A two-minute screen recording explaining a design change or walking through a deliverable often does more for a client relationship than a paragraph of written explanation — it's faster to make, harder to misread, and lets a client see exactly what you mean. Loom popularized this workflow, but changes to its free plan and per-seat pricing after its acquisition by Atlassian have pushed a lot of freelancers to look for alternatives that still nail the core job: record, share a link, done.
Coming from a consulting background, I tend to weigh pricing structure and long-term cost more heavily than a feature checklist.
What matters for a freelancer's async video use case
- A genuinely usable free tier — freelancers don't need a team plan, so per-seat enterprise pricing structures are the wrong fit entirely
- No painful recording caps — a 5-minute limit is fine for a quick update, frustrating for a walkthrough
- Simple sharing, no account required for the client — friction at the viewing end defeats the purpose of a quick, casual update
- Reasonable video quality retention — a compressed, blurry recording of code or fine design detail isn't useful to anyone
Quick comparison
| Tool | Free plan | Recording cap | Paid starting price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ScreenPal | Yes, unlimited clips | 15 minutes per video | ~$4/month (Deluxe) | Best value, closest direct Loom replacement |
| Tella | Yes | Limited by plan | From published pricing | Cleaner, more polished async recordings |
| OBS Studio | Yes, fully free, open-source | None | Free (self-hosted, manual sharing) | Freelancers who want zero cost and don't mind manual file handling |
| Vimeo | Limited free tier | Storage-capped | From ~$12/month | Ad-free, branded hosting for finished client deliverables |
ScreenPal — the most practical direct replacement
ScreenPal's free tier covers what most freelancers actually need from Loom: unlimited clips, a 15-minute cap per recording (three times Loom's free-tier limit), and cloud-hosted shareable links with no watermark. Its Deluxe paid tier, at around $4/month, undercuts Loom's business pricing while covering more than most freelancers need. It's a more no-frills tool than Tella — solid recording and sharing, without deeper editing or AI polish.
Best for: freelancers who just want Loom's core workflow (record, share a link) without Loom's current pricing.
Tella — best if the recording needs to look more polished
Tella's editing layer — cleaner transitions, a more considered visual presentation — makes a recording feel more like a produced update than a raw screen capture, which matters if async video updates are a regular, visible part of how you work with a client rather than an occasional quick note. It's positioned as the closest "cleaner-feeling" Loom replacement, with a rollout path specifically built for teams migrating an existing Loom library over.
Best for: freelancers who send async video updates often enough that a more polished presentation is worth the extra setup.
OBS Studio — free and open-source, with real trade-offs
OBS Studio is completely free, open-source, and puts no cap on recording length, but it's fundamentally a different kind of tool — local recording software rather than a hosted sharing platform. You get the file, and you're responsible for uploading and sharing it yourself (Dropbox or Google Drive from our cloud storage guide work well for this). For freelancers comfortable with a bit more manual handling, that's a real way to avoid any subscription cost at all.
Best for: freelancers who want zero cost, don't mind an extra manual step to share the file, and want full control over where recordings live.
Vimeo — best for polished, finished deliverables
Vimeo isn't a recording tool at all — it's where a finished recording goes once it needs to look genuinely professional: ad-free playback, your own branding on the player, and privacy controls that a Loom or ScreenPal link doesn't offer. For a freelancer delivering a final walkthrough video as part of a project (not just a quick internal-feeling update), hosting it on Vimeo instead of a casual screen-recorder link reads as more considered.
Best for: final client-facing deliverables where the video itself is part of the polished output, not just a quick working update.
Why this category is in flux right now
Loom's 2026 billing changes — converting free "viewer" seats to paid Creator accounts during its Atlassian migration — caught a lot of long-time users off guard with unexpectedly large bills, which is the direct reason so many freelancers are actively looking at alternatives this year rather than out of routine comparison shopping. If you're currently on Loom and reconsidering, it's worth exporting your existing video library (available as MP4 downloads on paid plans) before making any changes to your account.
Bottom line
For most freelancers, ScreenPal is the most direct, lowest-cost replacement for what Loom used to be. If your async updates are frequent enough that polish matters, Tella is worth the switch. And if you want a completely free, no-subscription option and don't mind a manual sharing step, OBS Studio paired with your existing cloud storage does the job at zero cost.
Pricing, free-tier limits, and recording caps in this category change frequently. Confirm current details on each provider's site before choosing.