Cap vs Loom
Cap is a European alternative to Loom — same content & media use case, built under EU data-protection law.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
Record beautiful screen videos with instant sharing or local editing. Cross-platform app with custom S3 support, AI features, and privacy controls.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- GDPR by default
- Yes
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- Yes
- Free tier
- No
Loom by Atlassian.
- Jurisdiction
- US
- GDPR by default
- Requires DPA + TIA
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- Yes
About Cap
Cap is a beautiful, open-source screen recorder that lets creators and engineering teams capture screen and webcam in 4K, edit locally, and share instantly through short links — with full ownership of the raw files and hosting. It positions itself as a privacy-respecting Loom and Camtasia alternative for people who want their recordings to stay under their control.
The app ships with three recording modes: Instant for quick Loom-style share links, Studio for timeline editing with backgrounds, padding, rounded corners, and annotations, and screenshot capture for stills. AI features auto-generate titles, summaries, chapters, and transcripts, while custom S3 buckets and custom domains let teams host recordings on their own infrastructure.
Key benefits:
- Open-source core on GitHub gives full transparency and community contributions
- 4K/60fps recording with intelligent compression keeps file sizes manageable
- Custom S3 and domains let teams host videos on their own storage and brand
- Local, cloud, or self-hosted storage options fit any privacy requirement
- AI titles, summaries, chapters extract structure from every recording automatically
- Native apps for macOS and Windows with Apple Silicon optimisation
Cap is developed in the United Kingdom with GDPR-aligned data handling and an option to host recordings entirely on customer-owned storage, keeping data out of US cloud jurisdiction. Self-hosted deployments give complete sovereignty over video assets and viewer analytics.
Ideal for engineers, support teams, and content creators who want a polished screen recorder with local-first storage, open-source transparency, and a clean alternative to proprietary tools like Loom and Camtasia.
Why choose Cap over Loom?
The decisive argument is data jurisdiction. Loom is headquartered in US, which means personal data processed through it can be subject to non-EU legal regimes — the US CLOUD Act, FISA 702, or similar laws depending on the provider. After the 2020 Schrems II ruling, EU organisations must carry out a transfer impact assessment for every such data flow.
Cap removes that overhead. As a United Kingdom-based provider, it operates natively under GDPR, and data stays inside the EU/EEA by default. For regulated sectors — health, public administration, finance — that's not a nice-to-have but a requirement. For everyone else, it's concentration-risk insurance: you avoid depending on a single non-EU jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.