Screen recorders, compared with Deixis
A hosted screen recorder makes the upload the product: you press record, the file goes to somebody else's servers, and the thing you send a colleague is a page on their domain. Deixis records the same walkthrough to an MP4 in a folder on your own disk, transcribes it on your own processor, and uploads nothing until you press Share — and even then you choose who the link is for and how long it lives. Each comparison takes the other tool's facts from its own pages, dated and linked, and the list of where Deixis loses is never empty.
The comparison so far is Loom, whose free plan stops a recording at five minutes, holds twenty-five videos a person and uploads every take. Loom wins on captions in fifty languages, comments and viewer insights; Deixis wins on the file, which is yours, with no length limit and a transcript written on your own machine.
If you are not leaving a particular tool and only want the plain answer, the free screen recorder covers recording with no watermark, no time limit and no account, and the free screenshot tool covers grabs you can mark up with arrows, boxes, numbered steps and redaction. Both say where the free part stops: a share link is the one piece that needs an account.
Screen recording
One page per tool
The Loom alternative that keeps the file on your disk
Loom caps free recordings at five minutes and uploads every take. Deixis records to an MP4 on your own PC and uploads nothing until you share it.
Side by side
Every tool here, and Deixis, at a glance
DeixisWindows · Mac · Android · iOS (beta) Speech recognitionOn your device · 7 languages AccountNone for anything local PriceFree · Pro $49/yr
- Runs on
- Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit, on an Intel or AMD processor with AVX2: 2013 and later; no build for Windows on ARM), Mac (Apple Silicon) and Android (a dictation bubble in any app, plus meetings), with an iPhone keyboard in beta on TestFlight and not yet in the App Store. Meetings run on Windows and Android. One engine on all of them, and dictation audio stays on the device, except a first-run dictation you choose to send before its model arrives.
- Speech recognition
- On your own device, inside the app, on every platform, in seven languages on Windows and the Mac: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch, each measured at fewer than one word in ten wrong. Android and iPhone dictate in English for now. Dictation audio stays on the device, except a first-run dictation you choose to send before its model arrives; a meeting's, only if you turn on cloud processing on Android.
- Leaves your machine
- Text, and only once you switch a cloud feature on, plus, on Windows, one key you press to check your own Claude plan, and, on Android, a meeting's audio if you turn on cloud processing for meetings or send meetings to your own computer, sealed so Deixis cannot read it. Never a dictation's audio, never screenshots, never window titles.
- Account
- None, ever, for anything that runs on your device. The cloud extras have a seven-day trial you start with an email code. No card.
- Price
- Free forever for everything local, meetings included. Pro is $49 a year for the cloud extras with nothing to set up.
LoomWeb · Desktop Speech recognitionIn the cloud AccountRequired PriceFree plan · $18/mo
- Runs on
- Chrome extension; Desktop app
- Leaves your machine
- Video, audio, text
- Free tier
- Starter: up to 25 videos a person, five minutes per recording, video quality up to 720p
- Paid
- $18 a month; Per user. Business lifts the video count and length limits; Business + AI, at $24 a user a month, adds the AI editing and automatic notes. Paying annually saves up to 17%.
Loom and Deixis, compared in full Price from loom.com, checked 14 September 2026
Open a row for the rest: the platforms, what leaves your machine and the price in full, from the tool's own pages and dated. Each tool's page here goes further — where it wins, and who should not switch.
What you get
More than dictation. One key, and everything behind it.
Hold the key and press a letter: free mode, a grab, a meeting, a recording, a translation, your own buttons. All of it on your own device, all of it free, none of it behind an account.
Dictation, where your cursor is
Hold a key, speak, release. Clean, punctuated text lands in whatever has focus, on your PC, your Mac and your phone, with your clipboard handed back.
Free mode: talk and point
Narrate for as long as you like while you grab a region, pick a button on screen or take a selection. One note, what you said interleaved with what you pointed at, pasted where you finish and saved as Markdown.
Screen grabs, annotated
Freeze every screen at the keypress, drag a region, add arrows, boxes, text and numbered steps, and pixelate what is private. Saved as a PNG that stays editable.
Screen recording, shared as a link
Record the screen with your narration. The recording writes itself up with a title, chapters and a summary, and from your Deixis account it shares as a link anyone can open without one. The Loom you can stop paying for.
Meetings, no bot, names included
Your microphone and the other side, transcribed on your machine while the call runs. Deixis tells the voices apart and remembers the ones you name, and never uploads a voice.
Your own buttons and workflows
Add a button to the palette: it gets the note on stdin and types back whatever it prints. Send finished notes to any URL you own. Chain steps: read the text off a screenshot, translate it, summarise it, post it.
Hold a key. Speak. Keep working.
Deixis is free, needs no account, and runs on your own device.
v1.3.2 · 64‑bit Windows 10/11 on Intel or AMD · macOS 13 on Apple silicon · 51 MB · nothing else to install · also for Windows · Android on Google Play