Loom vs Zight
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 assessmentZight compared with Loom
Loom is the video messaging standard with a far better recorder, real viewer analytics, a large integration ecosystem, and a more usable free tier. Zight wins on screenshots and GIFs, on annotation, and on the speed of the capture interaction, at a similar per-seat price. Teams that record long explanations want Loom; teams that mostly point at things on a screen want Zight.
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.
Choose Zight if
Support, engineering, design, and product teams whose async communication is mostly screenshots and short GIFs with occasional video, and who value a sub-five-second capture-to-link workflow over production quality.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Loom | Zight |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Video | Video |
| Starting price | $0 (Starter), then $18 per user per month billed monthly (Business) (free plan available) | Approximately $9.95 per user per month billed annually (Pro), or around $12 billed monthly (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Freemium per-seat subscription with three published tiers and a quote-only Enterprise tier, discounted roughly 17 percent for annual billing. | Per-user subscription with a capped free tier, billed monthly or annually, plus a quoted Enterprise plan. |
| Free plan | 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. | Roughly 25 total captures, recordings capped at 90 seconds, 720p quality, one user, and Zight branding on shared links. |
| Free trial | Free Starter plan serves as the evaluation path; paid tiers can be trialed from within the product | The free plan serves as the trial; no separate fixed-length paid trial is published |
| Best for | 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. | Support, engineering, design, and product teams whose async communication is mostly screenshots and short GIFs with occasional video, and who value a sub-five-second capture-to-link workflow over production quality. |
| Setup time | 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. | Ten minutes. Install the desktop app or Chrome extension, sign in, grant screen recording permission, and set the keyboard shortcut you will actually remember. Custom domain configuration on paid plans adds a DNS record. |
| Learning curve | 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. | Essentially none. The product is one keyboard shortcut and an annotation toolbar. The only habit worth building deliberately is using the blur tool consistently, because a fast capture flow makes it very easy to share a screen with customer data on it. |
| Platforms | Chrome extension, macOS desktop app, Windows desktop app, iOS, Android, Web | macOS, Windows, iOS, Chrome extension, Web |
| Compliance | SOC 2, GDPR, Covered by Atlassian's enterprise security and compliance program | SOC 2 Type II on Enterprise, HIPAA support on Enterprise, GDPR |
| Founded | 2015 | 2010 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Ownership | Owned by Atlassian (NASDAQ: TEAM) | Venture-backed |
Strengths and limitations
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.
Zight
Strengths
- The capture-to-clipboard-link interaction is still the fastest in the category and is the reason the product has survived fifteen years and a rebrand.
- Three capture modes in one tool: screenshot, GIF, and video, which matches how people actually communicate rather than forcing everything into video.
- GIF capture is a first-class feature, and GIF is the only format that renders inline in issue trackers, chat, and documentation.
- Annotation with blur is built into the capture flow, so redacting sensitive information takes two seconds instead of a detour through another tool.
Limitations
- The free tier is capped at roughly 25 total captures and 90 second recordings, which makes it an expiring trial rather than a plan.
- The video recorder is functional rather than good: no automatic zoom, no transcript-based editing, no filler word removal, and no polish features.
- Transcription and captions are not a core strength, so accessibility and searchability of video content are weak next to Tella, Descript, or Loom.
- Very small team, publicly estimated in the single digits, supporting a product with fifteen years of accumulated surface area.
Pricing compared
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.
Zight
Per-user subscription with a capped free tier, billed monthly or annually, plus a quoted Enterprise plan.
- Free$0
- Pro$9.95
- TeamAround $8 to $11
- EnterpriseCustom
At roughly $10 a seat, Zight is priced fairly against Loom Business and below most polished video recorders, and for a team whose async communication is mostly screenshots and GIFs it delivers more value per dollar than any video-first tool would, because it matches the actual shape of the work. The caveat is that you are paying for speed and breadth of capture, not for video quality. If you compare it feature-for-feature against Tella or Loom on video, it loses. If you compare it on how many times a day someone will actually use it, it wins comfortably.
Editorial verdict on each
Loom
Category LeaderLoom 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 profileZight
Zight earns its place by matching how people actually communicate visually, which is mostly screenshots and short GIFs with the occasional video, rather than by being the best video recorder. The capture-to-clipboard-link interaction remains the fastest in this category after fifteen years, annotation with blur is built into the flow where it belongs, and it runs everywhere including Windows and iOS. At around $10 a seat that is good value for a support, engineering, or design team. Go in with three things clear. The free tier is a 25 capture trial, not a plan. The video recorder is plain, with no zoom, no transcript editing, and no captions worth relying on. And every link you share is hosted by a company with a single-digit headcount, so those links, which are the entire product, depend on a subscription you keep paying. Buy it for speed and breadth of capture, and buy something else if what you need is video that customers will watch.
Read the full Zight profileLoom profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Zight last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.