Best Memorial Slideshow Makers: 8 Tools, Free Ones First
This is a tool comparison, not a how-to. If what you need is the process — how many photos, how to order them, how to pick music, how to not run over ten minutes — that is in our memorial slideshow guide. This page answers the narrower question people ask after they have the photos: which piece of software should I actually open?
Eight below, free tools first, then paid — a rule you can check yourself against the label on each entry, rather than a quality ranking you would have to take on trust. Within each group they run from simplest to most capable.
Before any of them, two things decide more than the software does.
What is it playing on? A laptop plugged into the funeral home's projector, a TV in a function room, or a phone passed around a kitchen. Ask the venue today, because the answer determines the file you need to walk in with.
Are you exporting a video file, or presenting live? Export one. Always export one. A presentation that depends on an app opening correctly, on someone else's hardware, with the family sitting in rows, is a bad bet. An .mp4 on a USB stick plays anywhere and has no login screen.
Free
1. Apple Photos / Windows Photos — Free
The one already on the machine. Select photos, choose "Play memory video" or "Create video", pick a theme and a song, export. Fifteen minutes, no account, nothing to learn.
Its limitation is control — the timing is largely decided for you, and fine-grained edits are awkward. For a slideshow of forty photos with one piece of music, that limitation costs you very little, and it is the right answer for more families than any other tool on this list.
2. iMovie — Free (Apple devices)
The step up when you want the timing to be yours. Drag photos onto a timeline, set how long each holds, add a title card, drop in a music track and fade it at the end. Handles video clips mixed in with stills, which the Photos app does less gracefully.
No watermark, no export limit, no subscription. Only on Mac, iPhone and iPad.
3. Clipchamp — Free (Windows / browser)
The nearest Windows equivalent, now bundled with Windows and also usable in a browser. Timeline editing, transitions, text, audio, and 1080p export on the free tier without a watermark.
The paid tier exists mainly for stock content and brand features you will not need. For this job the free tier is the whole product.
4. Canva — Free tier
Worth using specifically for the title and closing cards. Canva makes "Arthur Hale, 1938 – 2024" look considered rather than typed, and those two frames are the ones people photograph.
You can build the entire slideshow in it, though a long video with music is not what it is best at. Watch for premium elements — anything with a crown on it puts a watermark on your export until you pay. Stick to free assets and nothing is marked.
5. CapCut — Free
The one under-forties in the family will already know. Very fast for cutting phone video into a montage, strong on beat-matched timing, and the free tier exports without a paid watermark — but check the end of your export before you commit, because it appends a default closing clip that you should delete from the timeline first.
Suits a celebration of life more than a funeral service. Its instincts are energetic, and you may spend as much time turning effects off as adding them.
Paid
6. Animoto — Subscription
Built for exactly this shape of task: choose a template, drop photos in, licensed music attached, out comes a polished video. It has memorial and tribute templates, and the result looks professionally made without any editing skill.
The free plan brands the export, so treat this as a paid tool. Fair value if you are making one video, in a hurry, and want no decisions — check whether it can be cancelled after the first month before you subscribe.
7. Adobe Express — Free tier, paid for the useful parts
More design capability than anything above and a genuinely usable free tier, but the templates, fonts and stock that make it worth choosing over Canva mostly sit behind the subscription. Choose it if you already have an Adobe login. Do not start a subscription for one slideshow.
8. A tribute video service — Paid, per project
Funeral homes and specialist services will make the video for you: you send photos and music, they return a finished file, usually within a few days. It costs meaningfully more than any subscription above.
There is one situation where it is clearly the right call — nobody in the family can face doing it, and the service is in four days. That is a real situation, and paying to remove one task from that week is not a waste of money. Ask what happens if you want a photo changed after seeing the first version, and get the answer before you pay.
Quick Comparison
| Tool | Cost | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple / Windows Photos | Free | Fastest possible result | Little control over timing |
| iMovie | Free (Apple) | Full control, mixed photo and video | Apple devices only |
| Clipchamp | Free (Windows/web) | The Windows default | Paid tier is mostly stock content |
| Canva | Free tier | Title and closing cards | Premium elements watermark the export |
| CapCut | Free | Phone video, celebration of life | Delete the default end clip |
| Animoto | Subscription | Template-driven, no decisions | Free plan brands the video |
| Adobe Express | Freemium | Design range, if you have a login | Best parts are paid |
| Tribute video service | Per project | Nobody has the capacity to do it | Cost, and revision terms |
The Four Things That Go Wrong on the Day
Tool choice is rarely what fails. These are.
The file will not play. Export as .mp4 (H.264), copy it to a USB stick, and test it on the actual machine in the actual room if you possibly can. Not a link. Not a cloud folder. Not "I'll AirDrop it".
The music is silent. Venue laptops are often muted at the system level, or the projector cable carries video only. If sound matters, ask how audio is connected, and bring a backup on your own laptop.
It is too long. Aim for five to eight minutes. Beyond that, people stop watching, and the last photos — usually the recent ones that matter most — land in a room that has already drifted.
Nobody kept the photos. The slideshow gets made from photos scattered across four phones, plays once, and the collection dissolves. Put them somewhere shared before you start editing. If you are pulling from old prints, how to digitize and restore old family photos covers scanning them properly rather than photographing them on a table.
After the Service
A slideshow is played once, to whoever was in the room. The people who could not travel never see it, and in three years it is on a hard drive nobody remembers.
Upload the finished video and the photos that went into it to a memorial page, and it becomes something people can return to, and add to. That is the part the editing software does not do. How to make a tribute page walks through it — ours is free and takes about twenty minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best free memorial slideshow maker? For most families, the Photos app already on the computer. For control over timing, iMovie on Apple devices or Clipchamp on Windows. All three export without a watermark.
How long should a memorial slideshow be? Five to eight minutes, or roughly two to three songs. Sixty to ninety photos at four seconds each is a comfortable fit.
Can I use any song I want? For a private service, in practice yes. For anything you upload publicly, copyrighted music can get the video muted or blocked by the platform — the safer route is licensed music from the editing tool, or an instrumental version.
How many photos do I need? Forty is enough. Sixty to ninety is comfortable. Past a hundred and twenty, faces stop registering.
Should I pay someone to make it? Only if nobody in the family has the capacity to do it that week. The free tools are good enough that the money buys time and calm, not quality.
What format should I bring to the venue?
An .mp4 file on a USB stick, plus the same file on your own laptop as a backup. Test both beforehand.
GetMemorial helps families build beautiful, lasting online memorials in minutes — a permanent home for the video, the photos, and the stories behind them. Start a free online memorial website of your own.
