Loom vs ShareX Comparison 2026
Loom records the screen and your face, then hands back a shareable link the moment you stop: free for short clips, $18 a member a month once Business features are needed. ShareX captures a region, a window or a scrolling page, records video and GIFs, and then chains whatever steps you set afterward: annotate, upload, copy the link, all for nothing, forever, with no account. The catch is that ShareX only runs on Windows and involves a genuinely deep settings screen. Pick Loom for a two-minute video sent to one person; pick ShareX for high-volume screenshots uploaded to a place you control.
At a glance
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Loom | ShareX | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $18 | Free |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free plan, paid tiers | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Not stated |
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
ShareX
Screen capture and recording, open source
ShareX captures a region, a window, a scrolling page or the whole screen, records video and GIFs, and then runs whatever steps you set afterwards: annotate, upload, copy the link back. It has been in development for eighteen years and it uploads to a long list of destinations, including one you host yourself. Windows only, free, and it wants no account.
Why people weigh these two
- ShareX instead of Loom
- ShareX is free and open source, covering capture and recording for anybody willing to trade polish for owning the tool.
- Loom instead of ShareX
- Loom sends the recording out as a shareable link instead of a local file, with a free tier and an $18 plan, built for sending a message rather than capturing a screenshot library.
Which one should you pick
Pick Loom when the recording is really a message: a client walkthrough, a piece of feedback, an update the team watches on its own time. The free Starter plan covers most of that, and Business at $18 a member a month adds who-watched insights once a team needs them.
Pick ShareX when the job is mostly screenshots and short clips going somewhere specific, like a self-hosted bucket rather than somebody else's cloud. It costs nothing at any volume and has run eighteen years on donations, but it is Windows-only, and anybody on a Mac cannot install it at all.
Common questions
- Is ShareX really free, with no catch?
- Yes. No paid tier, no account required and no advertising, funded by donations after eighteen years of development. Loom's Starter plan is also free but caps how long a video runs and how many you keep; ShareX has no such cap.
- Does ShareX work on a Mac?
- No, it is Windows only. Loom does not state which operating systems it supports, but its web and desktop apps are the standard route, so it is the safer pick for a mixed-platform team.
- Which is better for sharing a recording with one client quickly?
- Loom. The link is copied the moment the recording stops, built specifically for sending a video as correspondence. ShareX is built around chaining capture, annotation and upload steps, and is not aimed at that one-click share.
- Can ShareX upload to my own server instead of a vendor's cloud?
- Yes, custom uploaders send captures to a server or bucket you control, which Loom does not offer. Loom hosts everything itself, and that is part of what the $18 a month Business plan pays for.
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.