Updated April 26, 2026.
Loom's free plan is one of the most-Googled product tiers in async-video software. The reason is simple: most people start free, hit a wall, and try to figure out whether to pay or move on. This post is the no-spin breakdown of what Loom Free actually allows in 2026, what it costs to remove each limit, and the free alternative — Clipy — that doesn't impose any of them.
We work on Clipy. The Loom limits below are taken from Loom's public plan pages. If anything has changed since this was written, the spirit of the comparison hasn't.
What Loom Free actually includes
- 25 videos lifetime per person. Not per month. Lifetime, on the Starter (free) plan.
- 5-minute cap per recording. Recordings auto-cut at five minutes.
- Basic editor only. No advanced trim, click-to-edit transcript, or filler-word removal.
- Watermark / branding applied in some places.
- Limited transcript and AI features. The headline AI features sit on Business+.
Each of these has a real job-to-be-done attached. The 25-video cap exists to convert. The 5-minute cap exists to convert. The watermark exists to convert. None of this is a secret — Loom is explicit about it. The question is whether your usage hits any of these walls.
Who hits each wall
The 5-minute cap
Hits anyone recording: walkthroughs, training videos, code reviews, lessons, demos longer than a minute or two. A clean product walkthrough is rarely under 5 minutes. The cap is the most common reason people search for an alternative.
The 25-video lifetime cap
Hits anyone who uses screen recording as a regular communication channel. 25 videos sounds generous until you realize it's lifetime. A founder doing a few customer recordings a week burns through that in a month.
The watermark
Hits anyone sending recordings to customers, candidates, or partners. A watermark on a sales follow-up looks unfinished.
What it costs to remove each limit on Loom
Loom's paid tiers (Business and above) remove the recording cap, the lifetime cap, the watermark, and unlock real editing. The price for individuals is real money per seat per month, billed annually.
For a small team, the math gets noticeable: 5 seats × Business pricing × 12 months ≈ several hundred dollars a year for "remove the limits Loom imposed."
Clipy: the limits that don't exist
Clipy is built around removing exactly these walls.
- No length cap. Record a 30-second bug report or a 90-minute training session. Both work.
- No video count cap. Record 1, 100, or 10,000. Free.
- No watermark. Ever, on any tier.
- No sign-up to watch. Send the link to a customer, they click, they watch. No account gate.
- No app install required. clipy.online works in your browser. There's also a desktop app for system-audio capture.
Side-by-side
| Limit | Loom Free | Clipy Free |
|---|---|---|
| Length per video | 5 minutes | Unlimited |
| Lifetime video count | 25 | Unlimited |
| Watermark | Yes | No |
| Viewer sign-up | Sometimes | Never |
| Trim | Basic | Yes |
| Cost to remove caps | Paid plan | $0 |
When Loom is still the right choice
- Your company has standardized on Loom and your viewers are inside the Loom ecosystem.
- You need Loom's specific AI features (titles, summaries, filler-word removal).
- You need Loom's deeper editor.
For everything else — including most personal use, most freelance work, most early-stage startup use, and almost all education use — the free version of Clipy removes the friction that Loom Free adds.
Try Clipy free. One-click screen recording in your browser, instant share link, no watermark, no time limit, no sign-up to watch. Start recording at clipy.online — or download the desktop app for system-audio capture.