For what it's worth, while I haven't found kdenlive (or shotcut, based on the same underlying toolkit) to be 100% stable, I've had significantly fewer lost-work incidents with kdenlive than I did with Premiere Pro. The frustration of Premiere's instability was the main thing that drove me to open-source software.
I've never used Resolve primarily so I don't have a good feeling of how they compare, but I have experienced a couple of unexpected, mid-work crashes in Resolve as well. I believe these were tied to my working on a machine with an Intel iGPU, which at least at the time seemed to be... discouraged, I'll say, by the Resolve community due to known stability issues. Possibly the root of evil with Premiere as well, but again, doesn't seem to be a major problem for kdenlive.
What I will say is that I personally prefer Shotcut to kdenlive. Both are basically graphical frontends to MLT, the actual media toolkit/editor (driven by XML files). Shotcut has a simpler, more user-friendly UI than kdenlive and also seems to be a bit more stable/performant. kdenlive is more featureful. I think most people should try both because it probably depends on your workflow which is more convenient.
Resolve/Resolve Studio and FCPX have significant presences as well.
I’d say its closest “competitors” are really Resolve and iMovie (much more robust than iMovie but same market more or less) since anyone who’s doing this professionally is going to pay for Avid/Premiere/Resolve Studio/maybe FCPX and not use kdenlive. Resolve is more geared towards casual use and hobbyists, while still being powerful in its own right (and free, of course).
Premiere is a (finicky) subscription based professional tool. kdenlive will never be a replacement for that and doesn’t strike me as an attempt at one.
Premiere is in the unique position of being the oldest video editing suite on the market - the first version was released in 1991! Much as with Photoshop, this sort of automatically makes it the gold standard.
It used to be the "gold standard" but a while ago just about everything else ate its lunch.
Resolve has an amazing free-as-in-beer version and the fully paid for one is currently £225 - and that's it, you've bought it, no subscription. Adobe biffed that one.
For VFX you've got a separate app, Adobe After Effects, which was absolutely amazing, but Resolve uses a node-based VFX chain rather than AE's Photoshop-like layers. Now okay, if you're used to AE and layers then nodes are a steepish learning curve - but if you're already using Blender or Unreal Engine (and lots of VFX folk are) then it's a nice simple jump.
Resolve's training material is way better than Premiere's, too.
You alluded to this but it’s worth expanding this point a bit: Adobe wants you to pay for premiere, Lightroom, audition, after effects, etc. all separately too. One $300 USD purchase and you have resolve studio (premiere), fairlight (audition but admittedly not as feature rich/stable), fusion (after effects), and now photo (Lightroom, new though so probably not at its level yet), all in one software package. Plus BMD’s industry standard color tools.
The cost of an Adobe subscription just makes no sense to me anymore unless you’re a photographer or graphic designer primarily as BMD hasn’t replaced that pipeline (yet). For video and vfx work fusion is great. Anything more advanced in the animation/effects world and you’re leaving NLE’s entirely anyway.
Also let’s talk about Adobe cloud manager…
Edit: it would be ~$60/mo for the above in creative cloud. $720 a year.
Shotcut to me is what Windows Movie Maker should have become. A handful of useful tools, a simple layout, just enough to get the job done, and a good bit of depth if you really want to get your feet wet with video editing.
I've never used Resolve primarily so I don't have a good feeling of how they compare, but I have experienced a couple of unexpected, mid-work crashes in Resolve as well. I believe these were tied to my working on a machine with an Intel iGPU, which at least at the time seemed to be... discouraged, I'll say, by the Resolve community due to known stability issues. Possibly the root of evil with Premiere as well, but again, doesn't seem to be a major problem for kdenlive.
What I will say is that I personally prefer Shotcut to kdenlive. Both are basically graphical frontends to MLT, the actual media toolkit/editor (driven by XML files). Shotcut has a simpler, more user-friendly UI than kdenlive and also seems to be a bit more stable/performant. kdenlive is more featureful. I think most people should try both because it probably depends on your workflow which is more convenient.