Is Blackmagic Cloud free? The account is. Blackmagic says a Blackmagic Cloud ID carries "no charge", and a free account includes 2 GB of cloud storage, 20 presentations, and access to any Resolve project library someone shares with you. What you pay for is media storage at $15 per terabyte per month, and a monthly fee for each project library you host yourself.
Prices checked October 2026. Sources: Blackmagic's free plan guide, its November 2024 price announcement and its collaboration page, all read on 5 October 2026.
What the free plan includes
Blackmagic's own guide lists three things on a free account:
- 2 GB of cloud storage, shared across personal storage, cloud folders, shared project libraries and presentations.
- 20 presentations, for real-time review of a Resolve timeline in a web browser.
- Access to shared project libraries, meaning libraries that another user has shared with you.
That last line is the important one for a team. A collaborator does not need a paid account to open a library the host shares with them. The host pays; the editors, colourists and assistants they invite join on free accounts.
2 GB is a test allowance, not a working one. One minute of UHD ProRes 422 HQ is roughly 5 to 7 GB, depending on frame rate, so the free plan holds project files and proxies for a short piece, and not much camera media.
The two things you pay for
Cloud media storage: $15 per TB per month. This is the footage itself. Blackmagic cut it from $30 to $15 per TB on 26 November 2024 and applied the cut to existing customers' bills from that day. If a comparison you are reading still says $30/TB, it predates the cut and every number after it is double.
A hosted project library: a monthly fee per library. A Cloud Project Library is the Resolve project database in the cloud: bins, timelines, grades, the project itself. Only the host pays for it. Blackmagic does not list the library fee on any public page we could find on 23 September 2026, so this page does not quote a figure. Check it in your Blackmagic Cloud account before you budget.
The two bills are independent. You can host a library and keep every frame of media on your own storage. For many teams that is the cheapest way to get live multi-user Resolve, because the storage line is where the bill grows.
What a real project costs
Take a two-camera documentary: 3 TB of media, three editors, six months.
| Line | Monthly | Six months |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud media storage, 3 TB at $15/TB | $45 | $270 |
| One hosted project library | library fee | 6 × library fee |
| Two invited editors | $0 | $0 |
Now keep the media on a NAS or a shared drive the team can already reach, and use Blackmagic Cloud only for the project library:
| Line | Monthly | Six months |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud media storage | $0 | $0 |
| One hosted project library | library fee | 6 × library fee |
Same collaboration, $270 less over the job. Whether that works depends on one question: can every editor reach the media another way? If they can, the storage line is paying for something you already own.
The three ways to run a shared Resolve project
There is no single "Resolve cloud" price, which is why searching for one is frustrating. There are three routes, and they cost very different amounts.
1. Blackmagic Cloud library only. Blackmagic hosts the project database. Media stays on storage your team already reaches: a NAS with remote access, a mounted cloud drive, LucidLink. You pay the library fee and nothing per terabyte.
2. Blackmagic Cloud library plus cloud media storage. The same, plus the footage lives in Blackmagic's cloud and syncs to each Resolve system. This is the version people mean when they say Resolve cloud is expensive: $15 per TB per month on top of the library.
3. A self-hosted project server. Blackmagic lists DaVinci Resolve Project Server as free. It runs on a machine you own, on the same network as the media. You pay in setup and upkeep instead of a subscription: a machine that stays on, somebody who can restore a database backup, and a VPN if anyone works from outside the building.
What decides it is where the media already is, not the price:
- Everyone is remote and the media is nowhere shared: route 2. You are paying $15/TB to solve getting footage to people, and that is a real problem worth money.
- Everyone is remote but the media is already reachable: route 1. Pay for the library and stop there.
- Everyone is in one building: route 3 deserves a serious look. A local project server beside local storage is the setup most facilities ran before cloud was an option.
The trap is assuming route 2 because it is the one Blackmagic markets.
Blackmagic Cloud against Frame.io and LucidLink
Prices checked September 2026 on each vendor's pricing page.
| Blackmagic Cloud | Frame.io | LucidLink | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 2 GB, 20 presentations | 2 members, 2 GB, 2 projects | No free plan listed |
| Paid entry | $15/TB/month storage, plus a fee per hosted library | Pro: $15 per member/month, 2 TB plus 2 TB per extra member | Starter: $7 per member/month, 100 GB per member |
| Extra storage | $15/TB/month | Add-ons available on Pro and Team | Starter $7, Business $8 per 100 GB/month |
| Who pays | The library host only | Every member | Every member |
| Built for | Live multi-user Resolve projects | Review and approval | Streaming files to any NLE |
Sources: Frame.io pricing and LucidLink pricing, read on 23 September 2026. LucidLink's Business plan is listed at $27 per member per month with 400 GB per member.
Where Blackmagic Cloud wins. It is the only one of the three that runs a live, shared Resolve project database. Frame.io and LucidLink hold files; neither lets three editors work in one Resolve project at once. And because only the host pays, a five-person Resolve team pays for one library, not five seats.
Where Frame.io wins. Client review. Clients comment on a timecoded cut in a browser without an account, and Frame.io is built into Premiere. If your bottleneck is approvals, not shared timelines, Frame.io is the tool, and on a full Pro plan ($15 per member for 2 TB each, about $7.50/TB) storage costs half of Blackmagic's $15/TB, as long as you need a seat for every 2 TB.
Where LucidLink wins. Any NLE, not only Resolve. It streams files as a mounted drive, so a mixed Premiere and Resolve shop uses one storage layer. Per terabyte, its add-on storage ($70 to $80 per TB) costs more than Blackmagic's $15, so it is the choice for workflow, not for bulk storage.
Where none of them wins. Cold archive. At $15/TB, a finished project that nobody opens costs $180 per terabyte per year. Object storage such as Backblaze B2, at $6.95/TB per month on its pricing page (checked 23 September 2026), or a drive on a shelf, costs far less for media you only need to keep.
Who Blackmagic Cloud is for
Small and mid-size teams on DaVinci Resolve who need to work in the same project from different places. Colourists with remote editors. Post houses with freelancers in other cities. Crews on Blackmagic cameras: Blackmagic says the Cinema Camera 6K, PYXIS, URSA Cine and URSA Broadcast G2 can record an HD proxy that syncs to a cloud project while the camera is still rolling, and Blackmagic Cloud is also built into the free Blackmagic Camera app.
It is not for solo editors, who have no one to share a project with. It is not for Premiere, Final Cut or Avid editors, because it is built around Resolve. And it is the wrong place to archive, for the reason above.
Blackmagic Cloud pricing questions
Prices checked October 2026 on the three Blackmagic pages listed at the top of this article.
How much does Blackmagic Cloud cost?
The account costs nothing. You pay for two things only if you use them: media storage at $15 per terabyte per month, and a monthly fee for each project library you host. People you invite to your library do not pay. A host with no cloud media and one library pays the library fee and nothing else.
Does Blackmagic Cloud cost money if you only collaborate?
No. Blackmagic says creating a Blackmagic Cloud ID carries no charge, and the free plan gives access to any project library someone shares with you, plus 2 GB of storage and 20 presentations. The host of the library pays. Everyone else can work in it on a free account.
What is Blackmagic Cloud pricing per month for a real team?
Multiply the terabytes of media you keep in the cloud by $15, then add one library fee for each library you host. 1 TB of media is $15 a month, 3 TB is $45, and 10 TB is $150, before library fees. Keep the media on your own storage and the monthly bill is the library fee alone.
How does Blackmagic Cloud storage pricing work?
You pay per terabyte stored, per month, at $15 per TB. Blackmagic cut the rate from $30 on 26 November 2024 and applied the new price to existing customers from that day. The free 2 GB is shared across personal storage, cloud folders, shared project libraries and presentations, so it fills quickly once you add camera media.
Is there a separate DaVinci Resolve cloud price?
No. Resolve does not have its own cloud subscription. Cloud collaboration in Resolve runs through Blackmagic Cloud, so the DaVinci Resolve cloud price is the Blackmagic Cloud price above. If you want shared projects without any cloud bill, Blackmagic lists DaVinci Resolve Project Server as free; you run it on a machine you own.
The part nobody budgets for
Cloud media is billed on what you store, and what you store is almost always more than what you use. Every graded export version, every duplicate transcode, every dailies pass nobody deleted: all of it bills at $15 per TB, every month.
A 3 TB project where 1 TB is never on a timeline costs $180 a year to keep footage nobody will open. Cloud storage is the one place where cleaning up before you upload pays back every month.
Before you move a project to Blackmagic Cloud, find out how much of it a timeline uses. Clip Sweeper does that across every Premiere and Resolve project on a drive, and the storage calculator compares what the remainder costs on each provider.