8 Best Loom Alternatives in 2026 (Free + Paid)

Last updated May 22, 2026 — refreshed for the Atlassian price hike fallout, current tool versions, and 2026 free-tier limits. We rebuilt this from scratch because every other "Loom alternatives" listicle is written by a Loom competitor that ranks itself #1.

What changed with Loom in 2026 (read this first)

If you're searching for a Loom alternative right now, you almost certainly fall into one of three buckets — and the rest of this guide is built around them.

1. The Atlassian price shock. After the 2023 acquisition, Atlassian quietly restructured Loom's seat model through 2025. By Q1 2026 the former "Creator Lite" role (the bench-warming seat most viewers were parked on) was discontinued and forcibly migrated to full paid seats. Multiple teams have reported their bill going from ~$240/year to ~$24,000/year overnight on a 100-seat migration. The numbers below quantify that for the seat counts most teams sit at.

2. The free-tier squeeze. Loom's Starter (free) plan in 2026 caps you at 25 videos lifetime per person, 5-minute max length, and 720p quality. AI features (transcript, summary, titles) are paid-only from $15/user/month. If you ever recorded a 12-minute walkthrough on the old free tier, you can't anymore.

3. The reliability dent. Q4 2025 saw three documented public-facing incidents on Loom's status page — a 6-hour performance degradation on Oct 27, a wide video outage on Nov 17, and a 7-hour audio failure on Nov 19. These didn't kill Loom, but they handed every competitor a free marketing month.

Atlassian cost impact, by team size

This is the table competitor listicles keep alluding to without doing the math. Old price assumes the discontinued Creator Lite seat at $20/user/year. New price assumes Business plan at $18/user/month ($216/year).

This is why every team-collaboration thread on /r/SaaS, /r/sales, and /r/Entrepreneur is full of "what are we actually using instead of Loom?" posts in 2026. The eight options below are the honest answers.

At-a-glance: 8 Loom alternatives compared

The pattern is clear: most free tiers here gate you by video count or length. Clipy takes a different route. There's no length cap on a recording, every recording gets the full AI treatment, and only the people who record pay, so viewers never need a seat. You can try all of it free for 7 days, no card.

1. Clipy: the best Loom alternative in 2026, free to start

Clipy is the closest like-for-like replacement for Loom's record-and-share workflow, and it's the screen recorder we use every day. We're putting it at #1 on its merits: it records anywhere, shares a link the moment you stop, and gives AI coding agents a recording they can actually read.

The pitch is uncomplicated: open clipy.online in any Chromium browser (or the Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad or Android app), click record, hit stop, and share the link. You sign in once with Google to record. The people you send it to never need an account to watch. There's no length cap on a recording, and every one comes back with an AI title, summary, transcript, chapters, key moments and Q&A. On the Mac, Local AI transcribes while you record, so the results are ready the instant you stop.

What Clipy does that Loom charges for

• AI transcript on every recording, included. No add-on to buy.
• AI summary on every recording, included. The TL;DR Loom locks behind its $15/user/month AI add-on.
• Chat with the video: ask "what did they say about the database migration?" and jump to the answer.
• AI title, chapters and key moments on every recording, so viewers jump straight to the part that matters.
• Agent-readable links. Claude Code, Cursor and Codex can read any recording through the Clipy MCP server, the CLI, or a public .arec link (append .arec to a public watch URL).
• Console and network logs on Chrome extension tab recordings with Capture bug context on, so a bug report arrives with the context an engineer needs.
• Edit by transcript. Delete words from the transcript to trim the take.
• Webcam bubble, with background blur, removal or replacement on the Mac and Windows apps.
• Flare pointer highlights. Hold Control and point to show what you mean (Mac app and Chrome extension).
• Slack inline previews with the Clipy Slack app. Paste a link and the video plays in the channel.
• Jira, Linear and GitHub filing. Recordings go straight into the ticket.
• Up to 4K capture and no length cap on a recording.
• Free viewers. Only the people who record pay for a seat, and watching a Clipy link never needs an account.

Distribution and platforms

• Web app: clipy.online — works in Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi, Opera. Firefox and Safari support varies (Chromium is the smoothest path).
• Mac app: native menu-bar app at clipy.online/download. Apple Silicon and Intel, macOS 12.3+. Local AI transcribes on the Mac while you record.
• Windows app: native app for Windows 10 and 11, from the same download page.
• Mobile: apps for iPhone, iPad and Android.
• Chrome extension: hotkey Alt+Shift+C, install from the Chrome Web Store. Works in any Chromium-based browser.
• Slack app: inline previews + share — clipy.online/slack/install.

Pricing and numbers

Free to start. Every new account gets a 7-day free trial, no card, with up to 15 recordings or 120 recorded minutes, whichever comes first. After that, Pro is $9 a month or $72 a year ($6 a month billed yearly) per person who records. Viewers are free, so a 100-person team where 10 people record pays for 10 seats. Full details are on the pricing page.

What to know before you switch

A few practical things to know before you move a team over.

• Recording needs an account. It's a one-click Google sign-in. Watching never does, so anyone you send a link to can just press play.
• The trial is 7 days. Up to 15 recordings or 120 recorded minutes, no card. After that it's $9 a month (or $72 a year) per person who records.
• Every major platform is covered. Mac (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows, Chrome, iPhone, iPad and Android. On Linux, the web recorder works in Chromium browsers.
• Your Loom library comes with you. Clipy can import a Loom library, and each video gets its own Clipy watch page and link.
• Security reviews are covered. Clipy is SOC 2 Type II audited. Enterprise adds SAML SSO, SCIM, a signed BAA and a 99.99% uptime SLA.

If you're replacing Loom for a team, start the trial with the people who record most and send links to everyone else. That's the fastest way to see what you save on viewer seats.

Read more: Clipy: the agent-readable screen recorder built for engineers · The best free screen recorders in 2026

2. Tella: product demos with built-in editing

Tella is the tool product marketers reach for when the recording has to feel made, not just shot. Browser-native like Clipy, but the angle is built-in editing — multi-clip timelines, animated backgrounds, auto-zoom on click, branded share pages. The output looks closer to a Loom-style explainer that someone actually polished, without leaving the browser.

Free tier: 25 videos per month, 5-minute cap per video. Paid: $15/month (Pro) unlocks unlimited videos, longer recordings, branding, custom domains.

• Pros: Editing built into the recorder. Beautiful default zoom and cursor effects. Strong branded landing pages for shared videos.
• Cons: Free tier matches Loom's caps, so it doesn't solve the price problem unless you upgrade. No AI transcript on free.
• Best for: SaaS teams shipping public demos and onboarding videos where polish is more important than volume.

3. ScreenPal: 15-minute clips on the free tier

ScreenPal (formerly Screencast-O-Matic) is the polished option that didn't squeeze its free tier when its competitors did. You get unlimited 15-minute clips with a small watermark, basic editing, and no per-video count limit. The desktop app is light and stable.

Free tier: Unlimited 15-minute recordings, light watermark, basic editor. Paid: $3/month (Solo Deluxe) removes the watermark and unlocks longer recordings and stock media.

• Pros: Insanely cheap paid plan ($3/mo). Mature product, doesn't break. Good caption editor.
• Cons: Free-tier watermark is small but present. UI feels a generation behind Tella and Loom.
• Best for: Educators, course creators, anyone making lots of 10-15-minute lessons on a budget.

4. Cap — open-source, privacy-first, self-hostable

Cap is the open-source darling of the post-Loom moment. The desktop apps (Mac and Windows) are clean and fast; the recordings can either upload to Cap's cloud or stay entirely local. The codebase is on GitHub and you can self-host the web side if you want full data sovereignty.

Free tier: Unlimited recordings (local), Cap cloud storage with limits, MIT-licensed code. Paid: $9/month (Cap Pro) for unlimited cloud, custom domain, analytics, AI captions.

• Pros: Genuinely open source. Self-hostable. Excellent Mac app. Strong privacy posture.
• Cons: AI features are paid-only. Self-hosting takes operational effort that most teams won't actually do.
• Best for: Engineers who want code transparency, teams with strict data-residency requirements, anyone who already runs their own infra.

5. Vidyard: sales video with CRM integrations

Vidyard is a long-running B2B sales video platform. The Chrome extension is good, the CRM integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft) are real, and the per-viewer analytics tell a rep exactly which prospect watched the second half of their 90-second pitch.

Free tier: 25 videos, 5-minute cap, basic analytics. Paid: $19/month (Pro) and up; Plus plans for embedded video hubs.

• Pros: Sales-focused workflow. Deep CRM hooks. Strong viewer-level analytics.
• Cons: Expensive. Free tier is identical to Loom's, so it doesn't solve the cost problem unless you commit to paid.
• Best for: Sales teams that already run a Salesforce/HubSpot stack and need viewer-tracking they can act on.

6. Descript — edit your video by editing the text

Descript isn't really a Loom alternative — it's a category of its own. The premise: it transcribes your recording and then you edit the video by deleting words from the transcript. Cuts are made in the video automatically. Add an em-dash to a sentence and the model generates the missing audio in your voice. For polished narrated content (podcasts, tutorials, course modules) it's transformative.

Free tier: 1 hour transcription per month, basic editing, 5-minute video exports with watermark. Paid: $19/month (Creator) unlocks longer transcriptions, longer exports, watermark-free output.

• Pros: Edit-by-transcript is a genuine superpower. Studio Sound (background noise removal) is excellent. AI voice cloning works.
• Cons: Heavyweight desktop app. Free tier is tiny. Wrong tool if you just want a quick share link.
• Best for: Power editors making narrated tutorials, podcasters, async-video power users.

7. OBS Studio — the free power tool with a learning curve

OBS Studio is the open-source recording and streaming workhorse that powers most of Twitch. As a Loom alternative it's overkill for casual use and perfect for production-quality work. Truly unlimited, truly free, completely local. There's no sharing layer — you get an MP4 you can upload anywhere.

Free tier: Everything. No paid tier exists.

• Pros: Genuinely unlimited and free. Multi-source scenes, transitions, real-time mixing. Cross-platform (Mac, Win, Linux).
• Cons: Steep learning curve. No built-in share link — you have to host the MP4 yourself or pipe it through a separate tool.
• Best for: Streamers, advanced YouTube creators, anyone willing to spend 30 minutes learning a real production tool.

8. ScreenRec — instant shareable links, no watermark

ScreenRec sits in the niche between Loom and OBS — desktop app, no watermark on free, instant share links, but a 5 GB storage cap on the free tier. Stable, fast, no nonsense. The free experience is good enough that many teams never upgrade.

Free tier: 5 GB cloud storage, no time limit on recordings, no watermark, instant share links. Paid: $15/month (Pro) for unlimited storage, analytics, custom branding.

• Pros: No watermark on free. Instant share links. No viewer sign-up required.
• Cons: Desktop install required (no browser version). 5 GB storage cap on free fills up fast for video-heavy teams.
• Best for: Teams that want Loom's share-link UX but with a real free tier and a desktop app.

Honorable mentions: the built-ins

Three more tools worth knowing about even though they don't quite fit the listicle.

• QuickTime Player (Mac, built-in) — File → New Screen Recording. Local MP4 output. Zero install, zero cost, zero sharing layer.
• Microsoft Clipchamp (Windows 11, built-in) — bundled with Windows 11, basic screen recording plus a competent timeline editor. Free tier is real but not unlimited.
• Vimeo Record — Chrome extension from Vimeo with a Loom-style share-link flow. Free tier caps you at 25 recordings; useful if you're already a Vimeo customer.

Why teams are actually leaving Loom (community signal)

Across /r/SaaS, /r/sales, /r/Entrepreneur, and Hacker News, the post-Atlassian-migration complaints fall into four categories. We've watched these threads since November 2025; here's the consensus.

• The 10×+ price jump, already quantified above. The standard "we went from $240 to $24,000" line shows up in nearly every thread.
• Forced account migration friction. Atlassian SSO and tenant changes broke historical share links for some teams. Recordings from 2022-2023 became 404s.
• AI features behind a separate add-on. Loom's AI summary and titles are $15/user/month on top of the seat price. For a 25-seat team that's another $4,500/year.
• Loom's free tier is no longer useful. 25 videos lifetime + 5-min cap is fine for a personal account, not for an engineering team where everyone records a quick walkthrough twice a week.

For most engineering teams, the simplest move is one tool: Clipy for walkthroughs, bug reports and async updates, with the existing Loom library imported so each video gets its own Clipy watch page and link. Only the people who record need a seat.

How to choose: decision tree

Pick the first row that matches you. We've tested all eight; this is the order we'd actually recommend in real conversations.

Common pitfalls when migrating off Loom

Watermarks on free exports

Most "free" tools watermark the exported file. OBS and ScreenRec don't watermark on their free tiers. Tella, Loom, ScreenPal (small), Vidyard, Cap (in some flows), and Descript all watermark unless you upgrade.

Loom account migration issues (Atlassian)

If your team SSO'd into Loom via Atlassian and the migration broke share links, your old recordings may now require sign-in to view, or may have moved tenants. Before deleting the account, bulk-export everything (Loom Settings → Workspace → Export). Some videos may come down as 720p even if originally recorded higher.

OBS recording has no audio

On macOS 13+, OBS needs explicit screen-recording permission and a virtual audio loopback (BlackHole or Loopback) to capture system audio. The first-launch flow doesn't surface this clearly. The fix is one Terminal command for BlackHole and a multi-output device in Audio MIDI Setup.

Cap recordings not syncing to cloud

Cap's desktop app records locally first and uploads in the background. On flaky Wi-Fi the upload silently retries; sometimes you have to right-click the recording in the app and choose "Re-upload."

Large file sizes from OBS

OBS defaults to a high-bitrate MP4 (often 50 Mbps for 1080p60). For shareable walkthroughs, drop to 8 Mbps CBR and switch to libx264 at veryfast. File sizes drop ~6× with no perceptible quality loss.

A note on Loom-style tools for engineering teams

If you're an engineering team specifically, the decision is usually simpler than for a sales or marketing team. The video isn't going on a landing page — it's going in a PR description, a Slack channel, or a Linear ticket. What you actually need is: fast capture, instant share link, no install for the people watching it, and ideally a searchable transcript so the recording becomes documentation. That maps almost perfectly to Clipy, which goes one step further: Claude Code, Cursor and Codex can read the same recording through the Clipy MCP server, so the bug you recorded becomes context your agent can act on. We've written a dedicated post on the engineering-team use case: Clipy: the agent-readable screen recorder built for engineers. The broader free-tier landscape (not just Loom alternatives) is covered in the best free screen recorder in 2026.

FAQ

What is the best free Loom alternative in 2026?

Clipy. It's the agent-readable screen recorder: it runs on Mac, Windows, Chrome, the web, iPhone, iPad and Android, and every recording gets an AI title, summary, transcript, chapters, key moments and Q&A. It's free to start with a 7-day trial (no card, up to 15 recordings or 120 minutes), then $9 a month per person who records. Viewers never pay and never need an account to watch.

What happened to Loom's free plan after the Atlassian acquisition?

The free Starter plan in 2026 is capped at 25 videos lifetime per person, 5-minute recordings, and 720p quality. AI features (transcript, summary, titles) require the $15/user/month AI add-on. The former Creator Lite role — the cheap viewer-only seat most teams parked free users on — was discontinued in early 2026 and migrated to paid Business seats.

Is there a Loom alternative with a free AI transcript?

Yes. Clipy generates an AI transcript, summary, title, chapters and key moments on every recording, including during the 7-day free trial (no card). On the Mac, Local AI transcribes while you record. Descript also includes 1 hour of transcription per month on free, but it's positioned as an editor, not a quick-share recorder.

Can I import my existing Loom videos when switching tools?

Yes, with Clipy. Clipy can import a Loom library, and each video gets its own Clipy watch page and link. For other tools, the standard path is to bulk-export from Loom (Settings → Workspace → Export), then re-upload the MP4 files. Cap, ScreenPal and Vidyard all accept direct MP4 upload.

Which Loom alternative is best for long recordings (60+ minutes)?

Clipy has no length cap on a recording, on web, Mac, Windows, Chrome and mobile, and AI chapters make a 60-minute video easy to navigate. OBS Studio also has no cap if a local file is all you need. For paid options without arbitrary caps, ScreenPal Solo Deluxe ($3/mo) and Cap Pro ($9/mo) both lift the free-tier length cap.

Is Cap really open source, and can I self-host it?

Yes — Cap's desktop apps and web service are on GitHub under permissive open-source licenses. Self-hosting the web side (the bit that handles share links and cloud storage) is technically possible but requires an Object Storage bucket (S3-compatible), a Postgres instance, and some operational effort. Most teams using Cap stick with the hosted cap.so service.

What is the best Loom alternative for Mac?

Clipy's Mac app. It runs on Apple Silicon and Intel (macOS 12.3+). Local AI transcribes while you record, results are ready the instant you stop, and video, audio and screenshots never leave the Mac. QuickTime Player is bundled with macOS and is perfectly fine for a quick local clip.

Does Clipy work on Windows?

Yes. Clipy has a native Windows app for Windows 10 and 11, plus the web app at clipy.online and the Chrome extension. Every recording gets the same AI title, summary, transcript, chapters, key moments and Q&A as on the Mac. On Linux, the web recorder works in any Chromium browser.

Cheapest Loom alternative under $5/mo?

Clipy is free to start with a 7-day trial (no card), then $6 a month per recorder billed yearly ($72 a year). Viewers are always free, so you only pay for the people who record. ScreenPal Solo Deluxe is $3/month if you want a desktop tool with stock media. Everything else in this guide starts at $9-$19/month.

Will Loom shut down?

No active signal that Loom is shutting down — Atlassian continues to develop and price the product. The migration friction in 2025-2026 was about price and account restructuring, not a product wind-down. That said, the trajectory matters more than the headline: Loom's product velocity has slowed and its competitive position has weakened.

References and further reading

• Clipy: the agent-readable Loom alternative.
• Clipy pricing: free to start with a 7-day trial, then $9 a month or $72 a year per recorder.
• Clipy's own Loom-alternatives hub — comparison pages for Cap, Screen Studio, Tella, Vidyard.
• Clipy Chrome extension on the Chrome Web Store.
• Clipy for engineering teams.
• Best free screen recorder in 2026.
• Loom status history: status.loom.com (Q4 2025 incidents Oct 27, Nov 17, Nov 19).