Looking for a Vidyard alternative?
Vidyard sells the analytics and charges $59 a seat for them. If what you need is the video, Prequel places the zooms, frames the camera, applies a background and exports at 4K and 120 fps on your own Mac, for $9 a month or $29 once.
No credit card required
Vidyard
Video for sales teams, with the analytics attached.
- Price
- Free for 5 videos a month, then $59/seat/mo
- Free
- Five recordings a month, capped at thirty minutes, without hosting
- 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 22 October 2026 against Vidyard, Vidyard pricing.
What is Vidyard, and what is it good at?
Vidyard is video for sales teams. Record a screen or a camera message, send it in an email or a sequence, and watch what happens next: who opened it, how far they watched, which part they replayed, and all of it written back into Salesforce or HubSpot. There are AI avatars, AI-generated prospecting videos, landing pages, calls to action and a hosting platform underneath.
The free plan records five videos a month, thirty minutes each, with no hosting. Starter is $59 a seat a month billed annually, and teams go up from there.
Why do people look for a Vidyard alternative?
The price is a sales tool's price. $59 a seat a month is reasonable for a rep whose pipeline it feeds, and a lot of money for a founder recording a product demo twice a week. The free plan's five videos a month make that decision quickly.
The recorder is the small part. Vidyard's value is the analytics, the CRM integrations and the sequences. The recording itself is a face in a bubble over a screen, and nothing about it is directed: no zooms, no framing, no background, no cursor work.
Is Prequel a good Vidyard alternative?
For making the video, yes. For the pipeline attached to it, no.
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 framed and cut out of the room, a background behind the window, the cursor smoothed. Captions are transcribed on your Mac.
Export is one file at up to 4K and 120 frames a second, and the price is $9 a month or $29 once, against $59 a seat.
What do you give up by switching?
The entire sales layer: viewer analytics, CRM write-back, email sequences, landing pages, calls to action, AI avatars and prospecting videos. If a rep is measured on reply rates, Vidyard is doing a job Prequel does not attempt.
Also Windows and the browser extension. Prequel is macOS on Apple Silicon.
How do the features compare?
| Feature | Prequel | Vidyard |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | Behind the camera bubble |
| Layouts for the screen and camera | Fourteen, per clip | Screen and camera, or either alone |
| Camera cut out of its background | Included | Virtual background inside the bubble |
| Perspective tilt and focus falloff on zooms | Included | Not included |
| Captions transcribed on your Mac | Included | Transcribed after upload |
| Timeline editing | Included | Trim and stitch |
| Separate audio tracks | Included | Not included |
| System audio without a virtual driver | Included | In the desktop app |
| 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 | Included |
| Records and exports without uploading | Included | No, recordings upload to Vidyard |
| 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 | Not published |
| Platforms | macOS 14+, Apple Silicon | macOS, Windows, web, Chrome |
| Licence | $9/month or $29 once, 7-day trial | Per-seat subscription |
What Vidyard is good at
It is a pipeline tool, not a recorder: who watched, how far they got, written straight back into Salesforce or HubSpot, with sequences and landing pages round it.
What does each one cost?
Vidyard
- Free$0 5 recordings a month, 30 minutes each
- Starter$59 per seat, per month, billed annually
- TeamsCustom contact them
Prequel
- Lifetime$29 once
- Pro$9 a month
Checked on 22 October 2026 against Vidyard, Vidyard 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 Vidyard alternative?
It depends what you are buying. For the recording, Prequel: zooms placed on every click and every burst of typing, a perspective tilt, a camera framed and cut out of the room, and export at up to 4K and 120 frames a second, for $9 a month or $29 once. For viewer analytics written back into a CRM, Vidyard is the product and nothing here replaces it.
How much does Vidyard cost?
The free plan records five videos a month at up to thirty minutes each, without hosting. Starter is $59 per seat per month billed annually, and Teams and Enterprise are quoted. Checked on 22 October 2026.
Does Vidyard add zoom effects to a recording?
No. A Vidyard recording is the screen as you performed it with your camera in a bubble over it, and the editing is a trim. Prequel places the zooms while it writes the file, tilts the push-in and lets focus fall away from whatever it is aimed at.
Is Prequel a good Vidyard alternative?
For making a demo that will be watched, yes, and for a sixth of the price of a seat. It records locally, finishes the video automatically and shares a link when you want one. What it does not carry is the sales layer: no CRM write-back, no email sequences, no landing pages, no prospecting avatars.