2026-04-08 · Vyds Team
Loom vs ScreenPal vs Vyds: Which Screen Recorder Wins?
Loom vs ScreenPal vs Vyds compared: free plans, pricing, editing, and who actually wins for budget-conscious users in 2026.
When you search for a screen recorder, two names come up constantly: Loom and ScreenPal. Loom because it's the category default, ScreenPal because it's the budget pick. Most comparison posts just tell you they're different price points and move on.
That's not useful if you're trying to decide whether either one is worth your money.
I built Vyds because I was frustrated with both. This is my honest take on the loom vs screenpal debate - including where each tool genuinely wins, where each one falls short, and what you'd be giving up with either choice. The three-way loom vs screenpal comparison matters because the "right" answer depends entirely on how you use the free tier.
TL;DR: ScreenPal is cheaper than Loom on paid plans, but its free tier puts a watermark on every recording. Loom's free tier caps you at 25 videos and 5 minutes each. Vyds's free tier is unlimited recordings with no watermark, stored in your own Google Drive. For the majority of light users, Vyds is the better starting point - and at $7/month, the paid plan costs less than half of Loom.
Table of Contents
- Loom vs ScreenPal pricing: the honest numbers
- Loom: what you actually pay
- ScreenPal: the budget option, with caveats
- Vyds: the free tier that's actually free
- Free plan comparison: where the real differences are
- Editing: who lets you trim without paying?
- Recording and capture
- Sharing and storage
- Team features
- The verdict
- FAQ
Loom vs ScreenPal pricing: the honest numbers {#loom-vs-screenpal-pricing}
Before getting into features, here's the full loom vs screenpal pricing picture alongside Vyds:
| Plan | Loom | ScreenPal | Vyds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 25 videos max, 5-min limit | Unlimited, 15-min limit, watermark | Unlimited, 5-min clips, no watermark |
| Paid (monthly) | $18/user/month (Business) | $8/month | $7/month |
| Paid (annual) | $15/user/month (Business) | $4/month | $5/month |
| Team (annual) | $15/user/month (Business) | $8/user/month | $9/seat/month |
| Free tier download | Paid only | Paid only | Free (BYOS) |
| Free tier watermark | No | Yes | No |
The loom vs screenpal pricing gap is large at the individual level. $4/month vs $18/user/month is a 4x difference. But for free-tier users, that monthly price comparison is irrelevant until you hit the free tier's limits.
Loom: what you actually pay {#loom-pricing}
Loom's free plan gives you 25 video slots per workspace and a hard 5-minute recording limit. For quick Slack updates or short walkthroughs, that's functional. The moment you try to record anything longer, you're blocked.
Downloading your recordings requires a paid plan. Trimming requires a paid plan. As one Trustpilot reviewer put it: "WHY DO I HAVE TO PAY JUST TO TRIM THE VIDEO???" (Tanky Blitz, Aug 2025).
The paid tier (Business) starts at $18/user/month, or roughly $15/user/month billed annually. For a solo user, that's $180-216/year. For a 5-person team, that's $900-1,080/year.
Another reviewer who was already on a paid plan: "They charge $200 a year for basic features that are free in 95% of apps." (Leo Blocker, Oct 2025).
Loom's pricing is also the most opaque of the three. The Business+AI tier ($24/user/month) bundles AI transcription, auto-titles, and summaries - features that are increasingly table stakes. Without the AI tier, you're paying $18 for capabilities that cheaper tools include at $4-7/month.
Loom best for: Teams already embedded in Confluence and Jira who need AI summaries and don't mind the price. If you're evaluating fresh, it's harder to justify. For our full take on whether Loom is worth it, see our is Loom worth it analysis.
ScreenPal: the budget option, with caveats {#screenpal-pricing}
ScreenPal (formerly Screencast-O-Matic) is the oldest player in this comparison. It's been around since the early 2010s and has built a reputation as the affordable choice.
The paid plans are genuinely cheap: Solo Deluxe runs $4/month billed annually ($8/month on monthly billing). Team Business runs $8/user/month annually. Compared to Loom's $15-18/seat, ScreenPal's pricing is much more accessible.
But the free tier is where the trade-off becomes visible.
ScreenPal's free plan puts a ScreenPal watermark on every recording. Not a subtle corner badge - a noticeable branding mark that appears in the video itself. For internal training or personal use, that might be fine. For anything client-facing, a sales demo, or professional communication, a watermark makes a bad impression.
The free plan also limits recordings to 15 minutes, which is more generous than Loom's 5-minute cap. And ScreenPal's editor is functional even on free - you get basic trim capability, which is more than Loom offers without upgrading.
ScreenPal also has mobile apps (iOS and Android), which neither Loom nor Vyds currently offers. If you need to record from a phone, ScreenPal is the only option here.
ScreenPal best for: Budget-conscious users who need a longer free recording window and don't mind the watermark, or individual professionals who want editing features at the lowest possible paid price point. For a head-to-head with Vyds, see Vyds vs ScreenPal.
Vyds: the free tier that's actually free {#vyds-pricing}
I'll be direct about my conflict of interest: I built Vyds, so take this section with appropriate skepticism. That said, the free tier differences are real and verifiable.
Vyds Free gives you unlimited recordings (up to 5 minutes per clip) with no watermark, stored directly in your Google Drive or OneDrive. We call this BYOS - bring your own storage. Your recordings don't go into our cloud; they go into a folder in your existing storage account. The moment you hit stop, the file is in your Drive.
There's no 25-video cap like Loom. No watermark like ScreenPal. No download paywall - the file is already in your Google Drive.
The 5-minute clip limit on the free tier is a real constraint. For longer recordings, you'd need Vyds Plus at $7/month ($5/month billed annually). That's $60-84/year for one person, compared to Loom's $180-216/year.
For teams, Vyds Pro is $12/seat/month ($9/seat/month annually) - cheaper per seat than Loom, with shared libraries and centralized billing.
Vyds best for: Light users who want a professional-grade free tier, and anyone who cares about data ownership - your videos live in your storage, not ours.
Free plan comparison: where the real differences are {#free-plan-comparison}
For most people evaluating screen recorders, the free plan is the entire product. You're not evaluating whether to pay $18/month - you're figuring out whether the tool is worth anything before spending money.
| Free feature | Loom | ScreenPal | Vyds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recording limit | 5 minutes | 15 minutes | 5 minutes |
| Video cap | 25 videos | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Watermark on recordings | No | Yes | No |
| Download your own recordings | Paid only | Paid only | Free (stored in your Drive) |
| Basic trim | Paid only | Basic on free | Plus plan ($7/mo) |
| Webcam overlay | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Chrome extension | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| macOS app | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Windows app | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Storage | Loom cloud | ScreenPal cloud | Your Google Drive or OneDrive |
The most important row in that table: download your own recordings.
With Loom, you cannot download videos from the free plan. They live in Loom's cloud. If you cancel, they're gone. If you want to send the file to someone directly, you can't - you can only share the Loom link.
With ScreenPal, same story - downloading requires upgrading past the free tier.
With Vyds, the file is in your Google Drive from the moment you finish recording. There's nothing to "download" because you already have it. This is what BYOS means in practice.
For a price-sensitive user evaluating a tool, this matters: you can use Vyds free forever without ever handing over your credit card, and your recordings will still be sitting in your Google Drive years from now whether or not Vyds is still a company.
Editing: who lets you trim without paying? {#editing-comparison}
Editing is where the loom vs screenpal comparison most clearly reveals each product's philosophy about the free tier.
Loom locks basic trim behind the paid tier. At $18/user/month, this is hard to justify. The user quotes speak for themselves - people are genuinely frustrated that a basic editing operation requires an enterprise-priced subscription.
ScreenPal gives you basic trim on the free plan, which is actually a competitive advantage over Loom on this specific point. The paid Solo Deluxe plan ($4/month annually) unlocks the full editor: text overlays, shapes, zoom/pan effects, and transitions. If rich editing tools matter to you, ScreenPal's paid plan is a strong deal at $4/month.
Vyds includes trim and stitch (combining multiple clips) on the Plus plan at $7/month. That's more expensive than ScreenPal Solo Deluxe, but Vyds's editor uses FFmpeg.wasm - everything runs in your browser without re-encoding, so trims and cuts process instantly. The tradeoff: Vyds currently doesn't have annotation tools like ScreenPal's overlays and shapes. If you need to add callouts, arrows, or on-screen text, ScreenPal's editor has more.
Bottom line on editing: ScreenPal wins on price for editing access ($4/month vs $7/month) and has more annotation tools. Vyds wins on processing speed. Loom loses - it's the most expensive and the most restrictive.
Recording and capture {#recording-and-capture}
All three tools cover the fundamentals: screen recording with webcam overlay, Chrome extension, macOS app, and Windows app.
System audio capture has historically been a headache on macOS, which requires a virtual audio driver to capture internal audio. Vyds and Loom both handle this natively on macOS without requiring third-party drivers. ScreenPal has required a virtual audio driver on some macOS versions - check your specific version before committing.
Webcam overlay: All three offer a movable webcam bubble. Vyds's camera bubble is draggable and resizable, with a shape toolbar for switching between circular and square formats. ScreenPal and Loom both have functional but less customizable overlays.
Recording quality: On paid plans, all three support 1080p or higher. On the free tier, Vyds is capped at 720p; ScreenPal free records at full resolution (a point in ScreenPal's favor for free-tier video quality).
Browser extension: All three have Chrome extensions that let you record without installing a desktop app. For quick recordings without setup, this is the fastest path to getting started with any of them.
Sharing and storage {#sharing-and-storage}
This is where the loom vs screenpal comparison diverges most from a product philosophy standpoint.
Loom and ScreenPal both use proprietary cloud storage. Your recordings live in their databases. You share via a link they generate. If you stop paying, accessing old recordings becomes complicated. If the company disappears or changes its pricing structure, you're scrambling to export your library.
Vyds takes the opposite approach. BYOS means your recordings are already in Google Drive or OneDrive from the moment you hit stop. The sharing link points to the file in your own storage. You're not dependent on Vyds's servers to serve your recordings.
For professional recordings shared with clients - sales demos, support explanations, training materials - this matters. If a client clicks a Loom link in 2027, it plays as long as Loom's servers are running and you're still a paying customer. If a client clicks a Vyds link in 2027, it plays from your Google Drive whether you're still a Vyds customer or not.
This is an uncontested feature. No other screen recording tool positions "your storage, your videos" as a core product philosophy. For anyone who's had the unsettling experience of a SaaS company raising prices or shutting down with their recordings trapped inside, this matters.
Team features {#team-features}
For teams evaluating the loom vs screenpal question, the per-seat pricing math changes everything.
| Team feature | Loom Business ($15/user annual) | ScreenPal ($8/user annual) | Vyds ($9/seat annual) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared library | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Team folders | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Centralized billing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Admin controls | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Viewer analytics | Yes | Basic | Basic |
| AI summaries | Business+AI tier ($24/user) | No | No |
| Per-user cost (annual) | $15/user/month (Business) | $8/user/month | $9/seat/month |
For a 10-person team on annual billing:
- Loom Business: $1,800/year
- ScreenPal Team: $960/year
- Vyds Pro: $1,080/year
ScreenPal wins on price for teams, though with the same editor-heavy feature set that may or may not be relevant to your workflow. Vyds is $120/year more expensive than ScreenPal but includes BYOS - each team member's recordings go into their own storage rather than a centralized ScreenPal cloud account.
The verdict {#verdict}
Here's my honest take after building one of these tools and spending months studying the category:
Loom makes sense if you're already a Confluence and Jira shop, need AI summaries and automated transcription, and have a budget that supports $15-18/seat/month. For those teams, Loom's depth is real. For everyone else, the price is hard to justify. See our full Loom alternatives roundup for the broader comparison.
ScreenPal makes sense if you need in-video annotations, shapes, text overlays, and transitions - and you want that at $4/month. The editor is the best value in this comparison at that price point. The trade-offs: the free tier is watermarked and unusable for professional work, and your videos live in ScreenPal's cloud.
Vyds makes sense if you're a light-to-medium user who wants a professional free tier without watermarks, cares about data ownership, or is evaluating screen recorders before committing real money. If you outgrow the free tier, $7/month is the entry point. If you want rich annotations today, ScreenPal is still the better buy on paid.
The loom vs screenpal question doesn't have a single answer. But for most people landing on that comparison - budget-conscious, on a free tier, evaluating whether to pay - neither tool treats the free tier with much respect. Loom caps you and paywalls your downloads. ScreenPal watermarks everything.
That's the gap Vyds is designed to fill.
FAQ {#faq}
Is ScreenPal better than Loom?
For individual users and small teams, ScreenPal is much cheaper than Loom ($4/month vs $15-18/user/month for Business) and includes editing features at a fraction of the cost. Where Loom wins: AI features, viewer analytics, and deeper team management. If you don't need Loom's AI add-ons, ScreenPal's pricing is much more reasonable.
Does ScreenPal have a free plan?
Yes. ScreenPal's free plan allows unlimited recordings up to 15 minutes each with basic editing. The catch: a ScreenPal watermark appears on every recording. For professional or client-facing work, you'll need the Solo Deluxe plan ($4/month annually) to remove it.
Is Loom free forever?
Loom has a free tier, but it's restricted to 25 videos per workspace and 5-minute recordings. Downloading your recordings or accessing trim requires the paid Business plan at $18/user/month. Loom's free tier is closer to a demo than a working product for frequent users.
What's the cheapest way to record your screen without a watermark?
Vyds's free plan records without a watermark and without a video cap. Recordings are stored in your Google Drive or OneDrive - no Vyds account needed to access them later. For recordings under 5 minutes, it's free indefinitely. For longer recordings or editing tools, Vyds Plus starts at $5/month billed annually.
Can I trim a video on Loom for free?
No. Trim is a paid feature on Loom. The Business plan starts at $18/user/month, which is the entry point for editing access. ScreenPal offers basic trim on its free plan. Vyds includes trim on the Plus plan at $7/month.
How does Vyds compare to Loom vs ScreenPal on storage?
Both Loom and ScreenPal store your recordings in their own cloud. With Vyds, recordings go directly into your Google Drive or OneDrive - this is called BYOS (bring your own storage). You own the files, they live in your storage account, and you can access them whether or not you're a Vyds customer.
What happens to my ScreenPal videos if I cancel?
ScreenPal gives you a window to export your recordings after cancellation, but your library lives on their servers. If you don't export in time, access may be lost. With Vyds, your recordings are already in your own Google Drive - cancellation doesn't affect them at all.
Which screen recorder is best for a 5-person team?
For a 5-person team, annual per-seat costs break down to: Loom ~$900/year, Vyds ~$540/year, ScreenPal ~$480/year. ScreenPal is the cheapest. Vyds adds BYOS (each member's recordings go to their own storage). Loom adds AI summaries and deeper analytics. The right choice depends on whether AI features or data ownership matter more to your team. For more team-focused options, see our screen recording tools for teams comparison.
Related posts
- 7 Best Loom Alternatives in 2026 - The full list, with pricing and honest assessments
- Is Loom Worth It in 2026? - A detailed look at Loom's pricing and what you're actually getting
- 5 Free Screen Recorders Without Watermarks - All the no-watermark options at every price point
- Screen Recording Tools for Teams - Async video for distributed teams
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