I keep both Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro installed and genuinely use both, and the deciding factor is almost never features. It's turnaround time, because a meaningful chunk of my event work needs a same-day or next-day highlight reel delivered, and the two apps behave differently under that specific kind of pressure.
Final Cut's speed advantage is real, and narrower than people claim
For a fast, straightforward cut, ingest, rough assembly, basic color, export, Final Cut genuinely moves faster on the same hardware, particularly on Apple silicon where the optimization advantage is real rather than marketing. Where that speed advantage narrows is anything involving heavier collaborative or multi-cam workflows with footage from a team rather than just my own cards, where Premiere's project structure and shared bin workflows still edge ahead for me.
What actually decides it on a tight deadline
Solo, same-day turnaround from my own footage: Final Cut, without much debate at this point, the speed compounds across a rushed day in a way that's hard to ignore. Anything where I'm receiving footage from another shooter or need tighter integration with a broader post pipeline involving other editors: Premiere, because the collaborative friction of forcing everyone onto Final Cut usually costs more time than its speed advantage saves.
- Solo same-day turnaround from your own cards: Final Cut's speed wins
- Multi-editor or received-footage workflows: Premiere's structure still wins
- Neither app's speed advantage matters much on a relaxed, multi-day timeline
The honest trade-off nobody likes admitting
Running two editing apps means genuinely maintaining fluency in both, remembering two sets of keyboard shortcuts, two different project organization habits. That mental overhead is real and I won't pretend it isn't. It's still worth it for me given how much of my actual income depends on fast turnaround specifically, but I wouldn't recommend splitting your tools this way unless deadline pressure is a genuine, recurring part of your work rather than an occasional exception.