The Loom free plan in 2026 looks generous until you try to use it for real work. The Starter tier caps lifetime storage at 25 videos, caps every recording at 5 minutes, locks resolution at 720p, watermarks the video with a Loom logo, and requires you to make a Loom account. None of those limits are hidden — they’re on the pricing page — but they’re a much bigger deal in practice than the bullet points suggest.
This post walks through each limit, what it actually breaks in the way you record and share, and what the realistic free options are in July 2026. Pullsy is mentioned because we built it, but the points about Loom’s limits stand on their own. Loom plan details reflect Loom’s public pricing pages as of July 2026.
What “free” gets you on Loom in 2026
Loom’s “Starter” tier, free with an account, includes:
- 25 videos lifetime per account
- 5-minute maximum per recording
- 720p resolution maximum
- A Loom watermark on every recording
- Account required (email or SSO)
- No local file export — only hosted playback
- No password protection
- No custom branding
- No engagement analytics
- No CTA overlays
- No AI summaries, chapters, or transcript editing
Things you can do on free that sometimes surprise people: download your own MP4 (with watermark baked in), embed recordings on a webpage, share via a public link. So free isn’t useless — it’s just narrow.
How each limit breaks real work
25 videos lifetime
A solo freelancer who sends three Looms a week to prospects runs out of room in two and a half months. A four-person sales team that sends a personalised video follow-up per call runs out in roughly six weeks. A teacher who records every period runs out inside a month. When you hit 26, the upload button stops working — Loom tells you your library is full and offers the upgrade.
The limit is per account, not per library. Adding a second Loom account on the same email buys you another 25, at the cost of having your video history split across two places you can’t search together. See our breakdown on the 25-video cap alone.
5-minute maximum per recording
Most of the recording you actually want to do lasts longer than 5 minutes:
- A 12-minute product demo
- A 25-minute weekly update
- A 40-minute lecture
- A 9-minute step-by-step bug walkthrough
- A 6-minute onboarding session
Anything over 5 minutes requires either chunking it into multiple Looms (which fragments the story) or paying. We cover the chunking anti-pattern on the 5-minute cap page.
720p maximum
Read any monitor spec sheet published in the last five years: 1440p, 4K, Retina, Quad HD. Your screen is sharper than 720p. When you record in 720p, viewers on a modern display see a fuzzy video. Worse, any text or code in the recording is hard to read at fullscreen — which is the whole reason you record a screen.
If you’re showing a client a UI mockup, recording in 720p means they’ll squint at the controls. If you’re recording code, a 720p video doesn’t preserve the readability of the editor.
Watermark on every recording
The Loom watermark is a small corner badge that says “Loom.” When the video is playing on your laptop, it’s easy to ignore. When the same video is embedded in your client proposal, your landing page, a student syllabus, or a course module, the watermark looks like an ad for your video tool — not for your content.
Watermarks are not unusual for a free tier. The unusual thing is that Loom’s free watermark is the only way to remove it without paying the full Business tier per user per month. We detail the four concrete scenarios where the watermark actually costs you money on the watermark page.
Account required to watch
Loom requires the viewer to sign in — actually, to create an account is no longer required since 2024 for viewing public links, but the viewer still sees an interstitial and the recording’s analytics only count signed-in viewers.
If you’re sending a video to someone who’s never heard of Loom — a client, a student, a parent, an aunt — they’ll often bounce at the “create your account” wall. This is the friction that pushed Loom toward viewer-login-everywhere in the first place.
No local file export
You can download your own Loom videos from your library (they’re .mp4 files). But Loom does not give you an export of videos that aren’t yours, and it doesn’t give you a portable archive for the hosted ones. If Loom’s pricing moves, the platform shuts down, or your workspace is deleted, the video link stops working overnight.
This is why the Loom to MP4 tool exists as a backup path for the videos you want to keep forever.
What’s behind the Business tier paywall
Loom Business (around $18 per user per month) and Loom Business + AI (around $20–24 per user per month) unlock, in addition to removing every Starter limit above:
- Password protection on shared links
- Custom branding (your logo, not Loom’s)
- Engagement analytics — who watched, when, how far
- Call-to-action overlays on shared videos
- AI auto-summaries
- AI auto-chapters
- Transcript-based editing
- Filler-word removal
- Unlimited recording length and video library
The asterisks: every Business feature is per-seat. Five people on your team means five subscriptions. The cost adds up. For comparison, see our Pullsy vs Loom breakdown.
What the realistic free alternatives look like
If you’ve decided free needs to stay free:
- Pullsy Record — browser-only, no watermark, no time limit, free view analytics, AI transcript, plus a chat-with-video reader that lets viewers ask questions about the recording. Doesn’t require an install. Free tier has a 5-min cap (Pro is unlimited).
- OBS Studio — open-source desktop recorder, no watermark, no time limit, but steep learning curve and no hosted sharing layer.
- QuickTime (Mac) — free, no watermark, but you have to upload the file somewhere if you want to share it.
- Screencastify — Chrome tab/screen recorder with free tier, but watermark unless you pay.
Each one has trade-offs. The honest answer is that no single free tool does everything Loom does for free — but you usually don’t need everything Loom does. You need a recording, a share link, and the ability to watch without an account. That exists for free on a few tools. The differentiators — AI transcript, view analytics, chat-with-video — are the part where the free options split.
We tested the major options in best free Loom alternatives 2026 if you want the full comparison.
The “Loom changed billing in 2026” wrinkle
Loom was acquired by Atlassian in 2023. Throughout 2024 and 2025, billing was gradually moved onto Atlassian’s account system. By 2026 some Loom users have reported lag, audio-sync issues, failed uploads, and login problems — these are user reports, not official statements, so treat them as signal not verdict. The point is that if you’re choosing a screen recorder today, you’re betting on Atlassian’s infrastructure runway for as long as your recordings matter. We wrote about what to do if Loom is glitchy this week.
Frequently asked questions
A practical decision
If you’re starting from scratch and you record less than once a week, mostly for short friendly messages, the Loom free plan will work for you for the rest of 2026. If you record for work and want one less paid subscription, the alternatives above all work. The thing that’s painful to discover six weeks in is the lifetime 25-video wall, because by then you’ve already built the habit around Loom’s shareable-hosting model.
Want to try a different shape: open /loom-alternative and see what Pullsy’s free tier offers without an account.
Loom is a trademark of Atlassian. Pullsy is not affiliated with or endorsed by Loom. Loom plan details reflect Loom’s public pricing pages as of July 2026.