I Tried Premiere Rush Premium: Is It Worth Upgrading?

Premiere Rush is Adobe’s mobile video-editing app, and I tried out the premium version. Despite having some advantages, I didn’t see enough to justify paying for it altogether. Here’s a rundown of what I liked and disliked, plus some alternatives I recommend.

Premiere Rush Free vs. Premiere Rush Premium

Premiere Rush Premium is available for $3.99/mo or $34.99 per year. In the table below, you’ll see a quick rundown of what you get when you sign up for the free and paid versions.

Premiere Rush Premium Pros

Before going over the drawbacks, let’s look at why Premiere Rush Premium might be worth getting. Below were my favorite things about Premiere Rush Premium and what could make it worth upgrading for.

1. Significant Storage Increase

Having a decent amount of storage is important with video content as it often consumes much more space than photos. With the free version of Premiere Rush, you get 2GB of storage. This might be enough if you’re a casual video editor, but if you create lots of social media content, you may wish to get something more substantial.

When you upgrade to Premiere Rush Premium, you get 100GB of storage. This will be more than enough for almost everyone, regardless of whether you use Premiere Rush for Instagram Stories, TikTok videos, or something else.

2. You Can Get Adobe Express Premium at the Same Time

Another benefit of Premiere Rush Premium is that you can get it if you buy an Adobe Express premium subscription. In my opinion, Adobe Express is one of the Adobe mobile apps worth using—and having multiple subscriptions in one is definitely helpful. You also get access to all of Photoshop Express’s features, which is ideal if you want to edit photos for your social media accounts.

I also tried out Photoshop Express Premium if you want to see whether that would be worth using, should you choose to upgrade. If you’re already within the Adobe Creative Cloud ecosystem, it’s probably worth looking at Premiere Rush Premium as you also get a three-day free trial.

3. 4K Editing

One of the coolest things about taking smartphone videos these days is that you can film in 4K at 60 frames per second. In many cases, I would rather film videos with my phone than my camera. The primary reason is that it’s easier to take out my phone than it is to set up my camera.

If you only have the free version of Premiere Rush, you can edit up to 1080p. So, if you regularly film in 4K, it might be worth upgrading your subscription. Alternatively, you could try editing in your phone’s native editing app; for example, I have no problem editing videos within my iPhone’s Photos app. If you also have an Apple smartphone, consider learning how to quickly master the Photos app on your device.

4. You Can Resize All Clips Simultaneously

I often film in the same format, but when this isn’t the case, it’s quite annoying when you have to manually change the size of different clips. In my opinion, Premiere Rush’s biggest advantage is that you can resize everything for your timeline in one go upon importing your videos.

To do this, you’ll simply need to tick a box; the app will take care of the rest.

Premiere Rush Premium Cons

Premiere Rush has some nice features if you upgrade to Premium, but there are also a couple of things I didn’t like about this subscription. Below are my two biggest gripes.

1. The Starter Plan Is Only Available on Mobile

If you get a Starter plan, this is available on mobile (you can get access to premium features on a desktop if you purchase a more comprehensive plan). So, if you want to edit on your desktop device—but don’t want to get one of the other apps—this will be a huge annoyance. And even if you do upgrade, it’s better just to get Premiere Pro; it’s more powerful and includes Premiere Rush Premium in your subscription package anyway.

I would recommend looking elsewhere if you want to just use Premiere Rush, as many other editing tools are available on your smartphone and desktop device. The good news with the Starter plan is that you can, at the very least, use it on your tablet as well.

2. The Premium Version Doesn’t Offer That Many Features

Another problem with Premiere Rush Premium is that while the storage increase and 4K editing are great, you won’t find a huge number of additional features compared to the free plan. My footage didn’t really look any different when using the paid version of Premiere Rush compared to the free edition, which—in my opinion—was quite disappointing.

Again, I think Premiere Pro is better if you want to do more advanced video editing. But since Premiere Pro isn’t available on a mobile device, you should look at alternatives like DaVinci Resolve (available on tablets). We’ve got a simple guide on using DaVinci Resolve on an iPad if that’s your preferred option.

I’d Rather Use These Premiere Rush Alternatives

If you’re on the lookout for alternatives to Premiere Rush Premium, DaVinci Resolve is my top pick for long-form videos and CapCut is better for cross-device versatility and short-form videos.

CapCut

While CapCut does have a paid plan, its free version is comprehensive enough for short-form videos. I’ve also created short videos for YouTube without too many problems; it offers easy imports and exports, and you’ll also find numerous editing tools within the app. Moreover, you can add text to your videos and adjust the sound.

CapCut is available on iOS and Android, in addition to various desktop devices (consider learning how to use CapCut on Windows/Mac without an emulator).

Download: CapCut for Windows | macOS | iOS | Android (Free, in-app purchases available)

DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve is my all-time favorite video editing app; I switched from Premiere Pro because I enjoyed how comprehensive its features were. The app is available on desktop devices, and you can also get it on iPad. This gives it minus points compared to CapCut because of its versatility, but if you have a qualifying device, the benefits are significant. For example, you’ll get access to advanced color editing options.

If you aren’t yet convinced, consider checking out why you should use DaVinci Resolve for video editing.

Download: DaVinci Resolve for Windows/macOS | iPadOS (Free, in-app purchases available)

Premiere Rush is ideal if you want to quickly edit short-form videos, but it’s not my favorite tool by any stretch. In my opinion, the premium version doesn’t give me enough significant advantages to consider moving away from CapCut or DaVinci Resolve. Nonetheless, you may want to still give it a go and see if it works for you.