Looking for a ScreenPal alternative?
ScreenPal edits, hosts and quizzes, and every zoom in it is one you placed. Prequel places them from where you click and what you type, frames the camera, applies a background and exports at 4K and 120 fps on your own Mac. $9 a month, or $29 once.
No credit card required
ScreenPal
One app to capture, create, share and engage. Formerly Screencast-O-Matic.
- Price
- Free, then $4–$10/mo billed annually
- Free
- Free forever, with a 15-minute limit on a recording and no watermark
- Platforms
- macOS, Windows, Chromebook, Android, iOS
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 ScreenPal, ScreenPal plans, ScreenPal screen recorder.
What is ScreenPal, and what is it good at?
ScreenPal is Screencast-O-Matic, renamed. It records your screen on Windows, Mac, Chromebook, Android and iOS, edits in the browser or in the app, hosts the result, and adds quizzing, analytics and captions on top. The free plan records for fifteen minutes with no watermark on the file, which is unusually generous, and paid plans start at $4 a month billed annually.
Teachers and course creators are the audience it was built for and still serves best: a lesson, a quiz inside the video, a link for a class, and a price that a department can sign off without a meeting.
Why do people look for a ScreenPal alternative?
The video is edited, not directed. The editor is a full one, with transitions, overlays, captions and multiple audio tracks, and all of it is manual. Nothing places a zoom where you clicked, smooths the cursor, frames a camera over a background or pulls focus. A polished walkthrough is an hour of arranging clips.
It spans five platforms, so it is native to none. The compromise shows up in the editor, which is a web application doing a desktop job, and in export, where the heavy work happens somewhere other than your own GPU.
Is Prequel a good ScreenPal alternative?
For a Mac recording that needs to look produced, yes.
Prequel records the screen, the camera, the microphone and system audio as separate tracks and opens the editor with the pass already 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 is framed, shaped and cut out of the room. A background goes behind the window with padding and a shadow. The cursor is smoothed. Captions are transcribed on your Mac with nothing uploaded.
Export is one file at up to 4K and 120 frames a second, encoded by the Mac's own media engine, at $9 a month or $29 once.
What do you give up by switching?
Hosting and teaching. ScreenPal keeps your videos, puts quizzes inside them, reports who watched what, and gives a class a link. Prequel exports a file and can share a link, and none of the quizzing or the analytics comes with it.
Also every platform but macOS. ScreenPal records on a Chromebook, a phone and a PC; Prequel needs an Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 14 or later.
How do the features compare?
| Feature | Prequel | ScreenPal |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | Virtual backgrounds behind the camera |
| Layouts for the screen and camera | Fourteen, per clip | Camera and screen, resized and placed |
| Camera cut out of its background | Included | Blur or replace the camera's background |
| Perspective tilt and focus falloff on zooms | Included | Not included |
| Captions transcribed on your Mac | Included | Speech-to-text in their editor |
| Timeline editing | Included | Included |
| Separate audio tracks | Included | Multiple audio tracks in the editor |
| 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 | Automatic levels, and silence detection |
| Import a video you already have | Included | Included |
| Records and exports without uploading | Included | Hosted; the editor and the library are theirs |
| Shareable links | Included | Included |
| Team workspace | Included | Included |
| Records an iPhone or iPad | Not included | Records on an iPhone or iPad, as its own app |
| Maximum export | 4K, 120 fps | Not published |
| Download size | 104 MB | Not published |
| Platforms | macOS 14+, Apple Silicon | macOS, Windows, Chromebook, Android, iOS |
| Licence | $9/month or $29 once, 7-day trial | Subscription, or a capped free plan |
What ScreenPal is good at
Fifteen minutes free with no watermark, a full editor, hosting, quizzing and analytics, on five platforms, at a price a school or a department can sign off without a meeting.
What does each one cost?
ScreenPal
- Free$0 15-minute recordings, no watermark
- Deluxe$4 per month, paid annually
- Max$10 per month, paid annually
- Team Business$8 per user, per month, paid annually
Prequel
- Lifetime$29 once
- Pro$9 a month
Checked on 22 October 2026 against ScreenPal, ScreenPal plans, ScreenPal screen recorder.
- 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 ScreenPal alternative?
On a Mac, Prequel, if the video has to look produced: zooms placed on every click and every burst of typing, a perspective tilt, focus falling away from the subject, a camera framed and cut out of the room, and export at up to 4K and 120 frames a second. If what you need is hosting, quizzing and class analytics, ScreenPal is doing a job Prequel does not attempt.
How much does ScreenPal cost?
There is a free plan with a fifteen-minute limit on each recording and no watermark. Deluxe is $4 a month paid annually, Max is $10, and Team Business is $8 per user per month. Checked on 22 October 2026.
Is ScreenPal the same as Screencast-O-Matic?
Yes, renamed. Same product line, same company, same hosting and quizzing, under a name that no longer says what the tool does.
Is Prequel a good ScreenPal alternative?
For making the video on a Mac, yes, and the work happens on your own machine: recording, editing and export never need the network, and captions are transcribed on device. It is $9 a month or $29 once. What it does not do is host your videos, put a quiz inside one, or run on a Chromebook.