Loom Review
The async video tool that replaced a meaningful share of the meetings it was supposed to replace.
Loom is the fastest way to replace a meeting with a three-minute video, and the friction it removes is the whole product: record, stop, and the shareable link is already on your clipboard. Free for 25 videos of up to 5 minutes, $18 per user per month for unlimited, $24 with the AI suite. The AI tier is where the real time saving now lives.
Key factsBest for: Async updates, walkthroughs and onboarding video
- The fastest path from thought to shareable video, now with an AI layer that trims the rambling automatically.
- Founded: 2015
- Acquired by: Atlassian (2023)
- Alternatives covered: Vidyard, Zight, Screen Studio, Microsoft Clipchamp
Pros
- Genuinely frictionless: record, stop, link is ready, which is why the habit sticks where other tools fail
- AI summaries, chapters and filler-word removal save real editing time
- Timestamped comments keep conversations async instead of escalating to a meeting
Cons
- The free tier's 5-minute cap is restrictive enough to feel like a trial rather than a plan
- Editing is deliberately minimal, so anything polished needs a different tool
- Per-user pricing gets expensive for large teams where only some people record
Every company has meetings that exist because someone needed to show someone else a thing. Loom killed that category. You hit record, narrate your screen for three minutes, and paste a link. The recipient watches at 2x when it suits them, comments at a timestamp, and nobody blocked 30 minutes of four calendars.
Acquired by Atlassian in 2023, it has since leaned hard into AI. This review covers whether it is still the right pick and where the free tier stops being enough.
What is Loom?
Loom is a screen and camera recorder that uploads as you record and produces a shareable link the moment you stop. It runs as a desktop app, a Chrome extension and a mobile app.
Beyond recording, it handles hosting, viewer analytics, timestamped comments and emoji reactions, plus embedding into Notion, Jira, Confluence and most documentation tools. The 2026 product adds an AI layer: automatic titles, summaries, chapters, filler-word and silence removal, and meeting notes.
How Loom works
Install the app or extension, pick screen, camera or both, and record. Upload happens during recording, so the link is ready within a second or two of stopping, which is the detail that makes the habit stick. Editing is deliberately minimal: trim the ends, cut a section, remove filler words.
Sharing is a link with permissions, and viewers can comment at a timestamp without an account. Analytics show who watched and how far they got, which is genuinely useful for anything you needed confirmation was seen.
Loom key features
Loom pricing
Loom publishes list prices, and only Enterprise is quote-only. Starter is free for 25 videos per person and 5 minutes per recording, Business is $18 per user per month with about 17% off on annual billing, and Business + AI is $24 per user per month.
The cheapest credible entry is that free Starter, then Business; the $6 gap to Business + AI is the best-value step for teams that record regularly, because silence and filler removal shortens most videos by a fifth. Vidyard offers a free tier plus paid sales plans, and Clipchamp a free tier plus a premium tier that some Microsoft 365 plans already include.
Zight is free to start, then $9.95 per user per month for individuals and $12 for teams, both billed annually. Screen Studio is now a macOS subscription at $29 a month, or $9 a month billed yearly.
| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Loom Starter | Free | 25 videos per person, 5-minute recordings |
| Loom Business | $18/user/mo, about 17% off yearly | Removes caps; waveform editing, branding removal, upload and download |
| Loom Business + AI | $24/user/mo | Auto titles, summaries, chapters, filler and silence removal, meeting notes |
| Loom Enterprise | Custom quote | SSO, SCIM, Salesforce, 99.95 percent uptime SLA, account manager |
| Vidyard | Free tier plus paid plans | Paid plans aimed at sales teams |
| Zight Create | $9.95/user/mo billed annually | Individual plan above the free tier, with video requests |
| Zight Collaborate | $12/user/mo billed annually | Team plan with transcription, AI summaries and step-by-step guides |
| Screen Studio | $9/mo billed yearly ($29 monthly) | macOS only; all features plus shareable links |
| Clipchamp Premium | Premium tier | Free tier, or included in some Microsoft 365 plans |
Loom pros and cons
What we like
- Genuinely frictionless: record, stop, link is ready, which is why the habit sticks where other tools fail
- AI summaries, chapters and filler-word removal save real editing time
- Timestamped comments keep conversations async instead of escalating to a meeting
- Embeds natively in Notion, Confluence, Jira and Slack
- Viewer analytics tell you whether the message landed
What could be better
- The free tier's 5-minute cap is restrictive enough to feel like a trial rather than a plan
- Editing is deliberately minimal, so anything polished needs a different tool
- Per-user pricing gets expensive for large teams where only some people record
- Video hosted with a third party is a blocker for some compliance regimes
Who Loom is for
Loom is a strong fit for distributed teams, customer-facing roles and anyone who explains software for a living. Product managers walking through a spec, designers giving feedback on a mockup, support staff showing a fix, sales reps sending a personalised demo.
It is also excellent for onboarding documentation, where a library of short videos ages better than a written runbook. It is a poor fit for polished marketing video, where you need real editing, and for teams under strict data-residency rules who cannot host content with a third party. If you need heavy post-production, this is the wrong tool by design.
Best Loom alternatives
If Loom is not the right fit, these are the closest options.
| Tool | Best for | Starts at | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loom | Async updates, walkthroughs and onboarding video | From $18/user/mo (Business) | Visit → |
| Vidyard | Sales teams that need video in the CRM | Free tier | Visit → |
| Zight | Teams that need screenshots and annotation as much as video | Free tier | Visit → |
| Screen Studio | Polished product demos and marketing clips | $9/mo billed yearly or $29 monthly | Visit → |
| Microsoft Clipchamp | Microsoft 365 shops that need recording plus real editing | Free tier | Visit → |
The bottom line
Loom still owns its category because it optimised the right thing: the seconds between finishing a recording and sending it. Everything else follows from that. Start on the free tier to see whether your team forms the habit, but assume the 5-minute cap will push you to Business within weeks if it works.
If your team records more than occasionally, go straight to Business + AI, because automatic filler and silence removal makes videos shorter and shorter videos actually get watched. Reach for Screen Studio instead when the output is meant to be published rather than sent.
Frequently asked questions
Sources
Prices and plan details come from each vendor's own pricing page, re-checked by the Toolradar pricing tracker.
- Loom pricing, checked Sep 2026
- Vidyard pricing, checked Sep 2026
- Zight pricing, checked Sep 2026
- Microsoft Clipchamp pricing, checked Sep 2026
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