The default async video recorder, now an Atlassian product
Loom is an async video messaging tool that records your screen, your camera, or both, uploads the recording while you are still talking, and hands you a shareable link with a transcript, comments, and viewer analytics attached; it runs as a Chrome extension, a desktop app for macOS and Windows, and mobile apps, and has been owned by Atlassian since the $975M acquisition closed in 2023.
Overview
Loom is the product that made async video a normal workplace habit. Before it, recording your screen meant a local file, a codec problem, and a Dropbox link. Loom collapsed that into one button in the browser toolbar: you hit record, you talk, you stop, and the link is already in your clipboard because the upload happened in parallel with the recording. That single piece of engineering is why the verb exists and why more than 25 million people had used it by the time Atlassian bought the company.
Atlassian announced the acquisition in October 2023 at $975M, a roughly 36 percent haircut from Loom's last private valuation, and has since folded it into the Jira and Confluence story. That ownership is the most important fact about buying Loom in 2026. The upside is that it is not going anywhere, it has real security engineering behind it, and it now does things like generating a Jira bug report with console logs and network activity attached from a recording of the bug happening. The downside is that the roadmap now serves Atlassian's collaboration suite, and the pricing has drifted upward since the deal closed.
For a small business the shape of the offer is simple. The free Starter plan gives you 25 videos per person capped at five minutes each, which is enough to decide whether async video is a habit your team will actually form. Business at $18 per user per month monthly, or about $15 annually, removes both caps and adds 4K, editing, custom branding, and password protection. Business plus AI at $24 monthly, roughly $20 annually, is where the summaries, auto-titles, filler word removal, and workflow generation live. Enterprise is quote-only and exists mainly for SSO, SCIM, and the Salesforce connector.
Where Loom is weakest is precisely where the sales-video vendors are strongest. There is no dynamic per-prospect personalization, no animated GIF thumbnail generated with a prospect's website behind you, no bulk generation of hundreds of variants from a CSV, and CRM logging beyond Salesforce on Enterprise is thin. Loom is built for a team explaining things to itself and to its customers, not for an SDR running a video-first outbound sequence. Judged on that internal-communication brief, it is still the best thing in the category.
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.
Not the right fit for
- SDR teams running video-first outbound at volume; Loom has no dynamic backgrounds, no per-prospect landing pages, no animated GIF thumbnails generated per contact, and no bulk CSV generation, so a sales motion built on personalization at scale belongs on Sendspark, Vidyard, or Potion.
- Anyone who needs CRM engagement logging as a core workflow; Salesforce integration is gated to the quote-only Enterprise tier and there is no first-party HubSpot pipeline the way sales-video vendors ship it.
- Buyers who want to escape big-vendor pricing; Loom is an Atlassian product now, list prices have gone up since the acquisition, and the free tier's five-minute cap is aggressive compared with Vidyard's 30 minutes or Bubbles' unlimited screen recordings.
- Teams that need heavy editing: multi-track timelines, zoom and pan effects, b-roll, or motion graphics. Loom does trim, stitch, and simple annotation, and that is the ceiling.
- Organizations with strict non-US or non-EU data residency mandates who need a small, responsive vendor; you are buying a component of a NASDAQ-listed suite and support runs through Atlassian's channels.
How it works
- 1
You install the Chrome extension or the desktop app and pick what to capture: screen only, camera only, or screen with a camera bubble in the corner. The desktop app is the better path for anything involving system audio or recording outside the browser.
- 2
While you record, Loom uploads chunks continuously. When you press stop, the video is already almost entirely on the server, so the shareable link is ready within a second or two rather than after a render. This is the whole product in one sentence and it is why Loom won the category.
- 3
After the recording, Loom transcribes it in more than 50 languages and generates closed captions. On the AI tier it also writes a title, a summary, and chapters, strips filler words and long silences, and can turn the recording into a written document or standard operating procedure. Basic editing lets you trim, stitch clips together, and drop text, arrows, and boxes on top.
- 4
You send the link, embed the player in Confluence, Notion, Slack, Jira, Figma, or an email, and Loom tracks who watched, how far they got, and what they clicked. Viewers can comment at a timestamp, react with emoji, assign tasks, or hit a call to action you attached to the video, and you get notified when they do.
Feature breakdown
27 features in 5 modulesRecording and capture
The part Loom made feel effortless and everyone else copied.- Parallel upload while recording
- Video chunks stream to the server as you talk, so the shareable link is ready essentially the moment you press stop rather than after a render and upload cycle.
- Screen, camera, or both
- Record a full screen, a single window, a browser tab, your webcam alone, or a screen with a round camera bubble overlaid in a corner that you can reposition.
- Chrome extension and desktop apps
- The extension covers anything in the browser; the macOS and Windows desktop apps handle system audio and applications outside Chrome, which the extension cannot always reach.
- Mobile recording
- iOS and Android apps let you record and send from a phone, useful for walkthroughs of physical things and for reviewing on the move.
- Resolution up to 4K
- Free Starter records at 720p; paid tiers unlock HD and 4K, which matters when you are demonstrating dense UI or code that has to stay legible.
- Custom recording backgrounds
- Replace or blur what is behind you in the camera bubble, which is the minimum table stakes for recording from a kitchen table.
AI features
The Business plus AI tier, and the reason to pay $24 instead of $18.- Auto titles, summaries, and chapters
- Loom writes the title and a summary of what you said, and breaks longer recordings into chapters so a viewer can skip to the section they need.
- Filler word and silence removal
- Automatically cuts ums, ahs, and dead air, which typically takes 15 to 25 percent off the runtime of an unscripted recording and makes it far more watchable.
- AI workflows and documents
- Turns a recording into written output: a how-to document, a standard operating procedure, a bug report, or a set of meeting notes, generated from the transcript rather than typed by you.
- AI bug reports into Jira
- Record a bug happening and Loom populates a Jira work item with the device, browser, operating system, console errors, and network activity captured during the recording. This is the clearest payoff of Atlassian ownership.
- Auto video enhancement
- Cleans up audio levels and lighting automatically so an unedited recording from a laptop looks and sounds acceptable.
Sharing, embedding, and engagement
What happens after you press stop, which is most of the value.- Instant shareable links
- Every recording gets a loom.com link with a viewer page carrying the transcript, comments, and any call to action you attached.
- Embeds across 400-plus tools
- The player embeds in Confluence, Jira, Notion, Slack, Salesforce, Figma, Google Workspace, GitHub, and hundreds of others, usually by pasting the link and having it unfurl into an inline player.
- Timestamped comments and emoji reactions
- Viewers respond at the moment in the video they are responding to, which turns a recording into an async thread rather than a broadcast.
- Task assignment from a video
- Comments can be converted into assigned tasks so feedback given in a recording turns into tracked work.
- Calls to action on the video
- Attach a button to the viewer page so a recording can end in a booked meeting, a signup, or a link to documentation.
- Viewer insights
- See who watched, how much of the video they got through, and drop-off behavior. Notifications fire on first view, which is the part sales users care about.
Transcription and accessibility
Solid, broad, and included on the free tier.- Transcription in 50-plus languages
- Automatic transcripts with closed captions, available on the free Starter tier rather than paywalled, which is unusually generous.
- Searchable transcripts
- Find the moment someone said a particular thing across your library without scrubbing through recordings.
- Transcript editing
- Correct names, acronyms, and product terms the model got wrong so captions and search stay accurate.
Administration, security, and developer surface
The Atlassian half of the product.- SSO and SCIM provisioning
- Single sign-on and automated user provisioning and deprovisioning, gated to the quote-only Enterprise tier.
- Custom data retention policies
- Enterprise administrators can set organization-wide rules for how long recordings are kept before automatic deletion.
- Password protection and privacy controls
- Paid tiers let you password-protect a video, restrict it to a workspace, disable downloads, and set link expiry, which matters when a recording contains a customer's data on screen.
- Custom branding
- Remove Loom branding and apply your own logo and colors to the viewer page from the Business tier upward.
- Loom SDK and API
- A software development kit lets you embed Loom recording into your own product, and an API covers programmatic access to videos and metadata.
- Salesforce integration
- First-party Salesforce connectivity is an Enterprise feature, which is the single biggest structural reason a sales team outgrows Loom and moves to a sales-video vendor.
- 99.95 percent uptime SLA
- Contractual availability commitment on Enterprise, backed by Atlassian's infrastructure and status reporting.
Use cases
4 documentedRemote engineering team killing standup
A team spread across four time zones is spending 45 minutes a day on a synchronous status call that exists so three people can hear one update.
Everyone records a two-minute Loom before their day ends, comments land at timestamps overnight, and the AI bug report flow pushes reproducible issues straight into Jira with console logs attached.
Support lead answering the same question forever
The same configuration question arrives from a dozen customers a month and each answer takes fifteen minutes of typing with screenshots.
One three-minute recording becomes a canned reply, the AI workflow converts it into a written help-center article, and viewer insights show whether customers actually finish it.
Design lead reviewing work asynchronously
Feedback given in a comment thread on a Figma file loses tone and gets misread as harsher than intended.
A recorded walkthrough with the cursor moving over the actual design carries intent, embeds directly in Figma and Confluence, and turns comments into assigned tasks.
Founder sending occasional prospect videos
Ten to twenty personal videos a month to warm leads, not a systematic outbound motion, and no appetite for a $59 per seat sales-video platform.
The free tier's 25 videos or a single $18 Business seat covers it, view notifications tell them when to follow up, and they avoid paying for personalization machinery they would not use.
Pricing
from $0 (Starter), then $18 per user per month billed monthly (Business)Freemium per-seat subscription with three published tiers and a quote-only Enterprise tier, discounted roughly 17 percent for annual billing.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $0 per user per month |
The five-minute cap is the real constraint. It is fine for quick answers and useless for a walkthrough or a demo. |
| Business | $18 per user per month billed monthly, about $15 billed annually |
The tier most teams should actually buy; the AI tier is worth the extra six dollars only if you record a lot of unscripted video. |
| Business plus AI | $24 per user per month billed monthly, about $20 billed annually |
Marketed as the most popular tier. Filler word removal alone justifies it for anyone recording without a script. |
| Enterprise | Custom quote only |
The Salesforce connector living up here is the reason sales teams leave Loom rather than upgrade. |
Billing notes
- Annual billing saves roughly 17 percent, taking Business from $18 to about $15 and Business plus AI from $24 to about $20 per user per month.
- Prices have risen since Atlassian closed the acquisition in 2023; buyers comparing against older reviews will find quoted numbers out of date.
- The free tier limits both video count and length, and the five-minute cap bites much earlier than the 25-video allowance for most people.
- There is no separate storage meter or per-minute overage on paid tiers, which is a genuine advantage over vendors metering dynamic video minutes.
- Enterprise is the only path to SSO, SCIM, and Salesforce, and it is quote-only, so a small team that needs any of those has effectively hit a sales call.
Value assessment: 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.
Strengths & limitations
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.
- The Jira bug report workflow, which pulls console errors and network activity out of a recording into a ticket, is a legitimately novel feature no competitor has.
- Timestamped comments, emoji reactions, and task assignment turn a recording into a conversation instead of a broadcast, which is what actually replaces meetings.
- No per-minute or storage meter on paid plans, so heavy recorders do not get surprise bills.
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 has moved up since the Atlassian acquisition and the roadmap now serves the Atlassian suite, so a small business is a secondary constituency.
- SSO, SCIM, retention policy, and the SLA all require an Enterprise quote, which means the self-serve ceiling is lower than the price would suggest.
Head-to-head comparisons
4 alternativesLoom vs Bubbles
from $0 (Basic), then $12 per member per month billed yearly (Pro Teams)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.
Full Loom vs Bubbles comparisonLoom vs Vidyard
from $0 (Free), then $59 per user per month billed annually (Starter)Vidyard is the sales-native counterpart: 30-minute free recordings, view notifications built for follow-up, AI avatars, an agentic Video Agent add-on, and CRM connectors, but Starter is $59 per user per month annually and Salesforce or HubSpot integration requires the quote-only Teams tier. Loom is $15 to $20 and better at internal work. If your videos go to colleagues, buy Loom. If they go to prospects and get logged against opportunities, buy Vidyard and accept the price.
Full Loom vs Vidyard comparisonLoom vs Dubb
from $0 (Starter), then $42 per user per month billed annually (Pro)Dubb wraps recording in an outbound machine: email and SMS campaigns, landing pages with CTAs, automation sequences, a teleprompter, and retargeting pixels, starting free for 25 SD videos and $59 monthly for Pro. Loom does none of that and does the recording itself better. Pick Dubb if you want video plus the sending infrastructure in one bill; pick Loom if you already have a sequencer and just want the cleanest recorder and the best embeds.
Full Loom vs Dubb comparisonLoom vs Bonjoro
from $0 (Free), then $15 per month billed annually (Starter)Bonjoro is deliberately narrow: one-to-one relationship videos fired by CRM triggers when someone signs up or buys, with a genuinely unlimited free tier and Starter at $15 per month annually. Loom is a general recorder with no trigger engine. Choose Bonjoro if the job is greeting and retaining customers at moments in a lifecycle; choose Loom if the job is explaining things to your team and your customers on demand.
Full Loom vs Bonjoro comparisonImplementation & onboarding
- 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.
- 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.
- Onboarding
- Entirely self-serve through Business plus AI. Enterprise adds dedicated support and an implementation path, which is also where SSO and SCIM configuration happens.
- Migration notes
- Videos can be downloaded individually or in bulk from the library, so leaving is possible but tedious at scale, and every link you have already pasted into documents and tickets will break when the source video is deleted. Coming in from another recorder there is no bulk importer; most teams simply start recording new material in Loom and leave the old archive where it is.
Platform, API & security
- Platforms
- Chrome extensionmacOS desktop appWindows desktop appiOSAndroidWeb
- API
- Public API for video and metadata access plus a Loom SDK for embedding recording capability inside your own product; the Salesforce connector is an Enterprise feature.
- Compliance
- SOC 2GDPRCovered by Atlassian's enterprise security and compliance program
- Data residency
- Handled through Atlassian's data residency framework rather than a Loom-specific control; confirm your required region with Atlassian before committing.
- SSO
- SSO and SCIM provisioning on the Enterprise tier only; Google and Microsoft sign-in on lower tiers.
- Security notes
- Encryption in transit and at rest, password protection and link privacy controls from the Business tier, custom data retention policies and a 99.95 percent uptime SLA on Enterprise. Security posture is now governed by Atlassian's program rather than a standalone Loom trust center.
Support & resources
- Channels
- Help center and self-serve support on all tiersEmail support on paid tiersDedicated support on Enterprise
- Documentation
- Extensive help documentation covering recording, editing, AI features, admin controls, integrations, the API, and the SDK, published under Atlassian's support structure.
- Community
- Large informal user base and an Atlassian Community presence; no dedicated standalone Loom forum of consequence.
Company
- Founded
- 2015
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California, United States
- Ownership
- Owned by Atlassian (NASDAQ: TEAM)
- Founders
- Joe Thomas, Shahed Khan, Vinay Hiremath
- Employees
- Not disclosed separately; operates as part of Atlassian
- Funding
- Raised venture funding as an independent company and reached unicorn status before being acquired by Atlassian for $975M in a deal announced in October 2023.
Funding history
| Round | Amount | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Venture rounds | Multiple rounds through Series C | 2016 to 2021 | Backers included Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Coatue, and ICONIQ; the 2021 round valued Loom at $1.53B. |
| Acquisition | $975M | 2023 | Acquired by Atlassian, a roughly 36 percent discount to the prior private valuation, with more than 25 million users and about 200,000 customers at the time. |
Timeline
- 2015Founded by Joe Thomas, Shahed Khan, and Vinay Hiremath, initially as Opentest before pivoting to screen recording.
- 2016Launches as Loom with a Chrome extension whose defining trick is uploading while recording, so the share link is ready the instant you stop.
- 2020Async video adoption accelerates sharply with remote work; Loom becomes the default verb for sending a recording instead of booking a call.
- 2021Raises at a $1.53B valuation and expands from a personal recorder into a team product with workspaces, admin controls, and enterprise security.
- 2023Atlassian agrees to acquire Loom for $975M, roughly 36 percent below the last private valuation, with over 25 million users and about 200,000 customers.
- 2024Integration into the Atlassian suite begins; recordings start feeding Jira and Confluence directly, and AI features consolidate under a paid AI tier.
- 2026Ships AI bug reports that populate Jira work items with device, browser, console, and network detail captured during a recording, the clearest payoff of Atlassian ownership.
Integrations
- Jira and Confluence
- Slack
- Notion
- Google Workspace including Gmail, Docs, and Drive
- Figma
- GitHub
- Salesforce (Enterprise tier)
- Microsoft Teams and Outlook
- Zapier
- Loom SDK and public API
- More than 400 tools supporting link unfurling and embedded playback
Frequently asked questions
10 questionsWhat is Loom?
Loom is an async video messaging tool that records your screen, your camera, or both and gives you a shareable link with a transcript, timestamped comments, and viewer analytics attached. Because it uploads while you record, the link is ready the moment you stop. It runs as a Chrome extension, a macOS and Windows desktop app, and iOS and Android apps, and has been owned by Atlassian since 2023.
How much does Loom cost?
The free Starter plan is $0 and gives you 25 videos per person with a five-minute cap on each. Business is $18 per user per month billed monthly or about $15 billed annually and removes both caps while adding 4K, editing, custom branding, and password protection. Business plus AI is $24 monthly or about $20 annually and adds summaries, filler word removal, and AI workflows. Enterprise is quote-only.
What are the real limits of Loom's free plan?
Two caps that bite at different speeds. You get 25 videos per person, which lasts a while, and a hard five-minute limit per recording, which does not. Five minutes covers a quick answer or a bug report and is not enough for a demo, a walkthrough, or a training video. Free recording is also 720p, and workspaces are capped at 50 members.
Is Loom good for sales prospecting?
Only for low-volume personal outreach. Loom records well and notifies you when someone watches, which is enough if you send ten or twenty videos a month. It has no dynamic backgrounds, no animated GIF thumbnails generated per prospect, no per-prospect landing pages, and no bulk generation from a CSV, and its only first-party CRM connector is Salesforce on the quote-only Enterprise tier. A real video-first outbound motion belongs on Vidyard, Sendspark, Potion, or Dubb.
Did Atlassian buying Loom change anything?
Yes, in both directions. Prices have gone up since the deal closed and the roadmap now serves the Atlassian collaboration suite, so small businesses are no longer the primary constituency. In exchange you get Atlassian's security and compliance program, an uptime SLA on Enterprise, deep Jira and Confluence integration, and the AI bug report flow that pulls console errors and network activity from a recording into a ticket.
Can I embed Loom videos in email?
Not as a playing video, because no mainstream email client plays embedded video reliably. What you send is a thumbnail image linking through to the Loom viewer page. That works fine, but it is a static thumbnail rather than the animated per-prospect GIF that sales-video tools like Sendspark and Vidyard generate, which is a measurable difference in click rate for outbound.
How good is Loom's transcription?
Good, and available in more than 50 languages on every tier including free, which is more generous than most competitors. Transcripts are searchable across your library and editable, so you can fix names, acronyms, and product terms that the model mishears. On the AI tier the transcript also drives auto titles, summaries, chapters, and the document generation workflows.
What editing can Loom actually do?
Trim the start and end, cut sections out of the middle, stitch multiple clips together, and overlay text, arrows, and boxes. On the AI tier it also removes filler words and long silences automatically, which is the most useful editing feature it has. There is no multi-track timeline, no zoom and pan, and no b-roll, so anything approaching production work needs a real editor.
Does Loom support SSO?
Only on Enterprise, along with SCIM provisioning, custom data retention policies, the Salesforce connector, and the 99.95 percent uptime SLA. Enterprise is quote-only, so a small team that needs SSO for compliance reasons cannot self-serve its way there. Lower tiers support Google and Microsoft sign-in.
Loom or Vidyard?
Loom if the videos go to colleagues and customers who already trust you, because the recorder is better, embedding is unmatched, and it costs $15 to $20 a seat. Vidyard if the videos go to prospects and need to be measured against pipeline, because it gives you 30-minute free recordings, AI avatars, agentic bulk sending, and CRM integration, at $59 per user per month annually for Starter with CRM connectors requiring a quote.
Editorial verdict
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.
Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.
Awards & badges
1 heldLoom holds 1 award from the SaaSTracker editorial program. Badges may be displayed by the vendor; each embed links back to this profile.
Category Leader · Async Video Messaging
“The default async video recorder, now an Atlassian product with the enterprise checkboxes done.”
<a href="https://saastracker.org/products/loom"><img src="https://saastracker.org/badges/embed/loom/category-leader-summer-2026.svg" width="180" height="180" alt="Loom: Category Leader, Async Video Messaging. SaaSTracker Summer 2026 Awards." /></a>
