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Cap

Open-source Loom alternativeOpen source

About Cap

Cap is an open-source Loom alternative from Cap Software, Inc.: a desktop app records and edits, a web app handles sharing, transcripts and workspaces, and the stack can be self-hosted with Docker. As of 2026-10-25 it has 23,741 GitHub stars, and desktop 0.6.1 replaced the Tauri app with a native GPUI build. Code is AGPL-3.0; the official app is free for personal use, while commercial use needs a $29/year license or Cap Pro at $12/user/month. Good for teams cutting Loom costs or keeping recordings in their own storage; not for users who need a mature release, older Linux or live streaming.

EditorialUpdated 10 min read

What it is

Cap is an open-source screen recording tool. Its GitHub description reads: open source Loom alternative, beautiful, shareable screen recordings. It has three parts: a desktop app that records and edits, a web app for playback, sharing, comments, transcripts and team management, plus a Chrome extension, a mobile app and a command-line tool. Recordings can go to the hosted cloud, into the user's own S3-compatible storage, or the whole system can be self-hosted with Docker.

The website splits recording into three modes. Instant Mode uploads during recording, so the share link is already on the clipboard when recording stops; Studio Mode records locally with screen, camera and microphone on separate tracks and opens the editor when recording stops; Screenshot Mode captures and annotates stills. All three live in the same desktop app.

The project is maintained by Cap Software, Inc., which is also the copyright holder in LICENSE. As of 2026-10-25 the repo has 23,741 stars, 2,149 forks and 11,693 commits on main, the latest at 2026-10-25 21:54 (UTC+8). Desktop 0.6.1 shipped at 2026-10-20 22:14 (UTC+8) and swapped the Tauri framework for a native app written with GPUI. The download page offers macOS (Apple silicon and Intel), Windows (marked Beta) and Linux builds.

The repo is a Turborepo monorepo: the desktop core is Rust, the web app is Next.js, the database is MySQL with Drizzle and Effect; the apps folder also holds cli, media-server, mobile, chrome-extension, desktop-gpui and render-farm, and the crates folder holds the Rust crates.

Open source Loom alternative. Beautiful, shareable screen recordings.

Cap README

Core capabilities

First, recording and editing. Studio Mode records locally in 4K, the editor offers backgrounds, auto zoom, cursor effects and captions, and export goes up to 4K/60fps. 0.6.0 added a redesigned editor, new track types and Studio Sound audio processing; 0.6.1 added more than 180 fixes across recording, editing and export.

Second, sharing and collaboration. Share pages carry comments, emoji reactions, transcripts and viewer analytics; Cap Pro adds custom domains, password-protected shares and calls to action on a video. Organizations can make new recordings private by default and invite viewers individually. Cap AI generates titles, summaries, clickable chapters and transcripts, and since 2026-09-07 owners can edit the summary and chapters by hand.

Third, storage and migration. Beyond the hosted cloud, Cap Pro can use a custom S3 bucket or Google Drive; the self-hosted stack ships with MinIO. A dedicated Loom importer handles bulk CSV imports and uploads large files in resumable parts, and since 2026-10-20 Cap Pro customers can ask the team to run the migration for them.

Fourth, interfaces for developers and AI agents. The desktop app bundles a CLI that can start recordings, export and upload; the website says it also ships a local MCP server so coding agents can record the screen, upload and read back transcripts. The 2026-09-22 changelog added a hosted MCP connector that lets AI assistants look up a user's recordings.

Fifth, the native rewrite in 0.6.1. As reported by the vendor, compared with the Tauri app, editor playback uses 77% less CPU and memory drops from 3.7 GB to 440 MB; recording uses 46% less CPU and memory drops from 2 GB to 256 MB; the Linux DEB shrinks from 224 MB to 97 MB and the AppImage from 265 MB to 131 MB.

Who it's for / Not for

Good fit: teams paying for Loom who want to cut the bill. Cap Pro is $12 per user per month, or $8.16 billed annually, and includes a Loom importer; for people who only need local recording and editing with occasional sharing, the matching option is the $29-a-year desktop license.

Good fit: organizations that want recordings to stay under their control. Cap Pro can store video in the organization's own S3 bucket, and self-hosting keeps the web app, media server, database and object storage on its own servers, with OIDC single sign-on and authenticating reverse-proxy sign-in.

Good fit: healthcare-adjacent teams that need a BAA. The changelog says Cap announced HIPAA compliance on 2026-08-13 and, from 2026-08-19, sells a signed BAA at $99 per organization per month. Inference: the certifications and BAA cover the hosted service; compliance for a self-hosted deployment rests with whoever runs it.

Good fit: developers who use the CLI or AI agents for bug reproductions and demo recordings; the CLI and MCP interfaces bring screen recording into automated workflows.

Not a fit: individuals or companies wanting to use the official app at work for free. The pricing page says the free plan is for personal use only; commercial use needs a desktop license or Cap Pro.

Not a fit: users on older Linux. The download page requires glibc 2.39 or newer and says Ubuntu 22.04 is not supported, AppImage included.

Not a fit: anyone who needs live streaming, multi-scene switching or complex audio mixing; that is closer to what OBS Studio does.

Not a fit: teams that need a long-term stable desktop release. The contributor guide calls the project "still in its early stages", 0.6.1 has just replaced the entire desktop framework, and the Windows build is still marked Beta on the download page.

How it compares

Against Loom: Loom's pricing page (as of 2026-10-25) lists Starter as free with 25 videos and 5-minute recordings; billed monthly, Business is $18 per user per month and Business + AI $24 per user per month, or $180 and $240 per user per year billed annually. Cap's free plan has no time limit on local recording, but cloud share links are capped at 5 minutes each and the plan is personal use only; Cap Pro is $12 per user per month with AI summaries and transcripts. Inference: Loom is more mature in enterprise integrations and existing user base, while Cap wins on price, open source and self-hosting.

Against Screenity: Screenity is an open-source recorder shipped as a Chrome extension, with 18,807 stars as of 2026-10-25, GPL-3.0, mostly JavaScript, and a description stressing free, privacy-friendly and no limits. Inference: for people who only record a tab or the screen from the browser and need no team workspace or desktop editor, Screenity is lighter; for local 4K multi-track recording, team sharing and AI summaries, Cap covers more.

Against OBS Studio: OBS Studio has 78,193 stars as of 2026-10-25, is GPL-2.0, written in C, and aimed at live streaming and recording with multi-scene, multi-source compositing. Inference: OBS is a production tool for recording and streaming with no layer of share links, comments or transcripts; Cap is an async video messaging tool where sharing follows recording. They overlap little.

Licenses differ too: Screenity and OBS use GPL-family licenses with no paid official tier; Cap's code is AGPL-3.0, but commercial use of the official app is paid and the cloud features are subscriptions.

Getting started

The desktop app is available from the website. The download page offers macOS builds for Apple silicon and Intel, a Windows Beta, and Linux DEB, AppImage, RPM and Arch packages, plus an install script for the CLI; people who already have the desktop app can link the bundled CLI. After signing up, Instant Mode recordings upload to the hosted cloud.

For self-hosting, the docs recommend Docker Compose; the flow is to clone the repo, run docker compose up -d, then open localhost:3000. The default docker-compose.yml includes the web app, an FFmpeg-based media server, MySQL and MinIO; the media server builds from source, so a full clone is required. Before going public, CAP_URL and S3_PUBLIC_URL need to be set and the default secrets replaced per the production checklist. Railway offers a one-click deploy, and Coolify users can use docker-compose.coolify.yml, where the variables become WEB_URL and S3_PUBLIC_ENDPOINT.

Self-hosting involves a few more settings. Email is optional: without Resend, login codes only appear in the cap-web logs and invite emails are skipped. AI features need the operator's own keys: AssemblyAI for transcription, and Groq, OpenAI, Anthropic or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint such as Ollama for titles, summaries and chapters. The 2026-10-23 update added generic OIDC sign-in, authenticating reverse-proxy sign-in and blocked signup domains. Once Cap Server URL in the desktop app settings points to the self-hosted address, uploads go to that instance.

Contributors need Node 24+, Rust 1.88+, Bun 1.4.4 and Docker; the contributor guide provides a bun run env-setup script to generate the .env file, and feature suggestions go through the Discord community.

Pricing & license

The pricing page has four tiers. Free is personal use only, with unlimited local recording and editing and share links capped at 5 minutes each. The Desktop License is $29 per person per year or $58 once, with commercial rights, unlimited local recording, the full editor, and 20 cloud share links a month of up to 5 minutes each. Cap Pro is $12 per user per month, or $8.16 a month billed annually, adding unlimited cloud storage and bandwidth, AI titles, summaries, chapters and transcripts, custom domains, password protection, viewer analytics, team workspaces, the Loom importer and custom S3 or Google Drive. Enterprise customers pay the Cap Pro price with optional SAML SSO ($199 a month, unlimited users) and a signed BAA ($99 per organization per month); students get 30% off.

The code license is mixed. The root LICENSE is AGPL-3.0 with Cap Software, Inc. as copyright holder; it also states that the cap-camera* and scap-* crates are MIT, and third-party components keep their original licenses. The repo API reports the license as Other because of this mixed wording.

Inference: AGPL grants rights at the source level, so anyone can build, modify and deploy it, and if a modified version serves others over a network the corresponding source must be published; the commercial license on the pricing page applies to the official builds and cloud service.

Risks & limits

Security fixes are explained mainly through the changelog. The changelog records repeated hardening, such as tighter shared-access controls on 2026-08-03 and a round of security fixes on 2026-10-23 covering ownership checks, rate-limited login codes, same-site requirements for cookie-authenticated writes, blocking custom S3 endpoints that point at private hosts, and checkout parameter validation.

Maintenance centers on the founder. As of 2026-10-25 the GitHub contributors API shows 8,827 commits from founder Richie McIlroy's account; the contributor list also includes automation accounts such as Copilot, seer-by-sentry[bot] and Cursor Agent.

Change is fast. 0.6.1 replaced the Tauri app with a newly written GPUI app, and the new code still has to prove its stability. Plan terms are moving too: the free plan's monthly share-link allowance only arrived on 2026-08-20, and videos over the limit stay locked until the account upgrades.

As of 2026-10-25 the repo API's open_issues_count is 342, a figure that covers both open issues and open PRs.

Documentation lags. The README still says the desktop app runs on macOS and Windows with a Tauri v2 plus SolidStart stack, while the download page and the 0.6.1 release notes describe a native GPUI app with Linux support. SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and HIPAA are as reported by the vendor; the changelog says reports and live control status sit on the website's trust portal.

How it got here

The first commit landed at 2023-11-18 04:31 (UTC+8), by Richie McIlroy, with a GPL-3.0 license; a later commit replaced it with AGPL-3.0. At 2024-01-03 22:00 (UTC+8) the LICENSE copyright holder changed from Cap to Cap Software, Inc. The first GitHub release, cap-v0.1.6, appeared at 2024-03-25 05:27 (UTC+8), and 0.2.0 followed at 2024-04-17 22:05 (UTC+8).

In 2025 the recording engine was replaced. At 2025-08-22 19:53 (UTC+8) Brendan Allan committed the new scap-* recording engine and brought in MIT-licensed crates; later the MIT license file moved into the licenses folder.

0.4.0, released at 2026-01-09 06:46 (UTC+8), added Screenshot Mode; 0.5.0, at 2026-06-03 04:38 (UTC+8), rebuilt the foundations for recording, screenshots, import, editing, export, upload and recovery. In August the changelog announced SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification, HIPAA compliance and signed BAAs. The desktop-gpui folder entered the repo at 2026-08-23 23:48 (UTC+8), and 0.6.0 shipped at 2026-09-15 21:10 (UTC+8) with the GPUI app as an optional preview under experimental settings.

0.6.1, released at 2026-10-20 22:14 (UTC+8), made the GPUI app replace the Tauri app entirely; 0.6.0 updates in place, keeping recordings, settings and macOS permissions. The same week the web app added concierge Loom migration, a faster Loom importer, self-hosted OIDC sign-in and a round of security fixes.

Our verdict

Cap has grown from a small open-source recorder into a full async video platform: desktop recording and editing, web sharing and transcripts, team workspaces, compliance certifications, Loom migration and interfaces for AI agents, with the core code open and self-hostable. Against Loom it has advantages on price and data control.

Three costs belong in the decision: the desktop app has just swapped frameworks and releases come fast, so stability remains to be seen; security fixes are explained through the changelog; and development depends on the founder.

Why it stands out

Cap is the open source answer to Loom, built in Rust, with a Tauri desktop app (a GPUI version is in development in the same repository) and a Next.js web layer. Record, share a link, get comments, and keep the files on your own storage if you want to.

Richie McIlroy founded it and has kept a product sense that is rare in open source: the recorder is fast, the editor is calm, and the share page is designed rather than generated.

It is open source, built in Rust with Tauri, and can keep recordings on your own storage.

Sources

Official

  1. CapSoftware/Cap on GitHubGitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026
  2. Cap READMEGitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026
  3. Cap LICENSEGitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026
  4. Cap licenses/LICENSE-MITGitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026
  5. Cap commit e1b6ce9: Initial commitGitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026
  6. Cap commit a856391: Update LICENSEGitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026
  7. Cap commit 522e38c: Add Cap Software, IncGitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026
  8. Cap commit 97b952d: New scap-* crates recording engine (#922)GitHub · Accessed Oct 25, 2026

Updates & reading