Cap or Prequel?
Cap is the closest thing to Prequel on this list, and it is open source. The difference is what each one is built out of, and what happens after the free tier.
Apple Silicon · macOS 14+ · one email when the first build is ready
Cap
Open source screen recording, local first.
- Price
- Free tier, $29 licence, or $12 per user/mo
- Free
- Studio Mode and 4K 60 export, for personal use
- Platforms
- macOS, Windows
Prequel
Create cinematic screen recordings from Mac
- Price
- Free, or $39 once
- Free
- Free tier, no watermark
- Platforms
- macOS 14+, Apple Silicon
Checked on 21 August 2026 against Cap pricing, Cap Studio Mode.
What is Cap, and what is it good at?
Cap is an open-source screen recorder — AGPL v3, with the whole platform self-hostable through Docker — and it is the closest thing on this page to what Prequel does.
Its Studio Mode has smart auto-zoom that follows clicks, cursor smoothing and click effects, custom backgrounds and rounded corners, separate control of microphone and system audio levels, and 4K 60 export. It states plainly that all recording and editing happen locally on your device, and it lets you connect your own S3 bucket or Google Drive instead of its cloud. It runs on macOS and Windows.
There is a free tier covering Studio Mode and 4K 60 export for personal use, with shared links capped at five minutes. A desktop licence is $29 for a single user, and Cap Pro is $12 per user per month or $8.16 billed annually.
That is a genuinely good product, honestly priced, and if open source is a requirement for you then the rest of this page is academic — choose Cap.
Where the usual argument does not work
Most comparisons on this site lean on two things: the recording never leaves your machine, and there is no subscription. Neither is a difference here.
Cap processes locally and says so. Cap has a one-off licence tier. Cap is more open than Prequel will ever be, because Prequel is not open source at all. A comparison page that claimed "local-only" as a differentiator against Cap would be wrong, and we would rather say that than hope you did not check.
Worth noting one oddity in their own pricing copy: the $29 desktop licence is described as perpetual and as billed yearly in the same place. We are not going to resolve that for them — check before buying.
So why choose Prequel?
Three specific things, and they are narrow.
It is macOS only, and built that way. Capture is ScreenCaptureKit, compositing is Metal, encoding is VideoToolbox, and the core is Rust. There is no cross-platform abstraction in the middle, which is a real cost — no Windows build, ever — bought for a narrow benefit.
It exports higher. Up to 4K at 120 frames per second, at a constant frame rate, against Cap's 4K 60.
Typing drives zooms. Cap's auto-zoom follows clicks. Prequel also treats a burst of typing as a moment worth pushing into, with a zoom target that follows the text rather than the pointer. If you record code, terminals or forms, that is the difference between a push that tracks your edit and one that sits on the mouse.
What do you give up by switching?
Windows, and the source code.
Cap runs on both platforms; Prequel does not and will not. Cap can be audited, forked, self-hosted and kept running by you indefinitely; Prequel cannot. For a lot of people that is decisive on its own, and it should be.
If neither matters to you and you are on a Mac, the argument narrows to export ceiling, the typing-driven zooms, and which one you prefer using.
How do the features compare?
| Feature | Prequel | Cap |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic zoom on clicks | Included | Included |
| Zoom on what you type | Included | Not included |
| Cursor smoothing and resizing | Included | Included |
| Camera overlay, shaped and placed after | Included | Included |
| Backgrounds, padding and shadow | Included | Included |
| Timeline editing | Included | Included |
| Separate audio tracks | Included | Included |
| System audio without a virtual driver | Included | Included |
| Reframe to vertical without cropping | Included | Included |
| Records and exports without uploading | Included | Included |
| Records an iPhone or iPad | Not included | Not included |
| Maximum export | 4K, 120 fps | 4K, 60 fps |
| Platforms | macOS 14+, Apple Silicon | macOS, Windows |
| Licence | Free tier · one-off purchase | AGPL v3, paid tiers for cloud |
What Cap is good at
Genuinely open source and genuinely local. Auto-zoom, cursor smoothing, backgrounds, 4K 60, bring your own S3 bucket, and the whole platform is self-hostable. Of everything on this page it is the closest to what Prequel does.
What does each one cost?
Cap
- Free$0 personal use; shared links capped at 5 minutes
- Desktop licence$29 single user — their page also says billed yearly
- Cap Pro$12 per user, per month, or $8.16 billed annually
Prequel
- Free$0 forever
- Personal$39 once · one Mac · a year of updates
- Team$19 per user, per month
Checked on 21 August 2026 against Cap pricing, Cap Studio Mode.
Automatic
It arrives already directed
A raw screen recording is flat — one distance from the viewer for the whole take, with the thing that matters too small to see. Prequel watches where you click and type while it records, and opens the editor with that pass already made.
- Zooms placedOn every click and every burst of typing
- Camera framedShaped, sized and set in a corner
- Background appliedPadding, radius, border and shadow
- Audio balancedMicrophone and system on separate gains
- Cursor cleaned upSmoothed, resized, hidden when it idles
The editor
Everything you would have done in post
It opens by itself when you stop recording, on the take you just made. Nothing to import, nothing to line up.
Zooms that follow the work
Push in on the cursor, a region or whatever you are typing into. Level, speed, tilt and yaw, with progressive blur falling away from the focus.
A camera you frame afterwards
Circle, squircle, rounded or wide, in any corner and any size. The webcam is never burned into the recording, so none of it is decided while you record.
Backgrounds worth shipping
Your own wallpaper by default, seven bundled presets, gradients and solids. Padding, radius, border and shadow on top.
Cuts on a real timeline
Trim the dead air, slice by slice, with a waveform under every clip and a playhead that scrubs. Layout, background and audio can all change mid-take.
A cursor that behaves
Four pointer styles, resized to survive a zoom, and gone from the frame after a few seconds of stillness rather than parked over your work.
What you see is what exports
The preview and the exporter draw the same plan, so the file is the frame you approved — not a close approximation of it.
Quality
Exports that hold up
A video that looks produced is worth nothing if the file is soft. Capture and export run on your Mac's own media engine — hardware H.264 or HEVC, composited in Metal — so 1080p60 records without dropping frames and 4K is a setting rather than a compromise.
- 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
One MP4, shaped for wherever it is going
Switch a recording from landscape to vertical and the look holds — the framing is stored in proportions, not pixels, so nothing slides off the frame on the way.
- Landscape 16:9
- 4K
- Vertical 9:16
- Square 1:1
- Portrait 4:5
- YouTube
- Shorts
- TikTok
- Reels
- X
Be there for the first build
Prequel is in development. Leave an address and we will send it the day it is worth installing.
Curious about the internals? Read the blog
FAQ
Zooms, exports and the rest
How much does Cap cost?
There is a free tier for personal use with Studio Mode and 4K 60 export, and shared links capped at five minutes. A desktop licence is $29 for a single user — their pricing page describes it as both perpetual and billed yearly, which we will not try to resolve for them. Cap Pro is $12 per user per month, or $8.16 billed annually. Checked on 21 August 2026.
Is Cap open source?
Yes, genuinely — AGPL v3 for most of it, with some crates under MIT, and the platform can be self-hosted with Docker. Prequel is not open source. If that matters to you, it is a real reason to choose Cap and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
Does Cap record locally?
Yes. Cap states that recording and editing happen locally on your device, and it lets you connect your own S3 bucket or Google Drive. This is one of the few comparisons on this site where local-only is not a difference between us.
So why choose Prequel over Cap?
It is a macOS-only app built on ScreenCaptureKit, AVFoundation, VideoToolbox and Metal, and that focus is the argument: export runs at up to 4K 120 against Cap's 4K 60, and zooms are driven by typing as well as clicking. Cap runs on Windows and is open source, which Prequel is not.