Clarcut vs Loom: which one fits your screen recordings?

Clarcut vs Loom at a glance

Public prices as of November 2026, excluding any taxes. They may change.

Two tools for two different jobs

Loom was made to replace a meeting or a long message: you record, the link is ready the moment you stop, your coworker watches, comments at a specific timestamp and reacts. Everything revolves around sharing: a team library, spaces, viewer insights, and integrations with Slack, Jira, GitHub, Gmail and Notion. For a company that works asynchronously, it's a real communication tool.

Clarcut starts from the video itself. While you record, it separately logs your mouse position, clicks and keystrokes. When you stop, the video is already edited: the camera zooms in on your clicks with smooth motion, the cursor is smoothed out, background noise is removed, and the picture sits on a background with a frame. The result looks like a polished product demo, not a quick message.

The differences that matter

• The look: Loom captures your screen as-is. Clarcut adds zooms, a smoother cursor, click ripples, a background and a frame, without touching the timeline.
• The price: Loom bills every month, per user. Clarcut Pro is a one-time $44, with one year of updates, on up to 3 computers. Clarcut's share links are optional (Clarcut Plus, $9 a month or $90 a year).
• The free plan: Loom's free plan stops at 25 videos of 5 minutes, in 720p. Clarcut's free version has no limit on count or length and exports 1080p at 30 fps, with a small watermark.
• Teamwork: Loom offers comments, reactions, shared spaces, per-viewer insights and integrations. Clarcut has none of that: its share links are for viewers, not for a team collaborating.
• AI: Loom Business + AI generates titles, summaries and chapters, removes filler words and lets you edit by transcript. Clarcut removes silences, but not the “ums.”
• Privacy: with Loom, your video goes to the cloud as you record. With Clarcut, editing and transcription happen on your computer; nothing leaves it unless you create a share link.

From recording to sending

1. 1

   With Loom

   Start recording from the app or the Chrome extension, talk, stop: the link is copied. You can trim the start and end and, depending on your plan, let AI remove hesitations. The viewer comments right on the video.

2. 2

   With Clarcut

   Pick a screen, a window or an area, then press Ctrl + Shift + R on Windows. When you stop, the editor opens with zooms already in place. Adjust a zoom by dragging its frame, cut silences in one click, add captions (Pro), then export as MP4 or GIF, or create a link with Clarcut Plus.

In practice, Loom is hard to beat for a 2-minute reply to a coworker. Clarcut takes a minute longer, but the result can work as a demo on your website, a tutorial for customers, or a social post.

What it costs over 1 and 3 years

The gap grows with headcount: Loom bills per seat, while Clarcut Pro is a one-time purchase per user. If your whole team needs to comment and discuss, this math isn't the whole story: that back-and-forth is exactly what Loom is good at.

When to pick Loom instead of Clarcut

• Your team communicates mostly through video messages and needs comments, reactions and viewer insights.
• You want your videos to flow into Slack, Jira or Notion without leaving your tools.
• You record from a Chromebook, a Linux machine (through the Chrome extension) or your phone.
• You want auto-generated summaries, chapters or filler-word removal.

Three questions that settle it

• Who watches the video? If it's coworkers who will reply, comment or ask follow-up questions, Loom's comments, reactions and viewer insights are the point. If it's customers, prospects or students who just need to understand something, the polish of an auto-edited video matters more than the conversation around it.
• How long does the video need to live? A Loom reply is often useful for a day or a week. A product demo, an onboarding video or a tutorial can stay on your site or help center for months, which makes the extra minute spent in Clarcut's editor worth it.
• Where can the file go? Loom uploads as you record, which is exactly what makes the link instant. If you film internal dashboards, customer data or anything you'd rather keep off third-party servers, Clarcut keeps editing and transcription on your computer, and you can blur a sensitive area from a given moment before exporting.

If your answers point both ways, that's normal: the two tools overlap less than their marketing suggests, and plenty of people use one for conversations and the other for content.

Switching from Loom without breaking anything

Plenty of teams keep both: Loom for internal conversations, Clarcut for videos that leave the company (demos, customer onboarding, tutorials). If you're leaving Loom, first save the videos you want to keep: downloading is part of the Business plan.

Then install Clarcut for free and redo a video you know well to compare the results. If you upgrade to Clarcut Pro after leaving Loom, the code TCHAO15 gets you 15% off.

Our verdict by profile

• Product or support team working async: Loom, for comments and integrations.
• Founder, marketer or instructor publishing demos and tutorials: Clarcut, for the no-editing polish and the one-time price.
• Freelancer sending videos to clients: Clarcut, with Clarcut Plus if you want a watch page with the transcript alongside.

Frequently asked questions