Loom vs Bubbles: Async Tools Compared

Bubbles is the async video tool that gets recommended by people who tried Loom and felt the conversation around their video was an afterthought. Both products record screen and webcam, both produce shareable links, both have a free tier and paid plans in roughly the same range. Where they diverge is the design philosophy. Loom treats a recording as a message to be watched. Bubbles treats a recording as the opening turn of a conversation.

That difference shows up in every feature decision. Bubbles puts threaded comments, timestamp-anchored replies, chapters, and team workspaces in the foreground. Loom keeps the recording front and center and makes the conversation an optional layer. Choosing between them is mostly a question of how much of your team's communication actually happens around video versus around the link to a video.

TL;DR

Pick Loom if your team uses async video as one channel among many — Slack for chat, email for external, Loom for "this is too long to type." Pick Bubbles if async video has graduated to a primary channel and your team frequently has multi-turn discussions that originated as a recording. Bubbles is built around the idea that a video without a conversation is half a tool. Loom is built around the idea that a video with a link is a complete tool. Both are correct for different teams.

Why This Comparison Matters In 2026

The async video category has grown up. The first wave of products in 2020 and 2021 was about "stop scheduling so many calls" and the success metric was simply that people sent videos instead of meeting on Zoom. By 2024 the question shifted: now that we send videos, what is the conversation around them supposed to look like?

Loom answered with comments and reactions but kept the architecture flat — a video has a comment thread attached, much like a YouTube video. Bubbles answered by rebuilding the architecture around threaded replies that include video, audio, or text on specific timestamps. Each reply can spawn its own thread. The result feels closer to how Slack threads work than how Loom comments work.

For teams where async video is occasional, Loom's lighter conversational layer is enough and the broader integrations are worth more. For teams where async video has become a primary medium — design reviews, code reviews, weekly updates, sales call debriefs — Bubbles' deeper threading is meaningfully better.

The pricing dynamics also matter. Loom's per-seat cost has crept up under Atlassian, with reports of Enterprise contracts past three hundred dollars per user per year. Bubbles has stayed in the more modest 13-dollars-per-month range, which makes it easier for smaller teams to adopt without procurement friction. For a 20-person team that uses async video heavily, the cost difference is real.

What Is Loom

Loom is the mainstream async video product, owned by Atlassian since 2023 and used by tens of millions of people across companies of every size. The recording flow is fast: open the recorder, capture screen and webcam, click stop, get a link. Native apps cover Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android, plus a Chrome extension that records directly from the browser. Integrations with Slack, Gmail, Notion, Jira, and the rest of the Atlassian stack are deep and well-maintained.

Loom's design philosophy is that the recording is the artifact. The viewer page wraps the video in lightweight engagement features — comments, reactions, transcripts, AI-generated summaries — but the video itself is what is being shared. Conversations on Loom videos exist, but they are typically short and shallow.

Strengths. The record-to-link loop is best in class. Cross-platform reach means almost any teammate can install and use it within a minute. Viewer analytics show watch percentage, drop-off, and engagement, which is genuinely useful for sales and customer success teams. The integration ecosystem is broad enough that Loom links live naturally inside the tools where work already happens.

Weaknesses. The conversational layer is shallow. Comments are flat and tied to the video, not threaded. Async video replies are not a first-class concept — you can record a video reply, but it does not embed inline in a thread. Pricing under Atlassian has climbed, and the free tier caps at 25 videos and five minutes per video. Loom's defaults around link sharing are public-by-default, which has caused accidental leaks of internal videos in some teams.

What Is Bubbles

Bubbles is a smaller async video product built explicitly around the idea that the conversation around a video is as important as the video itself. The recording experience is similar to Loom — record screen and webcam, get a shareable link — but the viewer page is more deliberately designed for back-and-forth discussion.

Threaded comments, video and audio replies on specific timestamps, chapter markers for navigation, and channel-style workspaces are core features rather than add-ons. The product is positioned for teams whose async video usage has matured past one-way messages into multi-turn discussions. Design teams using it for async critique, engineering teams using it for code walkthroughs, and product teams using it for weekly updates are common use cases.

Strengths. Threaded conversations are genuinely better than Loom's flat comments. Replying with a video on a specific timestamp lets a teammate respond to "the bug at 2:14" with another recording rather than typing out an explanation. Channel-style workspaces organize recordings by topic instead of dumping them into a flat library. The pricing is friendlier — paid plans around 13 dollars per month per user with a free tier that supports real usage rather than just evaluation.

Weaknesses. The smaller user base means fewer integrations and less internal familiarity at most companies. New teammates need a brief onboarding to understand the threaded model, which Loom does not require. Recording quality is competitive but not exceptional. AI features exist but are less developed than Loom's. Mobile support is thinner than Loom's, with the desktop and web experiences receiving most product investment.

Recording Quality And Platform

Loom records across more platforms than Bubbles does. Native apps on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android cover most teammates. The Chrome extension covers everyone else. Recording fidelity is tuned for fast cloud upload, which means visible compression on detailed displays but acceptable quality for messaging.

Bubbles records primarily through a web app, a desktop app, and a Chrome extension. There is no first-class iOS or Android recording experience. For teams that record on phones, this is a significant gap. For teams that record only at their desks, it is irrelevant. Recording quality is on par with Loom — both are tuned for cloud delivery rather than maximum fidelity.

For a team with heavy mobile usage, Loom's reach matters. For a team that records only from laptops in office or home settings, the difference is invisible.

Editing Capabilities

Both tools take a minimal-editor approach, but Bubbles' editor is more conversation-aware while Loom's is more recording-aware.

Loom lets you trim the start and end, remove an interior segment, blur a region, and add a captioned title. The implicit assumption is that if a take is bad, you re-record. AI features generate transcripts, summaries, and chapter markers automatically. There is no concept of editing the recording in response to viewer feedback.

Bubbles trims similarly but adds chapter markers as a first-class editing concept. You can mark sections of a recording as discrete chapters, give each one a title, and viewers can navigate between them. Since the conversation around a recording often references specific chapters, this editing affordance is more useful in practice than it sounds. The editor is otherwise comparable in scope to Loom — neither is a real video editor.

If editing depth matters, neither is the right tool. Both are recorders with light editing on top, and serious editing happens in Descript, Final Cut, or a dedicated editor. Our comparison of Loom and Descript goes into when transcript editing is worth the workflow change.

Sharing And Collaboration

This is the dimension where Loom and Bubbles diverge most.

Loom's share story is fast and broad. Click stop, the link is in your clipboard, paste it into Slack or email. The viewer page autoplays the video, supports timestamped comments and emoji reactions, and tracks viewing analytics. Comments are flat — each comment is attached to the video, not to other comments. Async video replies are possible but not a primary interaction model.

Bubbles' share story is slower but deeper. The link is generated similarly fast, but the viewer page is built for sustained interaction. Comments are threaded. Timestamp markers anchor each comment to a specific moment in the video. Replies can be text, audio, or video, all inline in the same thread. Channel-style workspaces collect related recordings under topical categories rather than dumping them into a flat library.

For teams whose async video usage stops at "watch and react," Loom's flat model is enough. For teams whose async video usage extends into multi-turn discussion, Bubbles' threaded model removes friction Loom's design did not anticipate.

Pricing And Value

Loom's free tier caps at 25 videos and five minutes per video, enough to evaluate but not to rely on. The Business plan at 15 dollars per user per month unlocks unlimited videos, longer recordings, AI summaries, and engagement features. Enterprise pricing is custom and reportedly past 300 dollars per user per year for larger contracts post-Atlassian.

Bubbles' free tier is more usable for sustained light use, with reasonable caps that support real workflows rather than just evaluation. Paid plans run around 13 dollars per month per user with team and business tiers that include workspace administration, SSO, and priority support. The pricing structure is friendlier to small teams that want to deploy without a procurement review.

For a 20-person team, Loom Business runs about 3,600 dollars per year. Bubbles paid runs closer to 3,120 dollars per year. The cost difference is meaningful but not the primary factor — the bigger question is whether the team will actually use the threaded conversation model that justifies Bubbles' design.

Privacy And Data

Both products store recordings in the cloud by default and offer workspace-level retention controls on paid plans. Loom is SOC 2 Type II certified and has documentation around data handling. Bubbles has comparable certifications and a documented data posture, though as a smaller company the procurement process can require more direct conversation.

Loom's default share visibility is "anyone with the link," which has caused issues in teams that share videos containing internal context. Bubbles defaults to workspace-restricted sharing, which is structurally safer for teams that record sensitive material. Both products allow visibility to be adjusted, but the defaults matter for accidental disclosure risk.

For regulated industries, neither is a strong choice unless paired with workspace controls and explicit retention policies. For typical product, design, and engineering teams, both are fine.

Specialized Features For Threaded Conversations

Bubbles' specialized features cluster around the threaded conversation model. The most useful are inline video and audio replies, which let a teammate respond to a specific moment with another recording rather than a text comment. Timestamp anchoring on every comment, threaded reply structures that mirror how Slack threads work, and channel-style organization of recordings together produce a workflow that feels qualitatively different from Loom.

Loom's specialized features cluster around AI and analytics. AI summaries, action item extraction, and chapter generation are more developed than Bubbles' equivalents. Viewer engagement analytics are the deepest in the category — watch percentage, drop-off, and per-viewer engagement data are bundled into the workspace dashboard. For sales and customer success teams, this depth is worth more than threaded comments.

The right specialization depends on what your team actually does with recordings. If recordings spawn discussions, Bubbles' threading wins. If recordings are sent and read, Loom's analytics win.

Best For Different Personas

Design teams running async critique. Bubbles. Threaded replies on specific frames are designed for exactly this workflow.

Engineering teams reviewing code or architecture. Bubbles for active discussion, Loom for one-way walkthroughs sent to broader audiences.

Product teams running async standups. Either, with Bubbles favoring teams that want comments to accumulate and Loom favoring teams that want the recording to stand alone.

Sales and customer success. Loom. Viewer analytics directly inform follow-up.

Customer support responding to tickets. Loom. The volume and one-way nature of support recordings match Loom's flat model better than Bubbles' threading.

Distributed teams with heavy mobile usage. Loom. Recording from a phone is a first-class experience that Bubbles does not match.

Founders sending updates to investors. Loom. The professional ubiquity is the point, not the threading model.

Smaller teams that want sustainable async video. Bubbles. The pricing and threading combine into a more sustainable workflow at small scale.

Migration Considerations

Moving from Loom to Bubbles usually happens when a team realizes their async video usage has outgrown flat comments. The data migration is light — Loom lets you download MP4s from your library, and Bubbles imports them with workspace organization. The harder part is workflow change. Teammates need a brief onboarding to understand threaded replies and channel organization, and the value of the move only shows up after the team starts using threads consistently rather than treating Bubbles like a Loom clone.

Going from Bubbles to Loom is rarer and usually happens when a team standardizes on Atlassian tooling for compliance or integration reasons. The migration is straightforward but loses the conversation history attached to recordings, since Loom does not have an equivalent thread structure to import into.

A pattern emerging in 2026 is using Bubbles for high-context discussions inside specific teams while keeping Loom for cross-team or external-facing recordings where the recipient is unlikely to be on Bubbles. The combined cost for a small org is manageable, and each tool gets used for what it does best.

For teams evaluating the broader landscape, our Loom alternatives roundup covers six products across price points, including ones that emphasize different aspects of async video — polish, AI editing, education-specific workflows, and budget. Distributed-team workflows specifically are covered in our piece on screen recording for remote teams, which generalizes the async video question past any single tool.

FAQ

Q: Is Bubbles really different from Loom or just a clone?

The recording experience is similar. The conversational layer is genuinely different. Bubbles treats threaded replies, timestamp anchoring, and channel organization as core features. Loom treats them as optional surface features layered on top of a flat video object. Whether the difference matters depends on how your team uses async video — for one-way messages, Loom's simpler model is fine, and for multi-turn discussions Bubbles' threading is meaningfully better.

Q: Does Bubbles have viewer analytics like Loom?

Bubbles has basic view tracking — who watched and watch percentage — but the depth is shallower than Loom's. Loom shows per-viewer engagement, drop-off curves, and reaction summaries that feed into sales and CS workflows directly. If analytics are why you use Loom, Bubbles is a downgrade. If conversation is why you use async video, Bubbles is an upgrade.

Q: Can I record on mobile with Bubbles?

Mobile support in Bubbles is thinner than Loom's. There is web access from mobile browsers and limited recording in some configurations, but Loom's native iOS and Android apps are the more capable mobile recording experience. For teams with heavy mobile recording needs, this gap is real.

Q: Which has better integrations?

Loom has the deeper integration ecosystem — Slack, Gmail, Notion, Jira, Confluence, Salesforce, and dozens of other tools through native integrations or Zapier. Bubbles has fewer native integrations and relies more on the share link working everywhere a URL works. For teams whose work happens inside specific platforms, Loom's integrations are an advantage. For teams whose work happens inside their async video tool itself, Bubbles' lighter integration story is fine.

Q: Is Bubbles cheaper than Loom?

Bubbles is generally cheaper per user, with paid plans around 13 dollars per month versus Loom Business at 15 dollars per month. The free tier in Bubbles is also more usable for ongoing light use compared to Loom's 25-video, 5-minute caps. For a small team, the cost difference adds up but is not the primary reason to choose Bubbles. The threading model is.

Q: Can I use Bubbles for external sharing with non-Bubbles users?

Yes. Recipients of a Bubbles link do not need an account to watch. They do need an account to comment on threads, which is where the model differs from a fully public Loom link. For internal team use, this works well. For external sales or marketing distribution, Loom's lower friction for non-account viewers is better.

Q: How does Screenify Studio fit between these two?

Screenify Studio is a newer entrant that focuses on the recording and editing layer rather than the conversational layer. It produces better-looking recordings than either Loom or Bubbles thanks to features like AI auto-zoom, smart clipping, and AI captions. Sharing is link-based with viewer analytics, similar to Loom. It is not a threading-first tool like Bubbles, but for teams that want polish and async sharing combined, it sits in a different spot than either of these. Worth evaluating if recording quality is part of your decision.