The Best Screen Recorder for PC, Mac, Android & iPhone in 2024

• Pricing: Free
• Website: obsproject.com
• Who Is It For: Gamers, streamers (e.g. YouTube or Twitch streamers), users wanting to create work presentations or tutorials, those who don’t mind a learning curve.

• Customizability: With OBS, you can add as many scenes as you like from several source types, including video capture, window capture, game capture and image capture. You can also organize sections of the screen to your specifications.
• Audio features: The audio mixer lets you adjust volume and balance, and apply filters like noise gate, gain and noise suppression. 
• Streaming: OBS has a dedicated “start streaming” tab. In its settings, you can connect accounts like Twitch and YouTube. 
• Studio mode: Studio mode allows users to see a preview of their screen capture and make adjustments as needed before going live.
• Hotkeys: Adding another layer of customizability, OBS lets you set hotkeys for actions like transitions, muting and more. 
• Multiview: The multiview feature shows up to eight scenes from various sources (video, image, desktop, etc.) and enables you to transition between them. 

It took us some time to figure out how to add sources and navigate the UI, but once that was out of the way, the screen capture process was straightforward. We were pleasantly surprised by the customizability and recording quality of this free service. However, if you want editing tools, OBS might not be the best option for you. 

As an open-source software, OBS has no paid plans. You can use all its features free of charge. This makes it an ideal screen recorder for those on a budget or users who don’t require editing features. 

• Pricing: Annual plans from $64.95 
• Website: movavi.com
• Who Is It For: Windows or Mac users who want to record remotely or want something simpler than OBS.

• Scheduled recordings: One of Movavi’s standout features is its scheduling capability, which allows you to set your recording’s start time and desired duration. 
• Drawing: The pen and shape-drawing features let you highlight areas of your screen in various colors during recordings. 
• Editing features: Movavi’s editing capabilities (available on the priciest plan) include noise reduction, cutting, trimming, joining, AI backgrounds and special effects. 
• Mic grabbing: Movavi offers sound grabbing from the microphone and speakers. 

While some screen recorder apps have a clunkier aesthetic, that’s not the case with Movavi. The app is neatly tucked to the side of the screen, and you can fold it away by clicking the arrow. Beginning the recording was nice and easy, and we appreciated the annotation tools, which would be perfect for filming a video class or work presentation. 

You can pay monthly for Movavi’s screen recorder; however, this option is very expensive at $19.95, so it’s cheaper to go for an annual plan. 

As a rule, you can get the screen recorder on its own for $64.95 per year, or double up with the editor for $59.95 per year. This offers a 55% discount on the usual price of $133.95 (but discounts are subject to change). There’s also a lifetime plan and business plans, which are shown in the table below. A 30-day money-back guarantee comes with each plan.

You get a seven-day free trial of Movavi upon sign-up, but there are a few limitations: During your free trial, your recordings will have watermarks and are capped at five minutes per recording. 

Discounts mentioned are current at the time of writing and are subject to change. 

• Pricing: Free
• Website: zapier.com/zappy
• Who Is It For: Mac users wanting an alternative to the built-in screen recorder, QuickTime Player.

• Keyboard shortcuts: You can set up your preferred keyboard shortcuts for recording with Zappy. 
• Annotation tools: Zappy has annotation tools including a pen, arrow, rectangle and text box. You can annotate in five colors. 
• GIF creation: If you like creating GIFs to add variety to your content and boost engagement, you can produce them with Zappy.

The Zappy app is refreshingly simple — we could start recording within seconds of installing. It has all the functions you need for a simple screen recording, including annotation tools, shortcut captures and the option to appear on webcam. Some free screen recorders offer many more features, but if you just want the basics, Zappy is well worth trying out. 

Zappy is free to use for Mac users, but there is one caveat: If you want to get the shareable URL for your recording and upload your recordings to the cloud, you’ll need a paid Zapier account. The starting price is $19.99 per month on the annual plan — see the table of Zapier account prices below. 

• Pricing: From $179.88 per year
• Website: techsmith.com/camtasia 
• Who Is It For: Those who want a broad range of editing features.

• Editing suite: Once you record your video, you can go into the editing suite to import media and apply annotations, visual effects, filters, cursor effects, audio effects, transitions and more. In our opinion, Camtasia’s editing suite is by far the best of all the providers we tested. 
• Audio editing: Camtasia’s editing suite also lets you edit your audio with sound effects, background volume adjustment, audio visualization, leveling, normalization and noise removal.  
• Captions: When it comes to captioning, Camtasia allows you to add closed captions, dynamic captions and subtitles in different languages. 
• Tutorial collection: Camtasia has a whole collection of tutorials for everything you want to do with the software. 

At first, we were worried that Camtasia’s feature-rich offerings might translate to complexity, but that’s not the case at all. Camtasia breaks down the process into bite-sized chunks, beginning with a simple window for selecting your screen, camera, mic and audio settings, and then starting the recording. 

When you finish recording, it automatically takes you to the editing suite. Here, everything is presented in a way that is easy to understand, even for complete beginners. 

You can get a seven-day free trial with Camtasia without entering any card details, but the free recordings will be watermarked. 

Camtasia is one of the more expensive screen recorders, with individual plans costing $179.88, $249 or $599 per year (the table below shows the specialized options). That said, if you plan to edit a lot during post-production, it may be worth the investment. Refer to the table below to see the deals that are currently available. 

Limited-time offers may be available from time to time.

• Pricing: From $24 per year 
• Website: screenpal.com 
• Who Is It For: Those on a tight budget who need an editing suite.

• Generous free plan: Some providers’ free plans come with tight restrictions, but not ScreenPal. You get unlimited recordings, and the free recordings have a 15-minute time limit, which is still generous compared to some competitors. 
• No watermarks: Even the free plan recordings don’t come with watermarks, but there is a ScreenPal outro. Upgrading to a paid plan will get rid of this.   
• Editing tools: ScreenPal’s host of editing tools include cropping, cutting, resizing, background removal, sound effects, music and more. 
• ScreenPal AI: ScreenPal AI is available on the Solo Max and Team Business plans. It autogenerates elements like titles, summaries, quiz questions, translations and speech-to-text captions.

ScreenPal has a small learning curve: We found recording and editing to be a breeze. As we played around with the editing features, its intuitive UI let us customize recordings quickly and easily through cropping, resizing, adding colors, changing frame shapes and adding music. However, the free plan doesn’t support system audio recording. 

We appreciate ScreenPal’s flexible pricing plans, as they all have something for everyone. You can choose from a monthly plan or an annual plan, which will save you some money.

The Solo plans start at $3 per month (paid annually). This is very reasonable compared to some other providers, especially when you consider all the features you get. There are also Business and Education plans.   

Any discounts mentioned are current at the time of writing and may change. 

• Pricing: Free, premium plans from $12.50 per month (paid annually)
• Website: loom.com 
• Who Is It For: Non-tech-savvy folk, people who want to record quick, short videos.

• Instant links: You can instantly share your created recordings or pop into your account’s video library to grab the link.
• Loom AI (Business plan): If you upgrade from the free plan, you get access to Loom’s AI video enhancer. This generates recording features like titles, chapters, tasks, summaries and more, and creates documents from your script. 
• Backgrounds & canvases: You can add a range of backgrounds, frames and canvases to your recordings. 
• Compatibility: Loom is compatible with a variety of devices, including Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. It also has a Chrome browser extension if you prefer not to use the traditional desktop app installation. 
• Feedback features: Viewers can provide feedback on recordings with comments and emojis.  

Loom guided us from start to finish during the simple installation process. When we opened the app, the interface was highly intuitive and easy to navigate. Everything is packed neatly into a small window, and the most important functions (window selection, camera and mic settings) are front and center. We had fun experimenting with all the webcam backgrounds. 

If you don’t want to install anything, you can add the Chrome browser extension instead. However, we noticed that the extension lacks the “speaker notes” function and enhancement features like “touch up my appearance.” 

When we signed up for a free plan, we were impressed that we got a 14-day free trial of the Business plan without entering any card details. However, we consider its Business plan to be relatively pricey with limited editing features. An Enterprise plan is also available; you’ll need to contact sales to discuss pricing for this plan. 

Contact sales for Enterprise pricing.