Loom vs Screen Studio vs Dolly

People compare these three tools because all of them record your screen. That is where most of the overlap ends. Loom is built for sending a quick video message to a colleague and knowing they watched it. Screen Studio and Dolly are built for making a recording look good enough to put on a landing page, in a launch post or in documentation. If you choose the wrong kind of tool, you will either spend twenty minutes polishing a message nobody needed polished, or send a product demo that looks like a bug report.

This comparison covers what each tool is for, what it costs as of October 2026, and when each one is the right pick. That includes the cases where Dolly is not. Dolly is our product, so read the Dolly parts with that in mind; every claim about the other two links to their own pages or to independent sources.

The short version

• Loom is for async communication inside a team: record, share a link instantly, see who watched, get comments. Polish is secondary.
• Screen Studio is the most complete tool for polished Mac screen recordings: auto zoom, smooth cursor, camera layouts, captions, transcript editing, share links. It is a subscription.
• Dolly does the core of the polished-demo job (auto zoom, redrawn cursor, backgrounds, simple timeline, fast MP4 export) entirely on your Mac, free with no time limit. It is younger and does less.

Different jobs

Loom: video instead of a meeting

Loom's value is in the link. You record, and a shareable link is ready to paste into Slack, Jira or an email. Viewers can watch in the browser, leave comments and emoji reactions, and you can see viewer insights; those are listed even on the free Starter plan on Loom's pricing page. Loom has been part of Atlassian since the acquisition closed in November 2023, and the product leans into that ecosystem.

What Loom does not try to do is make your screen look cinematic. There is no automatic zoom that follows your clicks and no redrawn cursor. That is the right trade-off for a "here is how to reproduce the bug" message.

Screen Studio: polished demos with everything included

Screen Studio records your screen and cursor separately, then rebuilds the video with smooth zooms, a smoothed cursor and styled backgrounds. Its homepage lists a lot on top of that: camera layouts, captions generated on the Mac, transcript-based editing, GIF export, aspect ratios including 9:16, and share links that play at 1080p60 for videos up to 30 minutes. It is the tool that defined this category, and it shows in the depth of the feature set.

Dolly: the core of the polished demo, local and cheap

Dolly takes the same basic idea. It records a display or a window, records the cursor separately, and redraws the cursor smoothly with your choice of style, smoothing, click effects, click sounds and motion blur. Clicks become automatic zoom blocks on the timeline, which you can move, change or delete, and you can add manual zooms. You put the recording on a landscape, a macOS wallpaper or a blurred background with padding, rounded corners, shadow and inset. The timeline handles splits (the S key) and speed per section, and you export an MP4.

Recording, editing and export run on your Mac, with no account; a video only goes to a server when you choose Get link. Since version 0.3 it also records your camera (bubble, side by side or camera only), transcribes on your Mac for captions and editing by transcript, and exports GIF. Since version 0.4.9 it also has share links (Dolly links), free during the beta.

Pricing as of October 2026

Sources: Loom pricing, Screen Studio pricing, Screen Studio terms §9, AlternativeTo on the license change, Dolly pricing. Loom Free limits also from Layerpath, checked 7 September 2026.

A few notes on that table:

• Loom's page says annual billing saves up to 17%, but it does not state whether the $18 and $24 figures are the monthly or the annual rate. Check the page when you buy.
• Screen Studio offers 40% off for students and educators. People who bought the old one-time license (last sold at $229 with a year of updates) keep their version and get updates until 25 September 2027, according to AlternativeTo.
• Third-party reviews report that Screen Studio lets you open the app and record before paying, but export needs a subscription. Find that out before you record your launch video, not after.

Over a year, the gap is large. A single Screen Studio user pays $108 on the yearly plan or $348 month to month. A five-person team on Loom Business pays $18 × 5 × 12, which is $1,080 a year at the listed price. Dolly is free without a time limit, Pro is €59 a year, and Lifetime is €99 once per person. That does not make Dolly the right choice for everyone, but it is worth knowing what you are paying for.

Sharing

This is where Loom is strongest and Dolly is weakest.

• Loom: sharing is the product. Every recording gets a link, with comments, reactions and viewer insights on every plan, and password-protected videos on Business, per the pricing page.
• Screen Studio: optional share links at 1080p60 for videos up to 30 minutes, with comments on specific seconds, private links and view counts. You are asked before the first upload (screen.studio).
• Dolly: you export an MP4 file and share it however you like. Since version 0.4.1, Quick share puts a 1080p MP4 on your clipboard the moment you press Stop, so ⌘V pastes the video itself into Slack, Mail or Notion. Nothing is uploaded: the file goes wherever you paste it. Since 0.4.9, Get link gives a short link instead, right away, with timestamped comments, reactions, a transcript, password or expiry, and view counts without cookies. Free includes up to 10 active links; Pro has unlimited links with stats.

If the main thing you need is "send this to my team and see who watched it", Loom wins and it is not close.

Editing

Loom's AI tier adds filler-word and silence removal, auto summaries and auto chapters (Loom pricing). Screen Studio 4.0, released in October 2026, added transcript editing, a camera cutout tool and more mouse effects (AlternativeTo).

Dolly's editor is deliberately small. For the common case (one take of a product flow that needs zooms, a clean cursor and a nice frame) it covers what you need. If your workflow depends on cutting by transcript or putting your face in a corner, Screen Studio does that today and Dolly does not.

Privacy and where your video lives

• Loom is a cloud product. Recordings are uploaded so they can be shared as links. That is the point of it, but it means your recording lives on Loom's servers under Atlassian's terms.
• Screen Studio describes itself as offline first: recording, editing, transcription and export run on the Mac, and cloud features (share links, cloud transcription, AI voiceover) run only when you opt in (screen.studio).
• Dolly runs recording, editing and export locally. There is no account to create. A video leaves your Mac only when you send it somewhere or click Get link, and then only that video.

If you record screens with customer data, internal dashboards or unreleased features, a local tool removes one place where that footage can leak. Screen Studio and Dolly both qualify; Loom by design does not.

Platforms

Sources: Loom device compatibility, Loom pricing, screen.studio.

Loom is the only one of the three that works for a mixed Mac and Windows team today. Dolly also needs Apple silicon, so it will not run on Intel Macs.

Who should pick which

Pick Loom if

• You mainly record for colleagues: walkthroughs, code reviews, bug reports, status updates.
• You need links, comments and view tracking more than visual polish.
• Your team uses Windows, Linux or Chromebooks, or lives in Jira and Confluence.

Pick Screen Studio if

• You make polished demos regularly and want the deepest feature set available on a Mac: camera layouts, captions, transcript editing, GIF, built-in share links.
• The subscription is easy to justify because recordings are part of your job.
• You record iPhone or iPad apps and want the device frame done for you.

Pick Dolly if

• You want the core polished-demo look (auto zoom, smooth cursor, background, quick cuts, MP4) for free, with no time limit.
• You record now and then, and paying monthly for an occasional launch video feels wrong.
• You want recordings to stay on your machine, with no account.
• You want an AI assistant to record and edit demos for you. That is the Pro tier, which works with MCP clients such as Claude and Cursor.

Plenty of people will end up with two of these. Loom for talking to the team and a polishing tool for anything public is a reasonable setup. If that polishing tool is Dolly, the second tool can cost nothing.

You can download Dolly and export with the free tier before deciding. If you buy Pro or Lifetime and it is not for you, the refund window is 30 days.

Sources

• Loom pricing
• Loom device compatibility (Atlassian Support)
• The Loom recording platforms (Atlassian Support)
• Atlassian completes acquisition of Loom (Business Wire)
• Screen Studio homepage and pricing
• Screen Studio terms of service
• AlternativeTo: Screen Studio removes non-subscription licensing
• AlternativeTo: Screen Studio 4.0
• Trainn: Screen Studio pricing
• Dolly pricing
• Loom Free limits (5 minutes per video, 25 videos, 720p, Loom watermark) from Layerpath, checked 7 September 2026