I have changed editing software three times in about nine years. Twice for reasons that turned out to be sound and once because I read a lot of forum arguments and convinced myself I was using the wrong thing.
Here is what I have concluded about the differences, having now spent serious time in three of them.
The core function is the same everywhere
This needs stating first because the discourse obscures it.
Every major editing application does the same fundamental thing. Timeline, bins, trimming, transitions, basic effects, audio mixing, export. The concepts transfer completely and the keyboard shortcuts are the only real relearning.
Anyone who is good at editing in one is capable of being good in another within a few weeks. The skill is not in the software.
Which means most arguments about which is better are arguments about preference and about specific workflow needs, dressed up as arguments about quality.
Where they genuinely differ
Four areas, in my experience, and it is worth knowing which of them apply to you.
Media handling and codec support. Some applications deal with certain camera formats natively and smoothly, and others require transcoding. If you shoot on something unusual this is decisive and it is unglamorous.
Colour tools. There is a real difference here and one application in particular is substantially ahead because it grew out of a grading tool. If grading is a large part of your work, that matters.
Audio. Similarly, one has considerably deeper audio capability built in, and the others assume you will move to dedicated software for anything serious.
Collaboration. If more than one person touches a project, the options for shared projects and version control differ enormously, and this is where the professional-tier differences actually live.
The trimming model is the real ergonomic difference
The thing that felt most different when switching, and the one nobody warns you about.
The applications have different philosophies about what happens to surrounding clips when you change an edit. Some default to leaving gaps, some to closing them, some use a magnetic model that rearranges the timeline as you work.
None of these is wrong and they produce genuinely different working rhythms. The magnetic approach is fast and occasionally does something you did not intend. The traditional approach is predictable and requires more manual tidying.
Adapting to a different model took me about a month each time and was the source of nearly all my early frustration. It is not a bug in the software, it is a different set of assumptions.
The switch that was a mistake
The middle one. I moved because a lot of people online were confident that what I was using was outdated, and because a new version of something else had impressive features.
I lost about three months of productivity relearning, my project archive became awkward to access, and the features I had moved for turned out to be things I used twice.
The work I produced was not better. It was slightly worse for a while and then the same.
What I should have asked is what specifically was slowing me down in my current tool, and whether the alternative fixed that. The answer would have been that nothing much was slowing me down, which is not an argument for switching.
The switches that were correct
Both driven by a concrete requirement rather than by general dissatisfaction.
The first was a client whose workflow required a specific project format for interchange with their post house. That is not negotiable and switching was cheaper than fighting it.
The second was taking on more grading work, where one application's tools were meaningfully better and where I was spending hours doing things that would have taken minutes.
Both had a clear before-and-after that I could point to. Neither was about which software was best in general.
Cost is a real factor and not the one people cite
The pricing models differ substantially — subscription, perpetual licence, free tiers with paid upgrades.
What matters more than the headline number is what happens to your projects if you stop paying. A subscription that lapses can leave you unable to open your own archive, which is a genuine risk for anyone who might need to revisit old work.
Exporting project files in an interchange format periodically is worth doing regardless of what you use, for exactly this reason. It is a ten minute habit that protects years of work.
What I would tell someone choosing
Pick whichever one you can get help with. If the people around you use something, use that. Being able to ask a person a question is worth more than any feature comparison.
If there is no such constraint, try the free or trial versions and pick the trimming model that feels natural, because that is what you will interact with constantly.
And then stay. The returns to depth in one application are large and the returns to switching are mostly imaginary unless you have a specific unmet requirement.
Nine years in, my honest position is that I would produce roughly the same work in any of them, and the year I spent worrying about it produced nothing at all.