single figure of theirs
InTheClips is a narrow clipping tool; Clipchamp is Microsoft’s general-purpose editor, already on most Windows 11 machines. The review covers what the product does in full — this page is only about what a subscription here actually costs, and the honest answer turns out not to be a Clipchamp number at all.
A price transcribed here is wrong the moment Microsoft changes it, which for a page like this is barely a risk today: their own pricing page shows no dollar figure at all, as read on 2026-08-23. What is worth writing down instead is the shape of the bill, and where it actually lands.
There is almost no price list, and that is the point
Two tiers, and the free one is not a trial. Clipchamp’s own pricing page, read 2026-08-23, shows free and Premium, with no dollar amount printed on the page itself. The free tier exports with no watermark and no cap on how many videos you make — a genuinely usable tier, not a sample of one.
Premium is not really sold on its own — it rides inside Microsoft 365. The same page frames Premium around a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription rather than as a standalone purchase. For a large share of the people reading this page, the upgrade is already paid for, inside a bill they are paying for other reasons.
Which means the unit that decides your bill is not Clipchamp’s at all. It is OneDrive. Windows 11 requires a Clipchamp project file to be saved to OneDrive to stay editable — the source footage itself can stay on the machine, but the project that stitches it together cannot, a fact read directly off Microsoft’s support pages and covered in full on the review. Once that is true, Clipchamp is not a subscription decision so much as a tenant in whatever OneDrive storage you already have.
The full review, including this in detailWhat fills the storage Clipchamp now depends on
A project file is not the only thing sharing that quota. The source video can stay local, so a single project does not cost as much OneDrive room as it might sound. It is rarely the only thing in that pool, though — a phone’s camera backup, Outlook attachments and other Office documents commonly already live there, so the number worth checking before relying on Clipchamp for anything ongoing is how much of that storage is already spoken for, not how large a video file looks on its own.
The rollout was staged by tier, not a single cut-over. Microsoft’s own Clipchamp cloud-storage FAQ, read 2026-08-23, gives two separate dates: changes to Clipchamp Premium began 20 January 2025, and changes to the free account tier followed from late August 2025. A free account and a Premium one were not necessarily moved onto this at the same moment, which is worth knowing if what you are reading elsewhere is a year-old forum post.
There is an archive option, and it is worth reading closely rather than assuming. The same FAQ offers archiving a project to local disk as an alternative to keeping it synced to OneDrive. It is framed there as a way to stop a finished project occupying that storage, and the same page treats OneDrive sync as what active editing depends on — so check what archiving actually does to a project’s editability before relying on it as a way to keep working without the cloud.
Four things to check, and they apply to us too
None of these are about whether Clipchamp is good. They are about what it actually costs you, this tool included.
Check what you already own
A Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription commonly includes Clipchamp Premium already. Look there before paying for anything a second time, and run the same check on any tool bundled into a suite you already pay for.
Check how much OneDrive room is actually free
Not how large your plan sounds — how much of it is already spent on everything else that backs up there. That is the number a video habit is about to compete with.
Check which tier your own account is actually on
The Premium and free changes rolled out on different dates. If a guide you are reading does not match what you see, check whether it was written before your tier moved onto this.
Ask what “free” costs elsewhere, on any tool
A tool that charges nothing up front can still cost you something else — an account, a storage tier, a data policy. Ours charges nothing for the first thirty minutes and never charges for storage beyond the retention window a plan states; ask the same question of whatever you use next.
A different unit entirely: minutes of source video analysed — nothing about where a file lives.
We meter how much of your video is read, not where the project file sits or how large your cloud storage plan is. Nothing here depends on OneDrive, an archive, or any account beyond ours.
Four hours a month on Starter, eleven on Creator, twenty-seven on Studio — one credit per minute analysed. Exporting a clip is included up to a generous batch each month (80 / 220 / 540), and only past that does one cost 3 credits, from the same balance.
A third off — smaller than this category usually discounts a year by, because the yearly plan is about paying once rather than about the shop window.
No Microsoft account, no OneDrive, no separate suite to already be paying for. The trade-off is width: there is no timeline editor, no recorder and no brand kit — the full comparison is on the review.
Questions
What this search is usually standing in for.
How much does Clipchamp cost?
Their own pricing page, read 2026-08-23, shows no dollar figure at all: it is free, and Premium, and Premium is framed around a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription rather than sold as a standalone price. Check clipchamp.com’s own pricing page for anything that has changed since.
Is Clipchamp actually free?
Yes, to a real degree — the free tier exports without a watermark and without a cap on how many videos you make. Premium adds a few specific things on top, and for a large share of readers of this page it is already included in a Microsoft 365 subscription they are paying for anyway.
Why does OneDrive matter for the price?
Because Windows 11 requires a Clipchamp project file to be saved to OneDrive to stay editable, while the source footage itself can stay on the machine. Once that is true, the cost that actually varies is not Clipchamp’s subscription tier, it is how much OneDrive storage you have left — read Microsoft’s own Clipchamp cloud-storage FAQ for the specifics of what counts.
Can I keep a Clipchamp project entirely local?
Microsoft’s own FAQ describes archiving a project to local disk as an alternative to syncing it to OneDrive, framed as a way to free up that storage once a project is finished rather than a way to keep editing one without the cloud. Read that page directly before relying on it either way.
Is this page biased?
We make a narrower, competing product and say so at the top rather than in a footer. No figure of Clipchamp’s appears on this page on purpose — the arithmetic here is checkable without one, and anything you would rely on should be checked at the source regardless.
What would you check first?
Whether a Microsoft 365 subscription you already pay for includes Premium, and how much OneDrive room is actually free once everything else already backing up there is accounted for. Those two answer the real cost question better than any price list would.
The rest of the reading
The full review this page leans on, and the same argument written for another tool in the category.
Clipchamp review
Free, already installed on Windows, and enough for a great many jobs. Where it stops.
Opus Clip pricing
What each tier costs, what a minute means there, and where the bill surprises people.
Best AI clip tools
Six of them, each with the case it is the wrong answer for.
YouTube clip maker
Paste the watch URL and it is fetched once on our side, or upload the file. Only the passages you approve are ever cut.