Is Bubbles or Loom cheaper?

Bubbles starts at $0 (Basic), then $12 per member per month billed yearly (Pro Teams) (free plan available). Loom starts at $0 (Starter), then $18 per user per month billed monthly (Business) (free plan available).

Bubbles vs Loom

An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.

The short answer

Both sides assessed

Bubbles compared with Loom

Loom is the better recorder with better editing, transcription in 50-plus languages, embedding across 400-plus tools, and Atlassian's security behind it, at $15 to $20 a seat. Bubbles is cheaper at $12, has a far more generous free tier, threads video replies into channels, and throws in an AI meeting notetaker. Take Loom if embedding and reliability decide it; take Bubbles if you want the conversation around the recording and a second product in the same bill.

Loom compared with Bubbles

Both target async internal communication, but Bubbles is built around the thread rather than the link: video replies, channels, and an AI notetaker that joins live meetings, at $12 per member per month annually against Loom's $15. Bubbles' free tier allows unlimited screen recordings up to 30 minutes where Loom caps you at 25 videos of five minutes. Take Loom if embedding everywhere and reliability matter most, or if you live in Jira and Confluence. Take Bubbles if the conversation around the recording is the point and you want a much more generous free tier.

Choose Bubbles if

Distributed teams of three to thirty who want to replace recurring calls with threaded async video conversation, especially engineering, design, and product groups that also want their live meetings recorded and summarized under the same subscription.

Choose Loom if

Distributed teams that want to replace status meetings, code walkthroughs, design feedback, and support explanations with recordings, especially teams already inside Atlassian tools, plus solo operators and small companies who can live inside the free 25-video allowance.

Side by side

13 attributes

Attribute	Bubbles	Loom
Category	Video	Video
Starting price	$0 (Basic), then $12 per member per month billed yearly (Pro Teams) (free plan available)	$0 (Starter), then $18 per user per month billed monthly (Business) (free plan available)
Pricing model	Freemium per-member subscription with pricing that adjusts automatically based on team size, discounted for yearly billing.	Freemium per-seat subscription with three published tiers and a quote-only Enterprise tier, discounted roughly 17 percent for annual billing.
Free plan	Unlimited screen recordings up to 30 minutes each, five meeting recordings per week, AI summaries, a notetaker joining all meetings, and two channels, with recordings locking after two weeks.	Starter includes 25 videos per person, a hard five-minute cap per recording, 720p, transcriptions, comments, and emoji reactions, for workspaces of up to 50 members.
Free trial	14 days on Pro plans, alongside a permanent free Basic plan	Free Starter plan serves as the evaluation path; paid tiers can be trialed from within the product
Best for	Distributed teams of three to thirty who want to replace recurring calls with threaded async video conversation, especially engineering, design, and product groups that also want their live meetings recorded and summarized under the same subscription.	Distributed teams that want to replace status meetings, code walkthroughs, design feedback, and support explanations with recordings, especially teams already inside Atlassian tools, plus solo operators and small companies who can live inside the free 25-video allowance.
Setup time	Fifteen minutes. Install the Chrome extension or desktop app, connect Google Calendar or Outlook if you want the notetaker, create a channel, and record. The free tier means the first month costs nothing and proves whether the habit forms.	Under ten minutes. Install the Chrome extension or desktop app, sign in with Google or your work account, grant screen and microphone permissions, and record. There is nothing to configure before the first useful video.
Learning curve	Low mechanically, moderate culturally. Recording and replying are obvious. The change that has to be agreed explicitly is that a video reply is an acceptable answer, because if half the team responds by asking for a call the threading model never engages and you have bought an expensive recorder.	Near zero for recording. The part teams get wrong is cultural rather than technical: async video only replaces meetings if people agree to watch recordings instead of asking for a call, and that convention has to be set explicitly.
Platforms	Chrome extension, Desktop application, Web	Chrome extension, macOS desktop app, Windows desktop app, iOS, Android, Web
Compliance	GDPR, Advanced security features available for enterprise customers on request	SOC 2, GDPR, Covered by Atlassian's enterprise security and compliance program
Founded	2018	2015
Headquarters	San Francisco, California, United States	San Francisco, California, United States
Ownership	Venture-backed, private	Owned by Atlassian (NASDAQ: TEAM)

Strengths and limitations

Bubbles

Strengths

Threaded video replies and on-screen anchored comments make async video a conversation rather than a broadcast, which is a structurally better model for replacing meetings than a link and an email.
The most usable free tier in this category for real work: unlimited screen recordings at 30 minutes each plus five AI-notetaken meetings a week.
Two products in one subscription, async video collaboration and meeting recording with transcripts and summaries, at $12 per member per month billed yearly.
Channels give recordings a home, which is why Bubbles archives stay navigable while collections of Loom links generally do not.

Limitations

Nothing here serves sales: no dynamic personalization, no per-prospect landing pages, no CRM writeback, no animated GIF thumbnails, and no view-based follow-up automation.
Free recordings lock after two weeks, so the free tier is a working surface rather than an archive and the value of your library depends on paying.
Embedding and distribution are much narrower than Loom's 400-plus tool coverage, which matters if your documentation lives in Confluence or Notion.
The AI notetaker is a bot that joins the call, which some organizations and some clients will not accept, and on the free tier it joins every meeting by default.

Loom

Strengths

The recording experience is still the best in the category: parallel upload means the link is ready instantly, and the extension and desktop app are both genuinely reliable under load.
Embedding is unmatched, with the player unfurling natively across more than 400 tools including the entire Atlassian suite, Notion, Slack, Figma, and GitHub.
Transcription and closed captions in more than 50 languages are included on the free tier rather than paywalled.
Atlassian ownership means real security engineering, SSO and SCIM, custom retention policies, and an uptime SLA, which is more compliance surface than any independent vendor in this category offers.

Limitations

Zero dynamic personalization: no per-prospect backgrounds, no animated GIF thumbnails generated per contact, no bulk generation from a CSV, and no per-prospect landing pages.
CRM logging is minimal, and the only first-party CRM connector is Salesforce on the quote-only Enterprise tier, so HubSpot users get nothing native.
The free tier's five-minute recording cap is much tighter than Vidyard's 30 minutes or Bubbles' unlimited screen recordings, and it stops most real use cases dead.
Editing is shallow: trim, stitch, text, arrows, and boxes. No multi-track timeline, no zoom and pan, no b-roll.

Pricing compared

Bubbles

Freemium per-member subscription with pricing that adjusts automatically based on team size, discounted for yearly billing.

Basic$0
Pro Teams$12
Pro Personal$18

Bubbles at $12 per member per month billed yearly is the cheapest capable team tier in this category and it bundles two products. You get unlimited async recording with threaded video replies plus unlimited AI-notetaken meetings with transcripts and summaries, for less than Loom Business at $15 which does only the first and less than most standalone meeting notetakers which do only the second. The free tier is genuinely usable, with unlimited screen recordings at 30 minutes and a notetaker on every meeting, constrained only by a two-week lock. The value case fails for exactly one reason: none of this helps you sell anything. Judged as internal team infrastructure it is the best price-to-capability ratio here; judged as a sales tool it scores zero because it is not one.

Loom

Freemium per-seat subscription with three published tiers and a quote-only Enterprise tier, discounted roughly 17 percent for annual billing.

Starter$0
Business$18
Business plus AI$24
EnterpriseCustom

Business at $18 monthly is priced as the category default rather than as a bargain, and after the Atlassian acquisition it stopped being cheap. What you get for it is the most reliable recorder in the category, the best embedding story anywhere, transcription in 50-plus languages, and no usage meter to model. For an internal communication use case that is good value, particularly if you already run Jira and Confluence and can use the bug report flow. For a sales use case it is poor value, because the personalization and CRM machinery that justifies a higher price elsewhere simply is not here, and the one CRM connector Loom does ship is locked behind a quote. Buy it for the team, not for the pipeline.

Editorial verdict on each

Bubbles

Bubbles is the best value in async video for a team that talks to itself, and the threading is the reason. When the reply to a recording is another recording in the same channel, async video stops being a broadcast and starts actually replacing meetings, which is the thing every tool in this category claims and few structurally support. At $12 per member per month billed yearly you also get an AI notetaker with transcripts and summaries, which is a second product most teams would otherwise buy separately, and the free tier with unlimited 30-minute screen recordings is the most usable one here. Two caveats. Free recordings lock after two weeks, so the archive is not free, and the notetaker is a bot that shows up in your calls whether or not everyone is comfortable with that. And understand what you are not buying: Bubbles does nothing for sales, has no CRM writeback, and embeds in far fewer places than Loom. For a distributed team of three to thirty that wants fewer calls, it is the first thing to try.

Read the full Bubbles profile

Loom

Category Leader

Loom is still the best pure recorder in async video, and the reason is unglamorous engineering: it uploads while you talk, so the link is always ready. Add transcription in 50-plus languages on the free tier, embedding across more than 400 tools, and Atlassian's security program behind it, and it remains the safe default for a team that wants to stop holding meetings. Buy it for internal communication, support explanations, and design and code review, ideally on Business plus AI where filler word removal quietly makes every recording watchable. Do not buy it for sales. There is no dynamic personalization, no per-prospect landing page, and the only CRM connector is Salesforce behind an Enterprise quote. The five-minute free cap and post-acquisition price increases also mean Loom is no longer the cheap option it once was, and buyers who care mainly about price should look hard at Bubbles.

Read the full Loom profile

Bubbles profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Loom last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.