The best Loom alternatives for Mac
People leave Loom for three reasons: the price, the five-minute free cap, or videos that live on someone else's servers. Here is where to go for each, and which one we would actually pick.
Part of How to record a product demo video that people finish
TL;DR
| # | Tool | Price | Why you would switch |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Prequel $29 once, or $9/mo | $29 once, or $9/mo | The video arrives edited, and it is yours |
| 2 | Cap | Free, then $29/yr | Open source, self-hostable storage |
| 3 | Tella | $13–$19/user/mo | Browser-based, branded landing pages |
| 4 | Screen Studio | $29/mo, or $9/mo yearly | Polished automatic zoom on macOS |
| 5 | Descript | Free tier, then $16–$50/mo | Editing video by editing the transcript |
| 6 | OBS Studio | Free, open source | No limits, no account, no cost |
Prices checked on 2 September 2026.
People leave Loom for one of three reasons, and which one applies decides where you should go.
The price went up and the free plan is thin. Business is $18 per user per month and the free plan caps videos at five minutes. The recording is not good enough to send outside the company. Loom captures what you performed: un-zoomed, uncut, camera wherever it started. The video lives on their servers. You get a link, not a file.
All three show up together in threads asking for a way out.
Loom is genuinely excellent at the thing it was built for, which is getting a link into a colleague's inbox in ten seconds. If that is what you use it for, none of this list will beat it. If you are sending video to customers, read on.
What is Loom, and why look for an alternative?
Loom is a screen recorder built around speed of sharing: you record, it uploads, and you paste a link. For sending a colleague a two-minute walkthrough it is still the fastest thing in the category, and that is genuinely what it is good at.
People look for alternatives for three reasons. The free plan caps videos at five minutes, Business is $18 per user per month, and the video lives on Loom's servers as a page rather than a file you own. Which of those applies to you decides where you should go.
1. Prequel
The closest thing to "Loom, but the video is actually good."
Prequel records locally and hands back a video that is already directed: zooms that push in on what you clicked and typed, a perspective tilt so the frame has direction, focus falling away from whatever the zoom is aimed at, and a camera you shape, size and place after the take rather than before it. That last one works because it writes the screen, camera, microphone and system audio as four separate files, so the camera is never burned into a corner.
There is no cap on the length of a recording on any plan, against Loom's five minutes on free. Nothing is uploaded unless you ask for a share link, so the export is a file you own rather than a page you rent. And it is $9 a month against Loom's $18, or $29 once and never again.
Price. $29 once, or $9 a month, with fourteen days free. Requires. An Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 14 or later.
2. Cap
The open-source Loom. Instant mode gives you a hosted link in seconds, which is the Loom workflow almost exactly, and Studio mode records locally with an editor that has automatic zoom and backgrounds. You can point it at your own S3 bucket or Google Drive, which is the answer if "our video is on their servers" was the reason you left.
The free tier caps recordings at five minutes, the same limit you were escaping, and export tops at 4K 60. A commercial desktop licence is $29 a year: the same figure as Prequel's one-off, buying twelve months rather than the app.
Price. Free up to five minutes, then $29/year or $12 per user per month.
3. Tella
Tella is the closest to Loom in shape: record in the browser, get a branded landing page, no install. For customer-facing demos where the page matters as much as the video, it is a genuine step up from a Loom link.
Two things to check. Sixty fps export is reserved for the $19 Premium tier, where Prequel exports at up to 120 fps on every plan including the $29 one-off. And the video still lives on a hosted page, so if leaving Loom was about owning the file, this does not solve it.
Price. Pro $13, Premium $19 per user per month. No free plan, seven-day trial.
4. Screen Studio
If you left Loom because the recordings looked raw, Screen Studio is the obvious destination: automatic zoom on clicks and the smoothest cursor movement in the category.
It is macOS only, it has no sharing layer to replace Loom's links, and it exports at 4K 60 against Prequel's 4K 120, without the perspective tilt or the depth of field. Its $29 is monthly; the yearly rate works out at $9 a month, which is what Prequel charges monthly.
Price. $29/mo, or $9/mo billed yearly.
5. Descript
Different tool for a different problem. Descript transcribes your recording and lets you cut the video by deleting words, which for talking-head content is genuinely a better way to work than a timeline.
Your media lives on their servers as a condition of the product working, so it does not solve the ownership complaint, and the free tier watermarks exports and caps them at 720p. Paid plans start around $16 a month, above Prequel's monthly rate and well above its one-off.
Price. Free tier, then roughly $16 to $50 a month.
6. OBS Studio
If the price was the whole problem, OBS is free forever, open source, never watermarks and has no time limit. It records screen and webcam together and captures system audio natively on Ventura and later.
There is no sharing layer and no editor, so the link and the edit are both jobs you take elsewhere. That edit is the part Prequel has already finished by the time it opens the file.
Price. Free.
So which one
If you left over price alone, OBS Studio. If you want the Loom workflow with your own storage underneath it, Cap. If you need branded pages for customers, Tella. If you mostly cut talking heads, Descript.
If you left because the videos were not good enough to send to customers, that is what Prequel is for:
Product tours and demos. Zooms already placed on what you clicked, a perspective tilt, and no cap on the length of a take, against Loom's five minutes on free.
Tutorials and how-tos. The camera resized per section after the take rather than a fixed bubble in one corner for the whole video.
Social clips. Every frame preset is included, so a landscape recording reframes for vertical without cropping the subject out.
YouTube. 4K at up to 120 fps, no watermark on any plan, rendered on your own Mac rather than queued on someone's server.
$9 a month against Loom's $18, or $29 once. Fourteen days free.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the best Loom alternative for Mac?
- Prequel, if you are sending video to customers rather than colleagues. It records locally and hands back a video that is already edited, with zooms on your clicks and typing, a perspective tilt and a camera you frame after the take. There is no cap on recording length on any plan, against Loom's five minutes on free, and it is $9 a month against Loom's $18, or $29 once.
- Is there a free alternative to Loom?
- Cap and OBS Studio. Cap is open source and gives you the same instant-link workflow, though its free tier caps recordings at five minutes, the same limit as Loom's. OBS Studio is free with no limits at all, but has no sharing layer and no editor, so both the link and the edit happen elsewhere.
- Is there an open source alternative to Loom?
- Cap. It is open source, offers instant hosted links and a local Studio mode with an editor, and you can point it at your own S3 bucket or Google Drive so recordings stay on infrastructure you control. Note it uses a custom licence rather than a standard OSI one.
- How much does Loom cost?
- There is a free Starter plan capped at five minutes a video, then Business at $18 per user per month and Business with AI at $24. Checked on 2 September 2026.
- Can I download my videos instead of sharing a link?
- That depends on the tool. Loom, Tella and Descript are built around a hosted page, so the link is the product. Prequel, OBS Studio and Cap's Studio mode all record locally, so you get a file you own and uploading is something you ask for rather than a condition of the recording working.