Bubbles vs Tella
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
Editorial assessmentTella compared with Bubbles
Bubbles is built around the conversation that follows the video: threaded comments, timestamped replies, and meeting notes, at a lower entry price. Tella is built around the video itself and its viewers. Use Bubbles when the recording is the start of an internal back and forth; use Tella when the recording is a finished thing you want people to watch and you want to know whether they did.
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 Tella if
Founders, marketers, and small product teams on mixed Mac and Windows setups who need recordings that look produced but still want a hosted link with analytics, and who want automatic editing rather than a timeline.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Bubbles | Tella |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Video | Video |
| Starting price | $0 (Basic), then $12 per member per month billed yearly (Pro Teams) (free plan available) | $13 per user per month (Pro) (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Freemium per-member subscription with pricing that adjusts automatically based on team size, discounted for yearly billing. | Per-user subscription billed monthly or annually, with a free tier and a seven day trial of the full Pro plan. |
| 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. | A free tier exists, with exports limited to five minutes, which makes it an evaluation path rather than an operating plan. |
| Free trial | 14 days on Pro plans, alongside a permanent free Basic plan | 7 days of the full Pro plan, no credit card required |
| 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. | Founders, marketers, and small product teams on mixed Mac and Windows setups who need recordings that look produced but still want a hosted link with analytics, and who want automatic editing rather than a timeline. |
| 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. | Fifteen minutes. Create an account, install the Mac or Windows app or the Chrome extension, grant recording permissions, and record. Custom domain setup on Premium adds a DNS record and is the only step that involves anyone else. |
| 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. | Low. Recording and sharing are immediate. The learning is in the editing model: people used to timelines take a little while to trust that deleting a sentence in the transcript is the correct way to cut a video, and layout switching mid-recording takes a few takes to use naturally. |
| Platforms | Chrome extension, Desktop application, Web | macOS native app, Windows native app, Chrome extension, Web app, Embeddable player |
| Compliance | GDPR, Advanced security features available for enterprise customers on request | No SOC 2 or ISO certification publicly marketed |
| Founded | 2018 | 2020 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Remote, with roots in the Y Combinator network |
| Ownership | Venture-backed, private | Venture-backed |
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.
Tella
Strengths
- Native apps on both Mac and Windows plus a Chrome extension and web app, which makes it one of the few polished recorders a mixed-platform team can actually standardize on.
- Transcript-based editing plus filler word removal and silence detection turns a rambling ten minute recording into a tight one without opening a timeline.
- Automatic zoom, backgrounds, and layout switching produce output that looks composed rather than like a screen share.
- The blur tool for sensitive information is a genuinely practical feature that lets you demo real data instead of building a fake account.
Limitations
- The company is approximately three people. Support depth, roadmap velocity beyond the current focus, and long-term hosting of your links all rest on a very small team.
- The free tier's five minute export cap makes it effectively unusable as an operating plan, which is a harsher free offering than Loom, Zight, or ScreenRec provide.
- No sales-outreach layer: no per-prospect landing pages, no email GIF thumbnails tied to a contact, no CRM push of view alerts.
- Filler word removal, custom domain, and white labeling are all Premium-only, so the marketing pitch describes a $19 product while the headline price is $13.
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.
Tella
Per-user subscription billed monthly or annually, with a free tier and a seven day trial of the full Pro plan.
- Free$0
- Pro$13
- Premium$19
- EnterpriseCustom
Tella is priced sensibly for what it does. At $13 you get unlimited hosted recordings with 106 language transcription, analytics, and automatic zoom, which is roughly Loom Business capability plus better-looking output for a similar price. At $19 you add custom domains and filler word removal, which is where it starts competing with tools costing twice as much. The value case weakens in two places: the free tier is not usable as a plan because of the five minute export cap, and the company is three people, so you are betting on a very small team to keep hosting your links. Export your important videos and the bet is cheap.
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 profileTella
Tella is the most sensible middle path in this category. It gets close to Screen Studio's polish while running on Windows as well as Mac, and it wraps that in hosting, analytics, playlists, and a custom domain at a price that undercuts most competitors offering half of it. Transcript editing with filler word removal and the blur tool are the features that change how you work rather than how the video looks. The reservations are real but manageable: the free tier is too limited to operate on, filler word removal and custom domains are Premium-only so budget $19 rather than $13, there is no sales-outreach machinery at all, and the company is about three people with no compliance posture to show a security reviewer. For a founder, marketer, or small product team that records a lot of video and cares that customers will see some of it, Tella is the one to try first.
Read the full Tella profileBubbles profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Tella last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.