The Best Loom Alternatives for Mac in 2026

Loom made async video normal. Record, paste a link, skip the meeting. For a lot of teams it's still the right tool.

But people go looking for alternatives for a handful of very consistent reasons:

• The free plan's limits. Starter caps each recording at 5 minutes, 25 videos and 720p.
• The price per seat. Business is $18 per user per month, and the editing and AI features most people want, such as editing by transcript and removing filler words, sit on Business + AI at $24 per user per month.
• The cloud. Every Loom recording is uploaded, and its AI runs in the cloud. For recordings of internal dashboards, customer data or unreleased products, that's a problem for some teams.
• Polish. Loom is built for quick messages, not product demos. There's no auto-zoom on clicks or cursor smoothing.

Here are the best alternatives on the Mac, grouped by why you're leaving.

Disclosure: we make ZumCast, one of the apps below. Prices are from each product's official website, October 2026.

Quick picks

• You want polished demos, privacy and no subscription: ZumCast
• You want Loom's instant links, but open source or self-hosted: Cap
• You want beautiful click-to-zoom clips: Screen Studio
• You want Loom-style sharing with stronger editing: Tella
• You mostly need screenshots, sometimes video: CleanShot X
• You want free and don't need sharing: Apple's built-in tools or OBS

1. ZumCast: for polished demos that never leave your Mac

Price: Basic free; Pro $49 once (launch pricing from $9). Mac only.

If you're leaving Loom because of the cloud or the subscription, ZumCast is the opposite on both counts: everything happens on your Mac, and Pro is a one-time purchase.

It's also built for a different job. Loom is for a quick message; ZumCast is for a video you'd put on your website, in your docs or in front of a customer. When you stop recording, zooms on every click and a smooth cursor are already done. Then you ask Zumi, its on-device AI editor, for the rest: "cut the pauses", "blur anything private", "make it vertical". It shows the plan before anything changes.

What you gain over Loom

• Auto-zoom on clicks, cursor smoothing and on-screen shortcuts
• Edit by transcript, remove fillers and pauses, with no upload
• Captions translated on your Mac into 16 languages, exported as SRT or VTT
• Automatic redaction of emails, API keys, card numbers and faces, burnt into every export
• Vertical, square and 4:5 versions with their own crop
• Step-by-step guides (Markdown, HTML, PDF) and interactive demos from the same recording
• iPhone screen recording over a cable

What you give up

• Loom's team library, view analytics and in-video comments. ZumCast Pro includes share links (5 GB, links last 90 days), but it's not a shared video workspace.
• Windows, web and mobile recording. ZumCast is Mac only.

Pick it if your videos are demos, tutorials, onboarding or bug reports, and you'd rather pay once and keep your recordings on your Mac.

2. Cap: the open-source Loom

Price: free tier with a full editor and short share links; desktop licence $58 once or $29 a year; Pro $12 per user per month. Mac, Windows and Linux.

Cap is the closest thing to "Loom, but open source". Instant mode uploads while you record so a link is ready right away, and studio mode adds auto-zoom and cursor smoothing for more polished takes.

What you gain over Loom

• Open source, with your own storage or a fully self-hosted setup
• Auto-zoom and cursor smoothing in studio mode
• On-device captions in 19 languages
• A one-time desktop licence option

What you give up

• Loom's maturity and enterprise features. Check the licence terms if you'll use the free tier commercially.

Pick it if you like Loom's workflow but want open source, self-hosting or a lower price.

3. Screen Studio: for beautiful product clips

Price: $29 a month, or $9 a month billed yearly. Mac only.

Screen Studio is the app that made automatic zooms popular, and its output still looks great with very little effort.

What you gain over Loom

• Excellent auto-zoom and cursor smoothing
• iPhone and iPad recording with device frames
• On-device captions; exports up to 4K60, GIF, and 9:16 or 1:1
• Share links for videos up to 30 minutes

What you give up

• Transcript-based editing and filler-word removal aren't among its features.
• It's still a subscription.

Pick it if you're leaving Loom because your videos need to look better, and a subscription is fine.

4. Tella: Loom-style sharing with stronger editing

Price: from $13 per user per month billed yearly. No free plan. Mac and Windows, edited in the browser.

Tella keeps the cloud workflow but adds a proper editor: auto-zoom, transcript editing, and filler and silence removal, with polished share pages.

What you gain over Loom

• Auto-zoom and stronger editing at a lower per-seat price than Loom's AI plan
• Custom domains and 4K sharing on Premium

What you give up

• It's still cloud-based, and AI features run on credits.
• No free plan.

Pick it if you're happy in the cloud but want better-looking videos than Loom makes.

5. CleanShot X: if your "Looms" are mostly quick clips and screenshots

Price: $35 once with a year of updates; Pro $10 per user per month billed yearly for unlimited cloud. Mac only.

A lot of Loom use is really "show someone this one thing". CleanShot X handles that well with screenshots, short recordings and cloud links, and its editor now does smart zooms and vertical exports.

Pick it if most of what you send is screenshots and short clips, not long walkthroughs.

6. Free options: Apple's tools and OBS

If you don't need share links at all:

• Apple's Screenshot toolbar (Shift-Command-5) records your screen with a microphone, and on macOS 27 or later it can include system audio. Trim in QuickTime. No camera overlay, captions or zooms.
• OBS Studio is free and very capable, records system audio on macOS without drivers, and has no limits. It has no editor, captions or sharing, and takes time to learn.

You'll be uploading the file to Slack, Drive or similar yourself.

How to choose

Ask yourself one question: why are you leaving Loom?

• "The cloud and the subscription." ZumCast. Everything on your Mac, paid once.
• "I want open source or my own storage." Cap.
• "My videos need to look more professional." ZumCast if you also want captions, transcript editing and guides; Screen Studio if you only want great-looking clips.
• "I like the cloud, I just want better editing." Tella.
• "I only ever send quick clips." CleanShot X, or the free tools.

And if Loom's instant links and team library are the part you love, it may be worth keeping Loom for quick messages and using a dedicated recorder for the videos that matter. Plenty of teams do exactly that.

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Prices and features were checked on each product's official website in October 2026 and may have changed since. Loom is a trademark of its owner; this article isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Loom. ZumCast is made by the team that wrote this article. Download ZumCast free.