Looking for a Screencastify alternative?
Screencastify records in a tab, caps the free plan at ten videos and leaves the picture exactly as you performed it. Prequel records the Mac itself and opens the editor with the zooms placed, the camera framed and a background behind the window. $9 a month, or $29 once.
No credit card required
Screencastify
Screen recording that runs in your browser.
- Price
- Free for 10 videos, then $7–$10/user/mo billed annually
- Free
- Ten videos in total, thirty minutes each
- Platforms
- Chrome, Edge
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 Screencastify, Screencastify pricing.
What is Screencastify, and what is it good at?
Screencastify is a screen recorder that lives in Chrome. Install the extension, record a tab, your desktop or just the camera, and the video goes to Google Drive or to Screencastify's own library with a link ready to share. Editing is trim and stitch, text and blur boxes, and editing by transcript. Questions and polls can be dropped into a video for a class to answer.
It is free for up to ten videos with a thirty-minute cap on each, then $7 a user a month billed annually, or $19 monthly. Classrooms on Chromebooks are what it was built for, and in that setting it is hard to beat: nothing to install beyond an extension, and everything lands in Drive.
Why do people look for a Screencastify alternative?
It is a browser extension, with a browser's limits. Recording quality, frame rate and what the machine can do while recording are all bounded by the tab it runs in. There is no system audio in the way a native recorder has it, and the camera is a bubble on top rather than a layer you can reframe afterwards.
The free plan runs out at ten videos. Not ten a month. Ten.
Nothing is automatic. No zoom on a click, no cursor smoothing, no background, no framing. The finished video is the take, trimmed.
Is Prequel a good Screencastify alternative?
If you are on a Mac and the video has to look produced, yes.
Prequel records the screen, the camera, the microphone and system audio as separate tracks, with no extension and no browser involved, then opens the editor with the first pass made: zooms on every click and every burst of typing, tilted, with focus falling away from the subject, the camera framed over a background, the cursor smoothed and blurred as it moves. Captions are transcribed on your Mac.
Export is one file at up to 4K and 120 frames a second, at $9 a month or $29 once.
What do you give up by switching?
Chromebooks, Google Drive and the classroom. Screencastify is an extension a school can push to every device, with videos in Drive and quizzes inside them. Prequel is a Mac app with a Screen Recording permission, and it has no quizzing and no Drive integration.
Also Windows, since Screencastify runs wherever Chrome does.
How do the features compare?
| Feature | Prequel | Screencastify |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | Not included |
| Layouts for the screen and camera | Fourteen, per clip | Tab, desktop or camera only |
| Camera cut out of its background | Included | Not included |
| Perspective tilt and focus falloff on zooms | Included | Not included |
| Captions transcribed on your Mac | Included | Auto-captions after upload |
| Timeline editing | Included | Trim, stitch, text and blur boxes |
| Separate audio tracks | Included | Not included |
| System audio without a virtual driver | Included | Tab audio, not the Mac's own |
| 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 | Upload a video to the library |
| Records and exports without uploading | Included | No, recordings go to Drive or their library |
| Shareable links | Included | Included |
| Team workspace | Included | Included |
| Records an iPhone or iPad | Not included | Not included |
| Maximum export | 4K, 120 fps | Not published |
| Download size | 104 MB | A browser extension |
| Platforms | macOS 14+, Apple Silicon | Chrome, Edge |
| Licence | $9/month or $29 once, 7-day trial | Per-seat subscription, or a capped free plan |
What Screencastify is good at
Nothing to install beyond an extension, videos that land in Google Drive, and questions and polls inside a lesson. On a classroom of Chromebooks it is unbeatable.
What does each one cost?
Screencastify
- Free$0 10 videos, 30 minutes each
- Starter$7 per user, per month, billed annually, or $19 monthly
- Pro$10 per user, per month, billed annually, or $25 monthly
Prequel
- Lifetime$29 once
- Pro$9 a month
Checked on 22 October 2026 against Screencastify, Screencastify pricing.
- 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
What is the best Screencastify alternative?
On a Mac, Prequel: a native recorder with no extension, recording screen, camera, microphone and system audio as separate tracks and opening the editor with zooms already placed on every click and every burst of typing. If you are on a Chromebook, the answer is another extension, because a Mac app is no use to you.
Is Screencastify really free?
For ten videos, with a thirty-minute cap on each. That is ten in total rather than ten a month. After that, Starter is $7 per user per month billed annually, or $19 monthly, and Pro is $10, or $25 monthly. Checked on 22 October 2026.
Can Screencastify record system audio on a Mac?
It records the audio of the tab you are recording, which is what a browser extension has access to. The Mac's own sound, from any app, is not available to it. Prequel records system audio as a separate track with no virtual driver to install.
Is Prequel a good Screencastify alternative?
If you are on a Mac and the video is a demo rather than a lesson, yes: automatic zooms, a perspective tilt, a framed camera, a background, a cleaned-up cursor, captions transcribed on device, and export at up to 4K and 120 frames a second for $9 a month or $29 once. It has no quizzing, no Google Drive integration and no Chromebook build.