# loom alternatives: when the screen recording is for an audience

> loom alternatives compared, with prices checked today: Tella, Cap, Screen Studio and underway, and which to use when your screen recording is for the public.

Published 28 October 2026. By Rich Lovatt (https://underway.life/series/underwayrich).

Page: https://underway.life/loom-alternatives

the right loom alternatives depend on who is going to watch. Loom is built for a quick video message: you record your screen and your face, share a link in seconds, and a teammate or a customer watches it when they get to it. for that job it's very good, and if that's your job you may not need an alternative at all, just a different plan.

if your screen recordings are meant for the public, the job is different. a walk-through of what you built, or hours of real work sped up into a time-lapse, needs cutting, captions, a title someone would search for, and somewhere to post it. underway does that, and it adds the interview for the days there's no screen worth showing. we make underway, so this page says what each tool is for, from each one's own pages on 28 October 2026, and says where Loom is the better choice.

to judge the output rather than our description of it, a real series made with underway, every episode in order, is [here](https://underway.life/series/underwayrich)

## key takeaways

- Loom is for async messages to teammates and customers. a link in seconds is the whole point, and nothing beats it at that.
- underway is for screen recordings that go out publicly as a numbered series: walk-throughs, time-lapses of real work, and interviews, cut and captioned for you.
- free loom alternatives exist. Cap is open source and free for personal use on Mac, Windows and Linux.
- for polished product demos on a Mac, Screen Studio zooms in on your clicks automatically.
- Loom's free Starter plan allows 25 videos a person, five minutes each, up to 720p. Business is $18 a user a month. underway starts at $29.99 a month with a 7-day free trial.

## what Loom does well

Loom describes itself as a way to record and share video messages with teammates and customers. you press record, talk over your screen with your face in a bubble, and the link is ready as soon as you stop. it runs on Mac and Windows, as a Chrome extension, and on iOS and Android. for a bug report, a design review or a reply to a customer, that speed is the product.

on 28 October 2026 Loom's pricing page lists four plans. Starter is free: up to 25 videos a person, screen recordings of up to five minutes, up to 720p and up to 50 members in a workspace. Business is $18 a user a month billed monthly. Business + AI is $24 a user a month billed monthly, and adds Loom AI: auto titles, summaries and chapters, filler word and silence removal, auto meeting notes and recap emails. Enterprise is priced on request, and yearly billing saves up to 17%. Loom also now offers Record for agent, which turns a recording of your screen and clicks into a prompt for an AI agent.

## why people look for loom alternatives

most searches for loom alternatives come from one of three places. the free plan's five-minute cap and 25-video limit run out. the per-user price adds up across a team. or the recording is meant for somewhere Loom wasn't built for, like YouTube or a public page, and a shared link with a face bubble doesn't look finished enough there.

the first two are about price, and the list further down covers them. the third is about the job. a message to a teammate can be rough: they know the context, they asked for it, and they'll watch to the end. a stranger on YouTube knows none of that. the recording has to say what it is in the first seconds, carry captions for people watching with the sound off, have a title someone would type into search, and sit in some order so that one video leads to the next. that's editing and publishing work, and it's the work that stops most founders posting their screen recordings at all.

## how underway screen records

underway is a video diary for founders: one numbered episode at a time, about the business as it's being built. several of its episode kinds are screen recordings, all made on a computer, since a phone can't share its screen.

- Walk-through: share your screen and walk your audience through something, the app, the design, the numbers, talking while you click. the episode is landscape, your screen full frame, you in a round bubble in the corner, up to ten minutes.
- Timelapse: your screen recorded for as long as you work, hours if you like, up to four windows. no camera is on while you work. press Mark this at a moment that matters and that stretch plays at real speed. then you talk in front of the time-lapse with your face in a bubble, pausing and jumping to each mark as you go.
- screen sharing inside an interview or an AI co-host conversation, so you can show the thing you're being asked about, and the co-host can see it if you let it.

after you stop, the cutting is done for you. filler, restarts and dead air come out, captions go on, and your episode card goes on the front, all in the order you said things. the episode gets a name written with the words people search, and Shorts can be cut from it to send people to the full episode. on Series you can post it to YouTube and the networks you connect in one press, and every episode you publish has its own page in order on your series page.

![one of the loom alternatives for public video: underway's setup screen asking what kind of episode, with cards for a video interview, an audio interview, a screen walk-through, watch me work and a guest](https://underway.life/imagery/app/now/setup-kind-desktop.jpg)

choosing the kind of episode, as the screen looked in mid October 2026 with underway's example series. the two screen kinds, Walk me through it and Watch me work, are now called Walk-through and Timelapse.

## what you show stays yours

a recording meant for the public carries a risk a message to a colleague doesn't: a key in a terminal, a customer's email in a sidebar, a password manager left open. underway handles that in two ways.

first, every screen share asks what people may see. Share your screen records all of what you pick in the browser's own picker. Only part of it lets you draw boxes around the parts to show, and everything outside them is blurred and darkened as it's recorded, so the clear picture never reaches a file. second, every screen in an episode is read for keys and passwords before it can go anywhere. if something is found, the episode is held until you answer: take that stretch of screen off, or say it's fine. nothing is posted while the question is open.

## loom alternatives compared: Loom and underway

the two tools, on the questions that decide between them. Loom's side is from loom.com and its pricing page on 28 October 2026.

| | Loom | underway |
|---|---|---|
| built for | video messages to teammates and customers | a founder's public series about their business |
| how it's shared | a link, ready when you stop | cut first, then your page, YouTube and the networks you connect |
| screen recording | screen and camera bubble, on any plan | walk-throughs and hours-long time-lapses, on a computer |
| editing | filler and silence removal on Business + AI | cut for you in the order you spoke, captioned |
| hiding part of the screen | not described on the pages read | boxes around what to show, the rest blurred |
| when there's no screen | record your camera | an interview asks you questions out loud |
| a running series | a library of videos | numbered episodes, a streak, a public page |
| phone | iOS and Android apps | interviews on the phone; screen kinds on a computer |
| price | free Starter; Business $18 a user a month | $29.99 a month, or $299.90 a year |

## the other loom alternatives, free and paid

if your recordings are for colleagues or customers and you just want something other than Loom, these are the names worth trying. each fact is from the tool's own page on 28 October 2026. we haven't tested them side by side, so this is what each is for, not a ranking.

- Cap: the open source loom alternative. its code is on GitHub, it can be self-hosted, and it runs on macOS, Windows and Linux. free for personal use; a Desktop License for commercial use is $29 a year or $58 once, and Cap Pro is $12 a user a month, or $8.16 billed yearly.
- Screen Studio: a loom alternative for Mac only. it zooms in automatically where you click, smooths the cursor and keeps your webcam out of the way. $29 a month, or $9 a month billed yearly.
- Tella: recording, editing, sharing and viewer analytics in one tool. Pro is $13 a user a month and Premium $19, both billed yearly.

all three are recorders. they make a better video file or a better shared link. none of them decides what the video is called, numbers it, or puts it in order with the last one, because none of them is trying to. that's the line underway sits on the other side of.

## which is right for you

| | choose | why |
|---|---|---|
| a quick message to a teammate or customer | Loom | a link in seconds is exactly what it's for |
| free, and the code open | Cap | open source, free for personal use |
| a polished product demo on a Mac | Screen Studio | automatic zooms on your clicks |
| a public walk-through of what you built | underway | cut, captioned, named for search and posted |
| showing the work itself, not just the result | underway | a time-lapse of hours, with you talking over it |
| a story of the business told in order | underway | every episode numbered, nothing reordered |

![underway's vault: every episode as a numbered tile with its length and date, private until published](https://underway.life/imagery/app/now/vault-desktop.jpg)

where the recordings end up: every episode numbered and kept in order, private until you publish it. shown with underway's example series, an invented founder.

## what underway costs

every new account starts with a 7-day free trial of Founder, Series or Studio. you add a card at the start and nothing is charged until day 8; cancel before then and you pay nothing. Founder is $29.99 a month or $299.90 a year: the episodes, Shorts when you press Find clips, the words for every platform, your page and every connection. Series is $79.99 a month and adds one tap to post to the networks you connect, the weekly round-up and the podcast feed. Studio is $129.99 a month and adds things like YouTube thumbnails with your face in them and motion graphics on your episodes. your raw recordings download on every plan.

## what results look like

the clearest result we can show is our own. Rich Lovatt, who makes underway, films a numbered series about building it, with it: interviews about the day's work, and walk-throughs of what changed on screen, each cut and captioned without opening an editor. they're on the series page in order: one story, told while it's still happening.

## faqs

### what are the best loom alternatives?

for messages to teammates and customers, Cap, Tella and Screen Studio are the usual swaps. for screen recordings meant for a public audience, cut, captioned and posted as a numbered series, underway.

### is there a free loom alternative?

yes. Cap is free for personal use and open source, on Mac, Windows and Linux. Loom's own Starter plan is also free, with up to 25 videos a person of up to five minutes each, at up to 720p.

### what's a good loom alternative for mac?

Screen Studio runs only on macOS and zooms in automatically where you click, which suits product demos. Cap runs on Mac too. underway runs in the browser on a Mac or any computer.

### is there an open source loom alternative?

Cap's code is on GitHub and it can be self-hosted. underway is not open source.

### can underway record my screen like Loom?

yes, on a computer: a walk-through with you in a corner bubble, a time-lapse of hours of work that you then talk over, or a screen shared inside an interview. it's built for videos that go out publicly, not for a quick link to a colleague, which is where Loom is better.

### what if my screen shows something private?

underway lets you box the parts of the screen people may see and blurs the rest as it records. every screen is also read for keys and passwords, and the episode is held until you take the screen off or say it's fine.

## try underway free for 7 days

if your screen recordings are meant for an audience and the editing is what stops them going out, try a week of it. sign up, film episode zero about what you're building, then share your screen for a walk-through and see the finished episode after you stop. you add your card at the start and nothing is charged until day 8. everything stays private until you choose to post it.

start your 7 days and [film episode zero today](https://underway.life/signup)

## where to go next

if you're comparing editors as well, the shortlist ranked by how much editing each leaves you is [the best descript alternatives](https://underway.life/best-descript-alternatives)

if it's guests you record, the comparison with Riverside and its new agents is [riverside alternatives](https://underway.life/riverside-alternatives)

why a founder's own story, told as it happens, works as marketing: [founder-led content](https://underway.life/founder-led-content)