Price, honestly compared
Cap's pricing has three steps. Free is for personal use, with Studio Mode and 4K exports. The Desktop License adds commercial use and 20 share links a month (up to five minutes each) for $29 a year or $58 once. Cap Pro is $12 per user per month, or $8.16 a month billed yearly, and adds unlimited links, AI titles, summaries and chapters, a custom domain, passwords and viewer analytics.
Dolly is free with no time limit; free exports go up to 1440p and end with a 2-second "Made with Dolly" card. Lifetime is €5 once (no end card, 4K at 60 fps, GIF). Pro is €19 once and adds Connect your AI. Dolly links are free on every plan during the beta.
Where Cap is ahead
Cap runs on Mac (Apple silicon and Intel), Windows and Linux, plus a Chrome extension. It's open source: you can read the code, fork it, or run the whole platform on your own servers. Cap Pro has team workspaces, a custom domain and storage in your own S3 bucket or Google Drive. Dolly has none of that: it's a Mac app for Apple silicon, and Windows is still in the works.
Where Dolly is ahead
Dolly is built around how the video looks. It records your cursor as data and redraws it from 25 cursor sets, moves the camera on springs you can choose (focused, balanced or smooth, with motion blur), and puts the result on a designed background with padding and a shadow. While you record, you can read from a teleprompter that never shows up in the video, and draw on screen with a pen, highlighter, arrow or box (⇧⌘D). Afterwards, Dolly writes a title, summary and chapters on your Mac, from what you said, with no upload.
Sharing: closer than you'd think
Cap's Instant Mode uploads while you record and has the link ready when you stop. Dolly's Get link puts a short link on your clipboard in under a second and uploads while it renders; the page says "Processing" until the video plays. Both links have comments at a moment, reactions and a transcript. Dolly shows views, average watched and a drop-off curve without cookies, and lets you set a password, an expiry and a call-to-action button. The difference is cost: Dolly links are free during the beta, while Cap's cheapest paid plan includes 20 a month.
Your AI, in both
Cap has a local MCP server and a CLI so agents like Claude Code or Cursor can manage your recordings. Dolly Agent (Pro) goes a step further: your AI plans an explainer, records it in Dolly, edits it and adds a voice-over made on your Mac, and can re-record only the parts that changed. Dolly itself calls no AI, so there are no credits.
