Cap vs Loom: $8.16 a seat against $18, and only one of them tells you which price that is
How to read this page: every number below was read from the vendor’s own public pricing page on the date shown, and the pages are re-checked daily. Currencies differ because that is what each vendor showed an EU visitor. Some links on this page are affiliate links — if you subscribe through one we earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. Per our method, that never changes a number or a verdict. Source links always point to the vendor’s plain page.
Prices as this vendor showed them to a visitor in the United States — USD. A reader elsewhere may be quoted a different figure — we publish what we were served, never a conversion.
Prices as this vendor showed them to a visitor in the United States — USD. A reader elsewhere may be quoted a different figure — we publish what we were served, never a conversion.
Cap Pro is $12 a user a month billed monthly, or $8.16 billed annually. Loom Business is $18 a user a month, and Business + AI is $24. On any reading Cap is the cheaper of the two, and by enough that the gap is not the argument.
The argument is what each page is willing to tell you.
Cap's page carries both billing states. The card shows $8.16 and the toggle strip says, in words, that $12 is the rate billed monthly, with a 'Save 32%' badge on the annual option. Thirty-two per cent off $12 is $8.16 exactly — not to the nearest cent, exactly — so the two figures and the badge form a closed set that checks itself. That is rarer than it should be.
Loom's page carries a Monthly/Annually toggle, a 'save 17% if you pay annually' line in its own FAQ, and then prints $18 with no label saying which of the two it is. The other state never reaches the served page. So we can tell you Loom Business is $18 a user a month as the page prints it, and we cannot tell you whether that is the committed price or the flexible one — which is exactly the figure you need to compare a one-year decision against a month-to-month one.
This matters more than the usual pedantry about billing toggles, because 17% is a big enough discount to move the ranking of nothing here and the shape of everything. If $18 is Loom's annual rate then its month-to-month rate is higher still and the gap to Cap widens. If it is the month-to-month rate then Loom's annual rate is lower than $18 and the gap narrows. We know the direction of our own uncertainty and we are telling you rather than picking the flattering end of it.
Then there is a third thing Cap sells that Loom does not: a perpetual desktop licence at $29 a year for personal use. Not a seat, not a subscription to a workspace — a licence to run the application. For one person recording their own screen, that is a different transaction from renting a per-seat plan, and it is the option most comparisons of this pair leave out because it does not fit in a column next to a monthly rate.
And Cap is open source and self-hostable, which puts a floor under all of this in the same way it does for every open-source challenger: the per-seat price is avoidable entirely by a team willing to run the thing. That is a real option with a real cost, and it is not on the pricing page as a number.
Both have free tiers. Loom's is specific and generous on paper — 25 videos, five-minute recordings, up to fifty members in a workspace, all stated on the page — and the five-minute ceiling is the one that decides it: a walkthrough that runs six minutes is a paid plan. Cap's free tier exists alongside the licence and the subscription rather than as a funnel into one of them.
So: Cap is cheaper on every published figure, sells a shape Loom does not, can be run for nothing by a team that wants to, and is the only one of the two whose pricing page can be checked against itself. Loom is the one your recipients already know how to watch. Those are different kinds of reason and only you can weigh them.
Beyond the price tag
Both billing states, on one of them
Cap: $12 a user a month billed monthly, $8.16 billed annually, with a 'Save 32%' badge that reconciles exactly against the pair. Loom: $18 a user a month with no billing-state label and the alternate figure absent from the page.
The ladders
Cap sells one paid subscription rung, Pro, at $12 or $8.16. Loom sells two: Business at $18 and Business + AI at $24, the second adding automatic enhancement and editing. So the AI tier is a rung on Loom and not a rung at all on Cap.
The licence Loom has no answer to
Cap sells a perpetual desktop licence at $29 a year for personal use, separate from the per-seat subscription. One person recording their own screen is buying a different thing from a team renting seats, and only one of these two vendors sells it.
The free tiers are not the same shape
Loom's Starter is $0 with stated limits: 25 videos, five-minute recordings, up to fifty workspace members. The five-minute ceiling is the one that pushes teams onto a paid rung. Cap's free tier sits beside a licence and a subscription rather than funnelling into either.
One of them can be run for nothing
Cap is open source and self-hostable, so the per-seat fee is avoidable by a team willing to operate it. The cost moves from a subscription to a server and someone's attention; it does not disappear, and it does not appear on the pricing page either.
Per seat on both
Five seats on Cap Pro is $60 a month month-to-month, or $40.8 on the annual commitment. Five on Loom Business is $90. Neither headline is a bill.
Questions people actually search
Is Cap cheaper than Loom?
Yes, on every figure either vendor publishes. Cap Pro is $12 a user month to month or $8.16 billed annually; Loom Business is $18. The gap is wide enough that Loom's unlabelled billing state cannot close it in either direction.
Is Loom's $18 the monthly or the annual price?
The page does not say. It carries a Monthly/Annually toggle and states elsewhere that paying annually saves 17%, but the card itself has no qualifier and the second figure is not in the served page. We record what is printed and refuse to label it. If you are budgeting against a one-year commitment, that is the number to confirm with Loom directly.
What is the Cap desktop licence?
A perpetual licence for personal use at $29 a year, sold separately from the per-seat Pro subscription. It is the right shape for one person recording their own screen and the wrong shape for a team workspace, which is why it sits outside the ladder rather than at the bottom of it.
Can I self-host Cap instead of paying per seat?
It is open source and self-hostable, so there is no per-seat licence to pay. The cost becomes a server, upgrades and someone who will fix it. Worth it for teams that already run their own infrastructure; rarely worth it for a handful of seats.
Is Loom's free tier enough?
It depends on one number: five minutes. Loom Starter is $0 and allows 25 videos, up to fifty workspace members and recordings capped at five minutes, all stated on its page. Short async updates fit comfortably. A product walkthrough or an onboarding session does not, and that ceiling is what moves teams onto $18.
Which should I pick for a team of five?
On price, Cap: $40.8 a month annually against Loom's $90. On reach, Loom, because the people you send recordings to already know what a Loom link does. If your recordings stay inside the company the price argument wins easily; if they go to customers, the familiarity is worth paying for.
THE VERDICT, ONE MORE TIME
Our pick: Cap — $12 a seat month to month or $8.16 billed annually, against Loom's $18, and Cap is the only one of the two that tells you which of its prices you are reading.
Cap is cheaper on every figure either vendor publishes: $12 month to month and $8.16 annually against Loom's $18. It also sells a perpetual desktop licence at $29 a year for personal use, which is a shape Loom has no equivalent of, and it is open source and self-hostable on top. The deciding factor for us is smaller and duller than any of that: Cap serves both billing states in its page and its advertised 32% reconciles exactly against them, while Loom prints one number with no label and keeps the other in a browser session. A vendor that shows its working is easier to trust with a renewal.
Both read at their own pricing pages on 2026-09-03 04:2x CEST over plain HTTPS with a browser User-Agent: cap.so/pricing (HTTP 200, 188KB) and loom.com/pricing (HTTP 200, 852KB). Cap serves both billing states in its HTML; Loom serves one and does not label it, and this page says so rather than choosing one. Both were read from a Swiss egress rather than from the United States, and both served USD with no geo-redirect, so these are list prices as shown to a European reader — what a US-located visitor sees has not been verified. Every figure resolves from the record at build time rather than being typed. The method →
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