Loom vs Screencastify Comparison 2026
Loom records the screen and your face together and hands back a shareable link the moment you stop, free for short clips and $18 a member a month for Business once length or count caps bite. Screencastify records from a Chrome extension and adds what a classroom needs and Loom does not: questions dropped into the video with the replies collected afterward. Its free plan holds ten videos of up to thirty minutes, and Starter is $7 a user a month billed annually, about a third of the $19 monthly rate. The choice is between a link for correspondence and a video that expects an answer back.
At a glance
- Screencastify starts cheaper, at $7.
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Loom | Screencastify | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $18 | From $7 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | None |
| API | Yes |
Loom
Screen recordings that go out as a link
Loom records your screen and your face together and hands you a link the moment you stop, so the thing you would have written three paragraphs about arrives as a two minute video instead. Viewers can reply on a timestamp rather than describing where they got confused. Editing is trimming and little else, so a cut that needs more than that belongs somewhere else.
Our note
Loom is for the video nobody would otherwise have made. Buy it for correspondence rather than publishing, and check the free plan's length limit against the way you actually explain things before paying for anything.
Only on this side
- Covers video hosting
Screencastify
Screen recording built for classrooms
Screencastify records the screen from a Chrome extension and adds what a teacher needs and a marketer does not: questions inside the video, collected replies, and a way to ask thirty people to record something back. It works for a plain product demo too. The free plan stops at ten videos of thirty minutes each.
Why people weigh these two
- Screencastify instead of Loom
- Screencastify from $7 with a free tier is built for classrooms, priced and shaped for teaching rather than for work updates.
- Loom instead of Screencastify
- For a plain product demo, Screencastify's own advice says Loom is quicker to use, with a more generous free tier than the ten videos Screencastify's free plan allows.
Which one should you pick
Pick Loom when the point is speed: stop recording and the link is already on the clipboard, ready to drop into a message. The free Starter plan is enough for most correspondence, and Business at $18 a member a month adds viewer insights: who watched, how far they got, and where they stopped.
Pick Screencastify when the recording is meant to be answered rather than only watched: a lesson, a training video, a survey embedded in the timeline. Its free plan gives ten videos up to thirty minutes each, more room than Loom's capped Starter tier, and Starter drops to $7 a user a month if billed annually rather than the $19 charged monthly.
Common questions
- Is Loom or Screencastify cheaper?
- Depends how you pay. Screencastify's Starter tier is $7 a user a month billed annually, cheaper than Loom's $18 a month Business plan. Paid monthly instead, Screencastify jumps to $19, which lands close to Loom's rate either way.
- Which has the better free plan?
- Screencastify's own listing calls Loom's free tier more generous for a plain recording. Screencastify's free plan holds ten videos of up to thirty minutes each; Loom's free Starter caps both length and how many recordings you keep, without a stated number.
- Can viewers answer questions inside the video on either tool?
- Only Screencastify does that: a question dropped into the timeline with the replies collected in one place, built for a classroom or a training session. Loom has no equivalent; a viewer can only comment on a timestamp.
- Does either tool show who watched the recording?
- Loom does, from the Business plan and up: who watched, how far they got, and where they stopped. Screencastify does not list a comparable viewer-insights feature.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.