Loom Review (2026) — The Async-Share Default
Loom is the async-share half of most knowledge workers’ screen-recorder stack. At £0 you get 25 videos, 5 minutes each, no watermark, and a link that opens in any browser. At $15/user/month (Business; Atlassian raised the price after the 2024 acquisition) you get unlimited length, transcription, viewer insights, and an SSO option your IT team will eventually require.
This review covers what Loom is — and what it isn’t. Loom is not a production tool. The two minutes you’d spend trimming an intro in Camtasia, you’ll skip in Loom, and the result will read as casual rather than polished, which is the point. The day you need polished, you need a second tool. We name three of those at the bottom of this page.
What Loom does well
The link is the product. Record, click, copy link. The entire workflow is two steps. Loom’s browser extension records your screen + webcam overlay simultaneously, and the link is ready before you’ve alt-tabbed back to Slack. No upload wait. No encoding queue. This is the thing every alternative struggles to match — the perceived latency between “stop recording” and “link ready” is under five seconds on a normal connection.
The free tier is genuinely useful. 25 videos at 5 minutes each is not a fake free tier. For most knowledge workers, 25 clips covers two weeks of actual async communication before the cap kicks in. The videos have no watermark. The viewer doesn’t need a Loom account to watch. This is why Loom spread virally through remote teams — it works for the recipient even if they’ve never heard of Loom.
Viewer insights at the Business tier are the real upsell. Once you upgrade, you see exactly who watched, how much they watched, and where they dropped off. For sales demos and customer onboarding, this data changes behaviour. You stop sending recordings into the void and start timing follow-ups to the moment someone actually watched the recording.
The editor is sufficient for async. Loom’s built-in editor lets you trim the start and end, stitch clips, add a title card, and annotate with emoji. That’s genuinely enough for a 3-minute walkthrough. It is not enough for a course module, a product demo that ships to a thousand prospects, or anything that needs zooms, callouts, or multitrack audio — that’s where you need the production half of your stack.
Flaws (not dealbreakers)
The 25-video free-tier cap is a wall, not a slope. Unlike most freemium tools that degrade your experience gradually, Loom stops you cold at video 26. You cannot record video 26 on the free tier. This is a deliberate upgrade trigger, and it works — but it also surprises people who thought they were on a “mostly free” plan.
EU region cloud storage is a Business-tier feature. If you’re in the EU and have data-residency requirements — common in healthcare, education, and enterprise contexts — the free tier stores data in US-region only. The EU-region setting requires Business or Enterprise. This matters for Segment 4 (educators in EU schools) more than most, but it’s worth calling out.
No multi-track audio export. Loom records your mic and system audio into a single mixed track. If you want to cut the system audio from the recording separately — say, to re-add background music or clean the dialogue track — you can’t. Descript or Camtasia handle this; Loom doesn’t.
Atlassian acquisition changed the pricing roadmap. Loom was acquired by Atlassian in October 2023. The Business tier went from $12 to $15/user/month in early 2024. Atlassian has a track record of gradual price increases across their portfolio (Jira, Confluence). Factor this into multi-year budget planning.
Who this is for
Loom is right for you if: you’re on a distributed team communicating async, you value speed-to-link over polish, and your primary use case is “let me show you what I mean” rather than “let me produce a tutorial.” The typical Loom power user sends 5-10 clips per week, uses the viewer insights to time follow-ups, and runs Loom alongside — not instead of — a heavier production tool for the 10% of recordings that need polish.
Pricing reality (2026)
| Tier | Price | Key limits |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 25 videos, 5 min cap, US storage only |
| Business | $15/user/mo | Unlimited length, viewer insights, EU storage, SSO |
| Enterprise | Custom | Advanced DLP, custom retention, SCIM provisioning |
The free tier is legitimate. The Business tier is the actual product for teams. Enterprise pricing requires a sales conversation — Atlassian does not publish it.
The two-tool verdict
Loom is the async half. Use it for the 3-minute walkthrough you’ll send at 4pm and forget by Friday. For the tutorial you’ll edit and publish, use Camtasia, ScreenFlow, or Descript alongside it. The right question is not “Loom or Camtasia?” — it’s “Loom AND which production tool?”
Compare Loom against alternatives
- Loom vs Riverside.fm — when the production tool also handles async
- Loom vs ScreenPal — the cheapest paid async alternative
- Camtasia review — the production half of the stack
We purchased Loom with our own funds and used it for 30 days across real work scenarios. No vendor-supplied access or review copies.
Sample acquisition: Paid with our own funds. No vendor-supplied access.
Read full methodology →Typical first month: £0 for the first 7-10 days on the free tier. You will hit the 25-video cap in week two if you use Loom daily. Budget $15/user/month when that happens. Total cumulative recording time at 30-50 clips/week: roughly 4 hours of actual content in month one.