Looking for a Bandicam alternative on a Mac?
Bandicam is Windows software, so moving to a Mac means choosing again. Prequel records a display, a window or a region with the camera and system audio, places the zooms, frames the camera and exports at 4K and 120 fps, with no watermark anywhere. $9 a month, or $29 once.
No credit card required
Bandicam
High frame rate screen and game recording, for Windows.
- Price
- $33.26 a year, or $53.90 perpetual. Windows only
- Free
- Free with a watermark and a ten-minute cap
- Platforms
- Windows
Prequel
Cinematic screen recorder for Mac
- Price
- $9 a month, or $29 once
- Free
- 7-day trial, then paid
- Platforms
- macOS 14+, Apple Silicon
Checked on 22 October 2026 against Bandicam, Buy Bandicam.
What is Bandicam, and what is it good at?
Bandicam is a Windows recorder built for long captures and for games. It will record for twenty-four hours without falling over, hooks DirectX and OpenGL to capture a game at high frame rates with hardware encoding, records a device over HDMI, and draws on the screen while you record. It is the tool of choice for anyone capturing hours of gameplay or a full day of a running machine.
A personal licence is $33.26 a year or $53.90 for a perpetual one. The free version adds a watermark and stops a recording after ten minutes.
Why do people look for a Bandicam alternative?
Most often because they moved to a Mac.
There is no Mac version. Bandicam is Windows software. No build exists for macOS, so the question is not which settings to carry over but what to use instead.
It captures rather than directs. Even on Windows the output is the take: no zoom placed on a click, no cursor smoothing, no background behind the window, no camera framing. Editing means Bandicut or another editor afterwards.
Is Prequel a good Bandicam alternative?
On a Mac, for demos and tutorials, yes.
Prequel records a display, a window or a region with the camera, the microphone and system audio as separate tracks, and opens the editor with the first pass made: zooms on every click and every burst of typing, tilted, with focus falling away from whatever the push-in is aimed at, the camera framed over a background, the cursor smoothed. Captions are transcribed on your Mac. The timeline cuts, splits, retimes and blurs.
Export is one MP4 or HEVC file at up to 4K and 120 frames a second through the Mac's own media engine, at $9 a month or $29 once, with no watermark at any point including the seven-day trial.
What do you give up by switching?
Game capture, and Windows with it. Prequel records what the window server draws, not a DirectX surface, and it has no HDMI device capture and no twenty-four-hour session. For gameplay on a PC, Bandicam stays the better tool and OBS is the free one.
On a Mac, game capture is ScreenCaptureKit either way, and Prequel needs Apple Silicon and macOS 14 or later.
How do the features compare?
| Feature | Prequel | Bandicam |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic zoom on clicks | Included | Not included |
| Zoom on what you type | Included | Not included |
| Cursor smoothing and resizing | Included | Not included |
| Camera overlay, shaped and placed after | Included | Included |
| Backgrounds, padding and shadow | Included | Chroma key behind the camera |
| Layouts for the screen and camera | Fourteen, per clip | Camera over the screen |
| Camera cut out of its background | Included | Chroma key, with a green screen |
| Perspective tilt and focus falloff on zooms | Included | Not included |
| Captions transcribed on your Mac | Included | Not included |
| Timeline editing | Included | Not included |
| Separate audio tracks | Included | Two audio tracks, separated on export |
| System audio without a virtual driver | Included | Included |
| Reframe to vertical without cropping | Included | Not included |
| Magnifying-glass loupe over the work | Included | Not included |
| Colour looks and filters | Included | Not included |
| Microphone noise reduction | Included | Not included |
| Import a video you already have | Included | Not included |
| Records and exports without uploading | Included | Included |
| Shareable links | Included | Not included |
| Team workspace | Included | Not included |
| Records an iPhone or iPad | Not included | A device over HDMI, with a capture card |
| Maximum export | 4K, 120 fps | 4K, up to 480 fps |
| Download size | 104 MB | Windows only |
| Platforms | macOS 14+, Apple Silicon | Windows |
| Licence | $9/month or $29 once, 7-day trial | $33.26/yr or $53.90 perpetual |
What Bandicam is good at
Game capture through DirectX and OpenGL at frame rates nothing else here reaches, twenty-four-hour sessions, and a device over HDMI.
What does each one cost?
Bandicam
- Personal, annual$33.26 per year, one PC
- Personal, perpetual$53.90 one-off, one PC
- Business, annual$49.46 per year, one PC
Prequel
- Lifetime$29 once
- Pro$9 a month
Checked on 22 October 2026 against Bandicam, Buy Bandicam.
- Record your screen and cameraPick a display, a window or an area you drag out, with your camera, microphone and system audio each on their own track.
- Zooms and layout are applied automaticallyPrequel reads where you clicked and typed, then places the zooms, frames your camera and sets a background behind it.
- Edit, export and shareMove a zoom, trim a clip or fix a caption, then export one MP4 at up to 4K or send a link that plays anywhere.
Zoom and pan
Zooms that follow the action
Prequel automatically zooms in when you click or type, then softens the rest of the window so viewers know where to look. Every zoom is added to the timeline, so you can move, retime or delete it at any time.
Layouts
Switch layouts clip by clip
Choose from fourteen layouts for the same take: camera in the corner, beside the screen, split with it or hidden entirely. Use one layout for the whole video, or change it clip by clip.
Subtitles
Subtitles you can edit like text
Prequel transcribes every word on your Mac when the editor opens. Fix captions by typing in the transcript, choose a subtitle style or delete a sentence to remove it from the video.
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thanks so much for jumping on this call
Iwanttoshowyousomethingcool
[pause here]
we’ve been building for the past few months
Teleprompter
A teleprompter that follows your voice
Prequel hangs your script from the notch, just under the camera, and follows your voice — the word you're saying lights up as you say it. Wander off script and it waits for you; skip ahead or fall behind and it catches up within a couple of words.
Apple Silicon · macOS 14+
Native
Built for your Mac
Prequel is a native app for Apple Silicon. It records with the system’s own capture, encodes on the video hardware and draws every frame in Metal. Your recordings stay on your disk.
The editor
Everything you would have done by hand
It opens by itself when you stop recording, on the take you just made. Nothing to import, nothing to line up.
Guide attention automatically
Prequel zooms into the part of the screen that matters: the cursor, a region you draw, or whatever you are typing into. Set the level, the speed and how much the rest of the frame blurs.
Look present without taking over the video
Your camera stays framed and out of the way: circle, squircle, rounded, wide or portrait, in any corner and any size. It is never burned into the recording, so none of it is decided while you record.
Make recordings look designed
Add a background, padding and a shadow without editing any of it by hand. Your own wallpaper by default, seven bundled presets, gradients and solids.
Cut the parts nobody needs to see
Trim the pauses yourself, slice by slice, with a waveform under every clip. Layout, background and audio can all change mid-take.
Keep the pointer out of the way
Fifteen pointer styles, resized so the cursor survives a zoom. Smoothed while it travels, and hidden after a few seconds of stillness.
Export the frame you approved
The preview and the exporter draw the same plan, so the file matches what you signed off in the editor.
Quality
Videos stay sharp at 4K
Capture and export run on your Mac's own media engine. 1080p at 60 fps records without dropping frames, and 4K is a setting you pick.
- Resolution
- Up to 4K
- Frame rate
- Up to 120 fps
- Codecs
- H.264 · HEVC
- Encoding
- Hardware, VideoToolbox
- Compositing
- Metal
- Output
- Constant frame rate MP4
Formats
Export in any frame
Turn one recording into different formats without manually reframing every element. Switch from landscape to vertical and the layout stays intact.
- Landscape 16:9
- 4K
- Vertical 9:16
- Square 1:1
- Portrait 4:5
- YouTube
- Shorts
- TikTok
- Reels
- X
Record demos worth sharing
Free for 7 days. No watermark on anything you export.
No credit card required
Curious about the internals? Read the blog
FAQ
Zooms, exports and the rest
Is there a Bandicam for Mac?
No. Bandicam is Windows software and no macOS build exists. On a Mac, the nearest free equivalent for high frame rate and game capture is OBS Studio, and for demos and tutorials Prequel records a display, a window or a region and finishes the video automatically.
How much does Bandicam cost?
A personal licence is $33.26 a year or $53.90 perpetual for one PC, and a business licence is $49.46 a year. The free version watermarks the recording and stops after ten minutes. Checked on 22 October 2026.
Does Prequel watermark recordings?
No, at any point. The seven-day trial exports at every size and frame rate the paid app does, with nothing drawn on top, so the files you make in that week are usable whether or not you buy it.
Is Prequel good for recording games?
It records what the Mac draws, which covers most games in a window, but game capture is not what it is built for and there is no hook into a graphics API. For gameplay, OBS Studio is the better Mac answer and it is free.