Descript treats a video file like a document. Record screen, camera or a remote room, and the transcript becomes the timeline: delete a sentence and the footage goes with it. Its pricing page runs four tiers. Free is $0 with 720p export and 100 one-time AI credits. Hobbyist is $16 a month billed annually ($24 on monthly billing) for one person, with 10 media hours a month, 400 AI credits, access to Underlord the AI co-editor, and 1080p watermark-free export. Creator is $24 a month ($35 monthly), supports a team of three, and lifts the limits to 30 media hours, 800 credits and 4k export. Business is $50 a month ($65 monthly) for up to five people with 1,500 AI credits and 25 recording hours a drive.
TL;DR
Descript is an editing tool that happens to record: you edit video by editing its transcript, and the paid plans are priced per person - Hobbyist $16 a month billed annually ($24 monthly) for one person with 10 media hours and 400 AI credits, Creator $24 ($35) for up to three people with 30 media hours and 800 credits, Business $50 ($65) for up to five with 1,500 credits. Loom is a recording and sharing tool that happens to edit: Starter is free with 25 videos and 5-minute screen recordings, Business is $18 per user a month billed annually with unlimited videos and unlimited recording time, Business + AI is $24 per user with summaries and filler-word removal. Buy Descript to produce something; buy Loom to send something.
Loom optimises for the opposite half of the workflow: record quickly, send a link, let people watch on their own time. The free Starter plan gives 25 videos, 5-minute screen recordings, unlimited meeting length, transcriptions in 50+ languages, comments and emoji reactions, and up to 50 members in the workspace. Business is $18 per user a month billed annually - Loom notes that monthly billing costs 17% more - and moves you to unlimited videos and unlimited recording time with basic waveform editing and no Loom branding. Business + AI is $24 per user a month and adds auto titles, auto CTA, video-to-text automation, auto-summaries and filler-word removal. Enterprise is quoted by Atlassian's sales team and includes Atlassian Guard (Standard) at no extra cost.
Both products record and both edit, so the overlap is real and it is narrower than the marketing suggests. Descript's editing is the point: transcript-based cuts, Studio Sound, filler-word removal, clip generation, custom voice clones. Loom's editing exists so that a recording can be sent without embarrassment. The cheapest paid tier is within two dollars of each other, which makes this a question about output rather than budget.
| Feature | Descript | Loom |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | $0 with 720p export and 100 one-time AI credits | $0 with 25 videos, 5-minute screen recordings, up to 50 members |
| Entry paid plan | Hobbyist $16/month billed annually ($24 monthly), 1 person | Business $18 per user/month billed annually (17% more monthly) |
| Mid plan | Creator $24/month billed annually ($35 monthly), up to 3 people | Business + AI $24 per user/month billed annually |
| Top published plan | Business $50/month billed annually ($65 monthly), up to 5 people | Enterprise, quoted by sales, with Atlassian Guard included |
| Included volume | 10 media hours and 400 AI credits on Hobbyist; 30 hours and 800 credits on Creator | Unlimited videos and unlimited recording time from Business upward |
| Export quality | 1080p on Hobbyist, 4k on Creator and Business, watermark-free from Hobbyist up | Downloads and embeds; resolution tiers are not printed on the pricing page |
| AI features | Underlord co-editor, Studio Sound, filler-word and retake removal, create clips, voice clones | Auto titles, auto CTA, video-to-text automation, auto-summaries, filler-word removal on Business + AI |
| Primary job | Producing finished video and audio that gets published | Sending a recording to a colleague and moving on |
Pick Descript if
Podcasts, course lessons, YouTube videos, product demos that need to be cut down into clips - anything with an audience rather than a recipient - is Descript's territory, and the transcript editing model genuinely speeds that up. It costs more attention to learn and meters media hours and AI credits, so it is the wrong tool if you just want to hit record and send a link. Start on Free, and only pay once the 720p cap or the credit limit actually hurts.
Pick Loom if
Stand-ups, code walkthroughs, design feedback, customer explanations: Loom's free tier is enough for a lot of that, and at $18 per user a month the paid plan removes both the video cap and the 5-minute recording limit. The editing will not produce a publishable video and the AI features cost another six dollars a seat, but that is not what this tool is for. It is the cheaper way to replace a meeting.
No independent ratings, review scores or user quotes were collected for this pair; testimonials shown on either vendor's homepage are their own marketing and are not quoted here. Prices were read on 2026-10-15 from descript.com/pricing and loom.com/pricing.
Only partly. Descript records screen and camera and can send a link, and Loom trims and stitches recordings. But Descript's paid plans are built around transcript editing, AI credits and 4k export, while Loom's are built around unlimited recordings and workspace members. Substituting one for the other means giving up the half of the product you actually used.
Loom's free tier is more useful for a team - 25 videos, 5-minute recordings and up to 50 members - while Descript's free tier is capped at 720p export and 100 one-time AI credits. On paid entry plans the gap is two dollars: Descript Hobbyist at $16 a month billed annually for one person, against Loom Business at $18 per user a month billed annually.
Descript publishes both: Hobbyist $24, Creator $35 and Business $65 a month on monthly billing, against $16, $24 and $50 billed annually. Loom states that paying monthly costs 17% more than the annual rate rather than printing the monthly figure on the page.
Transcription is core to both. Loom includes transcriptions in over 50 languages on the free plan; Descript's editing is built on the transcript from the free tier upward, with AI credits metering the generative features rather than the transcription itself.
Loom, structurally: its workspace supports up to 50 members even on the free plan and goes unlimited on Business, and its Enterprise tier is sold by Atlassian's sales team with single sign-on and SCIM through Atlassian Guard. Descript's published paid tiers stop at a team of five on Business, with larger deployments handled as an Enterprise conversation.
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