Tella vs Loom: Which Screen Recorder Fits Your Videos?

If you record your screen for work, the Tella vs Loom question comes up fast. Both tools capture your screen and camera, both live mostly in the browser, and both promise to make you look good on video. But they were built for different jobs, and picking the wrong one means either paying for editing power you never use or fighting a tool that was never meant for polished content.

Loom, now owned by Atlassian, is built for quick async video messages at work. Tella is built for content you actually publish: courses, product demos, and YouTube videos. This comparison covers pricing, recording, editing, and sharing in detail, with sources for every claim, so you can decide in one read.

Tella vs Loom: The Quick Verdict

Here is the short version.

Pick Loom if you mostly send short videos to teammates instead of writing long messages. It is the fastest way to record, get a link, and move on. The free plan is generous enough for light use, and transcription plus viewer analytics come standard.

Pick Tella if your videos are the product. Course lessons, launch videos, product walkthroughs, YouTube content. Tella records in separate clips and gives you a real editor with layouts, backgrounds, zooms, and captions. There is no permanent free plan, but the paid plans are cheaper than Loom’s.

The rough rule: Loom optimizes for the sender’s time, Tella optimizes for the viewer’s experience.

Side-by-Side Comparison

	Tella	Loom
Free plan	None, 7-day free trial	Yes: 25 videos, 5 minutes each, 720p
Paid pricing	Pro $13, Premium $19 per user/month (annual billing)	Business $18, Business + AI $24 per user/month (less on annual)
Platforms	Web, macOS app, Windows app, Chrome extension	Mac and Windows desktop apps, Chrome extension, web
Recording limit	Up to 6 hours per clip on paid plans	5 minutes free, unlimited on paid
Editing	Full editor: clips, layouts, backgrounds, zooms, captions	Trim, stitch, and AI cleanup on paid plans
Max quality	4K export, 60 fps on Premium	Up to 4K on paid plans, 720p free
Branding	Watermark removed on paid plans	Loom branding on free, removable on Business
Best for	Courses, demos, YouTube, published content	Async work messages, quick feedback, standups

Pricing and limits come from the official Tella pricing page and Loom pricing page, current as of August 2026.

Recording: Speed vs Control

Loom is hard to beat on speed. You hit record from the Chrome extension or desktop app, talk over your screen with a camera bubble in the corner, and the video uploads while you record. When you stop, the shareable link is already on your clipboard. Free recordings are capped at 5 minutes and 720p, which is fine for a quick answer and deliberately tight for anything longer (Loom pricing).

Tella records differently, and this is the core distinction. Instead of one continuous take, Tella records in clips. Flubbed a sentence in clip three? Re-record just that clip instead of starting over. Paid plans allow up to 6 hours per clip with no cap on the number of videos (Tella plans), so long course lessons are not a problem.

Both tools capture screen, camera, or both. The difference is what happens to that footage afterward.

Editing: Where Tella vs Loom Really Splits

This is the section that should decide it for most people.

Loom’s editing is intentionally minimal. You can trim dead air, stitch clips, and on the Business + AI plan let AI remove filler words and silences, generate titles, summaries, and chapters (Loom pricing). That is cleanup, not composition. The philosophy is that a Loom should not be edited much, because editing defeats the purpose of a two-minute async update.

Tella ships a genuine editor. You get:

Layouts: switch between screen only, camera only, and combined views per clip
Backgrounds and padding: wallpapers and framing behind your recording
Automatic zooms: zoom in on the part of the screen you are working in
Captions and text: styled subtitles and headings on the video itself
AI cleanup: auto cut for filler words plus transcription in 106 languages (Tella pricing)

Premium adds 60 fps export and white-label options on top of the standard 4K export. The result looks designed rather than captured, which is exactly what you want when strangers, students, or customers are the audience instead of coworkers.

If you have ever exported a Loom, imported it into a video editor, and rebuilt everything Loom did not let you do, Tella removes that round trip.

Loom wins on distribution inside a company. Every video gets an instant link, viewers can comment with emoji reactions and replies at specific timestamps, and transcription works in 50+ languages on every plan. Workspaces, folders, and engagement analytics make it feel like a video inbox for your team. Since the Atlassian acquisition, Loom also plugs into Jira and Confluence workflows, which matters if your company already lives there.

Tella covers the basics well: shareable video pages, embeds, MP4 export, and GIF generation on paid plans (Tella plans). Premium adds a custom domain and player white-labeling, so a course platform or product site can host videos with no Tella branding anywhere.

One practical note on downloads. Loom only allows video downloads on paid plans, so free users are stuck with the hosted link. Tella lets you export finished videos even during the trial, though raw recordings require a paid plan.

Pricing in Depth

Loom has four tiers (Loom pricing):

Starter (free): 25 videos per person, 5 minutes per video, 720p, up to 50 workspace members, Loom branding you cannot remove
Business: $18 per user per month, about $15 on annual billing. Unlimited videos and length, up to 4K, downloads, and branding removal
Business + AI: $24 per user per month, about $20 annually. Adds filler word removal, silence trimming, auto titles, summaries, and chapters
Enterprise: custom pricing with SSO, SCIM, and a Salesforce integration

Tella has no permanent free plan, only a 7-day free trial with export enabled (Tella plans). Paid tiers (Tella pricing):

Pro: $13 per user per month on annual billing. Unlimited 4K videos, 6-hour clips, the full editor, and AI features
Premium: $19 per user per month on annual billing. Adds custom domain, white-label, 60 fps export, and advanced analytics
Enterprise: custom pricing with SSO and SCIM

Two things stand out. First, Tella’s Pro plan undercuts Loom’s Business plan while including far more editing. Second, both are subscriptions, so a solo creator pays every month whether or not they published anything. If your videos stop, Tella keeps them viewable but you cannot record, edit, or export until you resubscribe (Tella plans).

For teams, Loom’s per-seat math grows fast. Ten people on Business + AI is about $2,400 per year on annual billing. That is the price of async video culture at work, and for many teams it is worth it. For one creator making course content, Tella at $156 per year is the more sensible spend.

Which Should You Pick?

Choose Loom if:

You send videos instead of writing long Slack messages or emails
Your team already uses Atlassian tools like Jira or Confluence
Viewers are coworkers, and speed matters more than polish
You want a free plan for occasional short recordings

Choose Tella if:

You record course lessons, tutorials, or YouTube videos
You want backgrounds, layouts, zooms, and captions without a separate editor
You re-record sentences often and want clip-based recording
You publish under your own brand and want white-label video pages

Choose neither if you only need raw screen captures with no sharing layer. macOS ships a built-in recorder, and our guide to the best free screen recorders for Mac covers those options. And if Loom is close but not quite right, we compared the full field in our roundup of Loom alternatives.

A Third Option for Mac App Demos

There is one niche where both tools fall short: Mac users making app demo videos, the kind you put on a landing page, in an App Store preview, or in a launch post.

That is the exact job SmoothCapture was built for. It is a native macOS recorder that places your recording inside 3D device frames, records iPhone and iPad over USB, adds cinematic cursor movement and automatic zooms, and gives you a multi-clip timeline with captions and backgrounds. Where Tella makes talking-head content look polished, SmoothCapture makes the app itself the star.

The pricing model is also different from both: recording and editing are free with no time limit, and you pay once to export. A lifetime license is $99, covers up to 3 Macs, and comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. No subscription, ever.

If you demo your own software, it is worth a look alongside the other two.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Tella have a free plan?

No. Tella offers a 7-day free trial instead of a permanent free plan. During the trial you can record, edit, and export finished videos, though exporting raw recordings requires a paid subscription. After the trial ends, your videos stay viewable and shareable, but recording, editing, and exporting are locked until you pay (Tella plans).

Is Loom still free after the Atlassian acquisition?

Yes. Loom’s free Starter plan still exists under Atlassian ownership. It includes 25 videos per person, a 5-minute cap per recording, 720p quality, and up to 50 workspace members (Loom pricing). The main paid upsells are unlimited recording, 4K quality, video downloads, branding removal, and the AI editing features on Business + AI.

Can you download videos on Loom’s free plan?

No. Downloading your videos is a paid feature on Loom, available on the Business plans and above. Free users can only share the hosted Loom link or embed it. If owning the video file matters to you, that is a real limitation, since your content lives on Loom’s servers unless you upgrade (Loom pricing).

Is Tella better than Loom for YouTube videos and courses?

For published content, yes, and it is not close. Tella’s clip-based recording lets you redo individual sentences, and its editor adds layouts, backgrounds, automatic zooms, and styled captions without a separate editing app. Loom’s editor is limited to trimming, stitching, and AI cleanup because it is designed for quick messages, not content that needs to hold attention.

What is Loom’s recording time limit?

On the free Starter plan, each recording is capped at 5 minutes. Paid Business plans remove the cap entirely and allow recordings of unlimited length (Loom pricing). Tella’s equivalent limit is 6 hours per clip on paid plans, with no restriction on the total number of videos you create (Tella plans).

The Bottom Line

Tella vs Loom is really a question about who watches your videos. If the answer is coworkers, Loom’s speed, free plan, and Atlassian integrations make it the obvious pick, and the editing limits will not bother you. If the answer is customers, students, or an audience, Tella’s real editor and cheaper paid plans earn the subscription.

Neither is bad. They are optimized for different moments: Loom for the message you record once and forget, Tella for the video you want to be proud of next year. And if the video you want to be proud of is a demo of your own Mac or iOS app, SmoothCapture covers that specific job with a one-time purchase instead of another subscription. Match the tool to the audience and you will not regret the choice.