MarkLayer

Free Loom alternatives

By Vadym Rusin · Last updated: August 2026

Loom's free Starter plan covers 25 videos per person with a 5-minute cap on screen recordings. Business lifts both at $18 per user per month, and Business + AI is $24. For a team of ten, that is a real line item, which is usually what sends people looking.

Two different answers follow, and the right one depends on the video. If you need motion or voice, swap to a cheaper recorder. If you look back at your last ten Looms and half of them were one static screen with you describing what was wrong, those did not need to be videos at all.

Bottom line

If you need voice, motion, or a face on camera, pick Tella or Vidyard and keep recording. If most of your Looms are really one screen with an arrow on it, MarkLayer replaces those for free, and the recipient reads it in seconds instead of scrubbing a two-minute video.

Top free Loom alternatives

1. MarkLayer

Free and open source, and a different shape: instead of recording the page, you annotate it. Arrows, highlights, and pinned comments on a live URL, shared as a link that opens in any browser. Threaded replies sit on the page itself. No voice, no video, no recording to sit through.

Best for: The Looms that are really one screen and two sentences: a layout bug, a copy change, a design note.

2. Tella

Screen and camera recording with a stronger editing and presentation layer than Loom, aimed at polished async updates and demo videos rather than throwaway clips.

Best for: Videos someone outside your team will watch, where production quality matters.

3. Vidyard

Screen recording built for sales and marketing, with a free tier, hosting, and viewer analytics on who watched how much.

Best for: Outbound and customer-facing video where you need view tracking.

4. Berrycast

Straightforward screen recorder with a simpler feature set and flat pricing, aimed at people who found Loom heavier than they needed.

Best for: A direct, cheaper swap when you just want to record and send.

Frequently asked questions

What are Loom's free plan limits?
As of August 2026 the Starter plan is free for up to 50 members, with 25 videos per person and a 5-minute cap on screen recordings. Business removes the length cap and the video count at $18 per user per month, and Business + AI is $24.
Is MarkLayer a Loom alternative?
Only for a slice of what people use Loom for, and it is worth being honest about which slice. If the message is a walkthrough of a multi-step flow, record it. If the message is this heading is wrong and here is what it should say, an annotated link lands faster and costs nothing.
Does MarkLayer record video or voice?
No. It is drawing and text on a live page. There is live voice chat when several people are in a room together, but nothing is recorded and there is no video artifact at the end.
Why would an annotated link beat a video for a bug report?
Time to understand. A developer opens the link, sees a circle around the broken element and one line of text, and is oriented in about three seconds. The same information in a 90-second video means watching, scrubbing back, and pausing to read the URL.
Can I use both?
Most teams that try this end up doing exactly that. Loom or Tella for walkthroughs and async standups, MarkLayer for specific visual feedback. They are not really competing for the same message.

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Try MarkLayer

MarkLayer is free, requires no sign-up, and works on any webpage. Recipients of your share links don't need to install anything.

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