Shrinking Budgets - Software Costs (Resolve vs. Premiere/Plugins)?

Hey everyone,

I'm Derek, a 1st AC, and I'm genuinely scratching my head over something. Budgets feel like they're tightening across the board, and it's making me re-evaluate everything, especially post-production software.

On a recent short film, we were shooting on an ALEXA Mini with a small G&E package, a couple of SkyPanel S60-Cs and some Helios Tubes. Post was handled by one person juggling ingest off an 833 and editing. They were running Premiere Pro with a couple of AI plugins for denoise and some VFX assists. The project ran into a few snags, and the subscription costs for all that software really started to add up by the end.

I’ve used Resolve for dailies and basic grading, and know it has powerful editing capabilities, but I'm wondering how others are making the jump, especially when teams are used to the Adobe ecosystem. Or, if you're sticking with Premiere, how are you managing those monthly costs as things get leaner? Are there specific project types where one makes more sense than the other financially?

What are your strategies for leveraging robust free software like DaVinci Resolve, or for managing the ever-growing subscription fees for tools like Adobe Premiere Pro and various AI plugins, when project budgets are consistently shrinking?