Drefly vs Loom in 2026: Screen Recording Feature Comparison

Loom popularized async screen recording, and it's still the tool most people think of first. Drefly's Record tool covers the same core job, screen and camera capture with a shareable link, but starts from a different set of defaults: no account, no watermark, no length cap, and storage you own instead of storage Loom owns. Here's an honest, feature by feature look at where the two actually differ, sourced from Drefly's own product and Loom's published pricing page.

The comparison, at a glance

Loom figures above reflect Loom's publicly listed Starter, Business, and Business + AI plans as of this writing. Pricing and limits are set by Loom and can change, so check loom.com/pricing for the current numbers.

Where Drefly is the better fit

• You want to record right now. No account screen, no plan picker, just hit record.
• You record often, or for a while. No 25-video cap, no 5-minute wall, no watermark to pay your way out of.
• You want to keep the file. Recordings save locally by default, and a connected drive or bucket means the copy lives in storage you control, not a vendor's cloud.
• You want a recorder that costs nothing at all. record.drefly.pro is completely free, no cost, no payment wall, and no limits on how much you record, and every file you save stays yours, whether that's local storage or your own connected drive or bucket.
• You need a customer facing recorder, not a team tool. The embeddable widget lets visitors send you a recording with no signup of their own, straight into your own storage, and it drops into any website or stack, no dedicated Slack or Jira app required.
• Your team shares recordings in Slack. Drefly's Slack integration lets anyone on the team record and post straight into a channel or DM, for team workspaces or personal use, at no cost.
• You want your recording safely stored the moment you stop talking. Turn on shareable link before you record and Drefly syncs the file to your connected Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive in real time as you record, browser straight to drive, with nothing passing through Drefly's servers. The embeddable widget does the same for customer recordings, syncing each one into your own storage bucket in real time as visitors record.
• You want transcripts, AI summaries, and chapters without paying for them. Drefly generates all three on device for free, and a free AssemblyAI or ElevenLabs key unlocks faster, higher accuracy cloud transcription with speaker labels at no extra cost.
• You want to know what's happening on screen without watching the whole thing back. Perception scans the recording frame by frame on device, reading on-screen text and describing each scene, matched against the audio transcript.
• You want to record and share in whatever quality fits, up to full 4K. The quality dropdown covers 4K, 1440p, 1080p, 720p, 480p, 360p, or original on every recording, every share, and every download.

Where Loom is the better fit

• You need viewer analytics today. Loom's are built for that now; Drefly's viewer analytics are coming soon.
• Your team lives across Jira and GitHub too, not just Slack. Loom ships native app integrations for all three. Drefly has a live Slack integration for teams and personal use today, plus the embeddable widget for any other website or stack, with direct Jira and GitHub integrations coming soon at no cost.
• You need a native mobile app for recording on the go. Loom has one; Drefly's Record tool runs in the browser today, with native mobile apps coming soon at no cost.

Sharing, PIN protection, comments, and reactions

When you create a drefly.pro share link for a personal recording, you can turn on PIN protection before you share it. Anyone opening the link enters the PIN before the recording plays, and Drefly locks the link out after 5 failed attempts. Viewers can also leave a comment and drop an emoji reaction directly on the share page, with no account needed on their end.

There's one tradeoff worth knowing about. If you share a recording using the "Share link via drive path" option instead of the default drefly.pro link, the visitor lands directly on the file inside your connected Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive, a page that belongs to your drive provider, not Drefly. Because of that, the PIN toggle turns itself off for a drive link, and comments and reactions aren't available either, since those only run on Drefly's own share page. If you want PIN protection, comments, or reactions on a given recording, share it with the default drefly.pro link rather than the drive path option.

One more distinction: emoji reactions currently exist only on personal record.drefly.pro share links. The embeddable company widget supports PIN protection and comments, gated by the same PIN when one is set, but reactions aren't part of the widget yet.

Transcripts, AI summaries, and chapters

Every recording gets a transcript, a summary, and auto-generated chapters, and none of it costs anything. By default this runs on device in your browser using Whisper, no upload, no account, no cost. If you want faster turnaround and higher accuracy, especially with multiple speakers, paste your own free AssemblyAI or ElevenLabs API key and Drefly detects which provider it belongs to automatically, or you can pick the provider from a dropdown if the key format is ambiguous. The key lives only in your browser and is sent only to that provider to process the recording, Drefly never sees it or stores it.

Once generated, the transcript and summary are fully editable. Fix a misheard word, tidy up a chapter title, or rewrite a summary line, then download the result as plain text, an SRT subtitle file, or JSON for your own pipeline. Loom offers transcripts and AI summaries too, but they sit behind paid plans and are mostly view only. Drefly's version is free on every plan, editable, and yours to export in the format you need.

These insights are private to you by default, on both record.drefly.pro and developer.drefly.pro. Sharing a recording doesn't hand out the transcript, summary, or chapters automatically, a separate Share AI insights toggle sits next to the PIN option on the share modal, off unless you turn it on. Leave it off and viewers only get the video and comments. Turn it on and the same transcript, summary, and chapter tabs appear for them too, styled exactly like your own view, no extra export step. Loom has no equivalent control, once AI summaries are visible on a shared Loom video they're visible to anyone with the link.

Collecting recordings from customers

Loom is built for a team recording and sharing internally. Drefly also covers a case Loom doesn't: collecting a recording from someone outside your company, like a customer sending a bug report. Drop a one line embed script on your site and visitors can record and send it back with no signup of their own. The widget isn't tied to any framework or platform, it embeds on a plain HTML page, a React or Angular app, WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, or any other stack. Every session link is PIN protectable, expires after 24 hours, and is single use once completed, and recordings sync in real time straight from the visitor's browser into storage you already own: Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or any S3 compatible bucket, including Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, DigitalOcean Spaces, Wasabi, Google Cloud Storage, and MinIO. Drefly's servers never store a copy, and there's no signup fee or monthly cost to set the widget up. Read more in Why Use Drefly's Record Tool for Your Company and the full integration guide.

Free with no limits, and you own the data

record.drefly.pro is completely free, with no cost, no payment wall, and no limits on recording length or how many recordings you make. There's no account required to start, and no plan to upgrade out of later. The same applies to the company widget: no signup fee, no monthly cost, and recordings go straight into storage you already own and control, Drefly never keeps a copy. That pairing, free with no limits and data that stays owned by the person or company recording it, is the core difference between Drefly and a tool like Loom that gates length, watermark removal, and AI features behind paid tiers.

We'd love your feedback

If something in this comparison is out of date, or if there's a Loom feature you rely on that we haven't covered, let us know. Reach out through the Feedback page or by emailing support@drefly.pro.