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Looking for a Tella alternative?
Tella hosts your video and keeps 60 fps for its Premium tier. Prequel renders on your own Mac at up to 4K 120 — zooms that follow the work, a perspective tilt, focus falling away from the subject — and the export is a file you own rather than a page you rent. $9 a month, under both Tella's $13 Pro and its $19 Premium, or $29 once.
No credit card required
Tella
Record and share video that looks professionally edited.
- Price
- $13–$19 per user/mo, no free plan
- Free
- No free tier
- Platforms
- macOS, Windows, web, Chrome
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 21 August 2026 against Tella pricing, Tella plans, Tella features, Tella camera background, Tella 2.33 installer, Tella: add a zoom, Tella: Studio Voice, Tella: upload existing videos.
What is Tella, and what is it good at?
Tella records polished video and then hosts it for you. Automatic zoom on clicks, backgrounds, borders, camera reframing, auto layouts, AI audio enhancement, transcript editing and filler-word removal — and then the finished video lands on a branded page with a custom domain, password protection, calls to action and per-viewer analytics.
That last part is the real product. Tella is the only tool on this page that closes the whole loop from recording to distribution to knowing who watched. It runs on macOS, Windows, a Chrome extension and in a browser, so it works for teams that are not all on Macs.
If the link and what happens after it matters as much as the video, Tella is a strong choice and there is no local recorder that replaces it.
Why do people look for a Tella alternative?
Two things, mostly.
There is no free plan. Tella's own help pages say so plainly: it is a paid product with no forever-free tier. There is a seven-day trial, and exporting your recordings requires a subscription. Pro is $13 per user per month, Premium is $19, and 60 fps export is Premium only. For a team that is a line item; for one person recording occasionally it is a subscription for something used a few times a month.
Everything is in the cloud. Every recording gets a hosted Tella page. That is the feature, and it is also the constraint — the video exists on their infrastructure, and per-seat pricing means paying for people whose only involvement is watching.
Is Prequel a good Tella alternative?
For producing the video, yes. For distributing it, no.
Prequel records screen, webcam, microphone and system audio as separate tracks, places zooms from where you click and what you type — tilted, and with focus falling away from whatever the push-in is aimed at — frames the camera afterwards, applies a background, cleans up the cursor and exports one MP4 at up to 4K and 120 frames per second, against Tella's 4K 60 and with no Premium tier gating the frame rate.
All of it happens on your Mac. There is no upload, no render queue and no hosted page, because there is no server involved in making the file.
On price it is $9 a month, under both Tella's $13 Pro and its $19 Premium, or $29 once — and 60 fps export, which Tella keeps for Premium, is simply in it, as is everything above it up to 120. Both put a seven-day trial in front of the purchase, so judge them on the export rather than the calendar.
What do you give up by switching?
The distribution half, completely. No hosted pages, no custom domain, no password protection, no calls to action, no viewer analytics, no funnels. If you are using Tella to run outreach or measure engagement, Prequel replaces none of that — you would be exporting a file and putting it wherever you already put files.
Also Windows and the browser recorder. Tella works for a mixed team; Prequel is macOS on Apple Silicon.
How do the features compare?
| Feature | Prequel | Tella |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic zoom on clicks | Included | 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 | Included |
| Layouts for the screen and camera | Fourteen, per clip | Included |
| Camera cut out of its background | Included | Blur, a colour or an image |
| Perspective tilt and focus falloff on zooms | Included | Not included |
| Captions transcribed on your Mac | Included | After upload to Tella |
| Timeline editing | Included | Included |
| Separate audio tracks | Included | Included |
| System audio without a virtual driver | Included | Included |
| Reframe to vertical without cropping | Included | Included |
| Magnifying-glass loupe over the work | Included | Not included |
| Colour looks and filters | Included | Included |
| Microphone noise reduction | Included | Included |
| Import a video you already have | Included | Yes, on paid plans |
| Records and exports without uploading | Included | No — recordings are hosted by Tella |
| Shareable links | Included | Included |
| Team workspace | Included | Included |
| Records an iPhone or iPad | Not included | Not included |
| Maximum export | 4K, 120 fps | 4K; 60 fps on Premium only |
| Download size | 104 MB | 25 MB, editor in the browser |
| Platforms | macOS 14+, Apple Silicon | macOS, Windows, web, Chrome |
| Licence | $9/month or $29 once, 7-day trial | Per-seat subscription, no free plan |
What Tella is good at
It closes the whole loop — record, auto-edit, host on a branded page with a custom domain, password protection and per-viewer analytics. Polish and distribution in one product.
What does each one cost?
Tella
- Pro$13 per user, per month
- Premium$19 per user, per month
Prequel
- Lifetime$29 once
- Pro$9 a month
Checked on 21 August 2026 against Tella pricing, Tella plans, Tella features, Tella camera background, Tella 2.33 installer, Tella: add a zoom, Tella: Studio Voice, Tella: upload existing videos.
- 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.
Instant edit
Start with the edit already done
Prequel records where you click and type, then opens the editor with zooms already placed, a framed camera and a polished background. Spend less time building the first cut and more time fine-tuning.
- 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 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
Does Tella have a free plan?
No. Tella's own help pages state it is a paid product with no forever-free plan — there is a seven-day trial, and exporting requires a subscription. Prequel works the same way, on the same seven days, and two ways to pay at the end of it — $9 a month or $29 once — neither of which decides what your export is allowed to be.
How much does Tella cost?
Pro is $13 per user per month and Premium is $19, with Enterprise priced on request. 60 fps export is Premium only. Checked on 21 August 2026.
Is Tella better for anything?
Distribution, specifically. Custom domains, password protection, calls to action and per-viewer analytics go further than a link and a workspace do, and it runs on Windows and in a browser where Prequel does not. Pro is also a dollar a month cheaper. If the hosted page is the product you are buying, that is Tella's ground; if the video is, Prequel exports at 4K 120 where Tella keeps 60 fps for Premium.
Where does Tella process my recordings?
In the cloud — every video gets a hosted Tella page. Prequel records and renders on your Mac's own media engine, so nothing is uploaded to produce the file.