Two kinds of screen video
Loom made the async message popular: hit record, talk over your screen, paste a link in Slack, see who watched. Speed and the link come first. The free Starter plan covers a lot of that, within its limits: 25 videos per person, recordings of up to 5 minutes, and video up to 720p.
Dolly is for the video you'd put your name on: a product demo on your homepage, a tutorial in your help center, a walkthrough for a customer. That's where auto zoom, a smooth cursor and a designed frame matter. Since version 0.4.1 Dolly also handles the everyday message: with Quick share, the video is on your clipboard when you press Stop.
Price, over a year
Loom lists Business at $18 per user per month and Business + AI at $24, with up to 17% off when billed yearly. At the listed price, a five-person team on Business pays $1,080 a year. Dolly is free with no time limit; Lifetime is €5 once (no end card, 4K, GIF) and Pro is €19 once. Five Lifetime licenses cost €25, once.
The free plans, side by side
Loom Starter stops each recording at five minutes (Loom help) and counts every video, archived ones included, toward 25. Trimming, downloads and 4K are on Business. Dolly Free has no time limit and no video count, includes the full editor and Auto edit, and exports up to 1440p. The catch: free exports end with a 2-second "Made with Dolly" card. More in Loom's 5-minute limit, explained.
Sharing: where Loom is ahead
This is Loom's home ground. Every Loom video has a link that plays in any browser, with comments, reactions and viewer insights, and Business adds password protection. Dolly now has two ways to share. Get link (Dolly links, free during the beta) puts a short link on your clipboard in under a second and uploads while the video renders; it plays as soon as it's ready, on a page with timestamped comments, reactions, a transcript, a password or expiry if you want, and insights without cookies. Quick share puts a 1080p MP4 on your clipboard when you stop, so ⌘V pastes the video itself into Slack, Mail, Notion or Messages, with nothing uploaded. Loom still goes further for sales teams: it tells you by name who watched, and its team library has no Dolly equivalent. See how to send a screen recording in Slack.
How the video looks
Loom records your screen as it is. Dolly records the cursor separately and redraws it, zooms in on your clicks and typing, and places the recording on a background with padding, rounded corners and a shadow. On a phone or in a chat preview, that's the difference between reading the button and guessing at it.
Platforms and privacy
Loom runs on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android and in Chrome, and stores videos in its cloud. Dolly runs on Macs with Apple silicon only (Windows is in the works), with no account: recording, editing and export happen on your Mac, and a video goes online only when you choose Get link.
