Cap vs Loom
Cap is a European alternative to Loom: same content & media use case, headquartered in United Kingdom and governed by UK GDPR, while Loom (Atlassian) is based in the United States.
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
- United Kingdom
- Primary privacy law
- UK GDPR
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- Yes
- Free tier
- No
Records your screen and face and hands back a link that plays instantly, with transcripts and time-stamped comments, and plenty of teams swapped status meetings for it. The free Starter plan stops at 25 videos per person and five minutes each; Business costs 18 dollars per user monthly. Owner Atlassian reincorporated from England to Delaware in 2022, putting it under US law.
- Jurisdiction
- United States
- GDPR by default
- Requires DPA + TIA
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- Yes
Cap vs Loom at a glance
| Cap | Loom | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | United Kingdom | United States |
| Data jurisdiction | United Kingdom | United States |
| Primary privacy law | UK GDPR | Requires DPA + transfer assessment |
| US CLOUD Act exposure | No | Yes |
| Best for | Teams that need content & media built for European data-protection requirements | Teams already invested in the Atlassian ecosystem |
Choose Cap if…
- You want a provider governed by a European privacy regime
- GDPR or public-sector data-protection requirements apply to you
- Open-source code and self-hosting matter to you
- You'd rather back the European tech ecosystem
Stick with Loom if…
- You depend on integrations only available in the Atlassian ecosystem
- Your organisation has no EU data-residency constraints
- Migration costs outweigh the jurisdiction benefits for now
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, while keeping 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 the United States, 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 under UK GDPR, and data stays in the United Kingdom, which the European Commission recognises as offering an adequate level of protection. For regulated sectors such as health, public administration, and 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 jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.