Every list of Loom alternatives is really a list of free-tier walls. Screen capture itself is free on Windows, macOS and most browsers. What you are shopping for is the limit you can live with: a five-minute cap, a video count, 720p, a watermark, or small print saying you cannot download your own file.
Loom’s pricing page, checked on 23 September 2026, is blunt about where free stops: Starter gives 25 videos per person, five-minute recordings, 720p, up to 50 members and transcription in 50+ languages. Business, about $18 per user per month, lifts those caps — and adds the detail that decides whether leaving is possible: downloading your videos.
| Tool | What free gives you | Where free stops |
|---|---|---|
| Loom Starter | 25 videos per person, 5-min recordings, 720p | Download, branding removal, 4K and unlimited length are paid |
| OBS Studio | No account, no cap, no watermark | No hosting, no share link, no captions service |
| Clipchamp | Unlimited 1080p exports, no watermark, screen and voice recorder | 4K, brand kit and premium stock need Microsoft 365 |
| ScreenPal | 15-min recordings, 10 hosted videos, editing, 5 quizzes | Recorder and hosting limits lift at about $4/month |
| Zight | 5-min recordings, 1 GB, 15-second GIFs, last 50 captures | Unlimited time and AI actions from about $9.95/month |
| Vidyard | 5 videos a month, up to 30 minutes each | Analytics, branding and CRM sync are paid tiers |
OBS Studio, the one with no walls
Free and open source on Windows, macOS and Linux, at version 32.2.2 since 14 August 2026: scene-based capture, a mixer with per-source noise suppression, VST plugins, no time limit, no account. It does not ship the second half of Loom — a link to paste into Slack, viewer analytics, captions. You get a file. Right for long sessions and demos you will edit anyway; wrong shape for a five-minute clip that must land by lunch.
The recorder already on your desktop
Windows has Xbox Game Bar (Win+G), macOS has QuickTime’s New Screen Recording. No install, no account, no cap, no upload — but both stumble when you switch windows or blend a mic with system audio. Fine for a bug report, thin for an onboarding library.
Clipchamp — the best free output, and no audience
Microsoft’s browser editor has the most generous free tier here: unlimited exports up to 1080p with no watermark, a screen/camera/voice recorder, AI subtitles, AI voiceover and silence removal, all without a subscription. The friction sits at both ends — 4K, the brand kit and premium stock need Microsoft 365, and there is no share page, no view analytics, no call-to-action buttons.
ScreenPal — free forever, ten videos
The $0 plan outlived the Screencast-O-Matic name: 15-minute recording limit, 10 hosted videos, editing, webcam background blur, 5 quizzes. Deluxe at about $4/month drops the recorder and hosting limits; Max at about $10/month adds AI captions, text-to-speech narration and an AI video generator. Quizzes keep it alive in classrooms, and ten hosted slots is the wall: you delete something to publish something.
Zight — built for under five minutes
Free covers 5-minute recordings, 1 GB of storage, the last 50 captures and 15-second GIFs. Create, about $9.95 per user per month billed annually, drops the time limit and adds five AI smart actions a month plus ten video requests. That last feature is the differentiator: Zight is built for asking a colleague to record a reply. For bug reports, the free tier lasts.
Vidyard — long takes, few of them
Vidyard’s free plan allows five videos a month at up to 30 minutes each, the mirror image of Loom’s 25 videos at five minutes. Missing is what Vidyard sells to sales teams: viewer analytics, custom branding, CTAs, CRM sync. Fine for a handful of long walkthroughs, wrong if you need to know who watched.
The trap: your old videos are not yours
When a free tier ends, your recordings survive; your access to them changes. Loom’s downgrade documentation says a lapsed account drops to a 25-video limit, and Atlassian’s community answer adds that longer videos made on a paid plan stay viewable through their links, the five-minute cap applying only to new recordings. The sting is elsewhere: downloading videos is a Business feature, so on Starter you cannot export your library. Leaving means paying for one month of the plan that includes download, on the way out.
The pattern repeats: ScreenPal hosts ten free videos, Zight stores 1 GB, Vidyard allows five a month. The platform decides what stays, so capture anything that matters beyond the next quarter to a local file — no billing decision can touch it.
Three assumptions worth checking
Free means unlimited. The published numbers disagree: Loom 25 videos per person and five minutes, Zight five minutes and 1 GB, ScreenPal ten hosted videos, Vidyard five a month.
I can export whenever I leave. On Loom, download is paid, so the export is a cost, not a fallback. Check the same box before any subscription lapses.
AI is included. It is the newest paywall: about $24 against $18 on Loom, about $10 against $4 on ScreenPal, and unlimited Zight AI actions only at about $12.
Putting a stack together
Record long sessions in OBS, short ones in Clipchamp, then edit in a free desktop editor instead of paying for trim-and-stitch — Kdenlive or DaVinci Resolve both run locally for nothing.
Official image from kdenlive.org.
Keep the master file yourself and put the share link on top; pay for hosting only when a client demands it. If you want generated footage rather than a screen recording, this is the wrong list — start with our Runway tool page; the stage-by-stage video creation guide covers that pipeline. Meeting recordings are a different problem again: our Sony XM6 test shows how that half behaves.
Figures from loom.com/pricing, Atlassian’s Loom support pages, obsproject.com, clipchamp.com/en/pricing, screenpal.com/plans, zight.com/pricing and vidyard.com/pricing, checked 23 September 2026. None of it was hands-on; our comparison method applies.