Loom vs Screencastify: Education Compared

Educators have been recording their screens long before "async video" became a startup category. Loom and Screencastify both exist because that habit scaled — first during remote learning in 2020, then as a permanent fixture of how teachers, instructional coaches, and university faculty share content. The two tools land in many of the same classrooms, but they are not equivalent products.

Loom is a cross-platform async video tool whose biggest market is workplaces, with education as a meaningful but secondary segment. Screencastify is a Chrome extension built first for K-12 educators, with a feature set tuned to Google Classroom and Google Workspace. Picking between them is less about features in isolation and more about what your district uses, what device your students have, and how much editing you actually need.

TL;DR

Choose Loom if you teach across multiple operating systems, your students use a mix of Chromebooks, laptops, and phones, and you want recordings that travel beyond Google Workspace. Choose Screencastify if your school runs on Google Classroom, every student has a Chromebook, and you want a recorder that lives inside Chrome with assignment integration baked in. The tools serve overlapping audiences, but the deciding factor is usually the platform your school has already standardized on rather than any single feature.

Why This Comparison Matters In 2026

The pandemic-era boom in classroom video has not retreated. Most US K-12 districts now have an "asynchronous video" entry in their tech stack, and most universities expect faculty to provide recorded lectures alongside live ones. Two product decisions made in 2020 have aged into permanent infrastructure choices.

Loom's pricing increases under Atlassian have made it less obvious for tight school budgets. The Business plan at 15 dollars per teacher per month adds up quickly across a 60-person faculty. Loom for Education exists with discounts for verified institutions, but the underlying product is still designed for workplace use.

Screencastify, meanwhile, has narrowed its focus. It was an early all-purpose Chrome screen recorder that pivoted hard into education around 2021 and has since shipped features aimed at teachers — embeddable quiz questions inside videos, direct assignment publishing to Google Classroom, deeper FERPA documentation. The product is opinionated about who it serves.

For administrators making a district-wide call, the choice often comes down to whether the school is Google-only on the back end. If Google Classroom and Drive are the assignment and grading systems, Screencastify's integration depth saves teachers measurable time. If the district is mixed — some teachers on iPads, some on PCs, some on Macs — Loom's platform reach matters more.

What Is Loom

Loom is a cross-platform async video product owned by Atlassian since 2023. The core workflow is the same in every context: record your screen and webcam, click stop, get a shareable link, paste it where it needs to go. The product has native apps on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android, plus a Chrome extension that records directly from a browser tab.

In education, Loom is most popular among university instructors and high school teachers in larger districts where device choice is not standardized. The product is unopinionated — sales reps recording follow-ups and professors recording lecture supplements use the same tool the same way. Loom for Education adds discounted seats, content moderation, and SSO for verified institutions.

Strengths. Cross-platform reach is the biggest one. Teachers who record on a MacBook at home and review on an iPad in class are well-served. Recordings process and host in the cloud automatically, so there is no "where did I save the file" problem. Viewer analytics show how far each student watched, which is useful for spotting students who skipped the assignment.

Weaknesses. No native quiz embedding inside videos, which is a significant gap for K-12 instruction where comprehension checks matter. LMS integrations exist but are mostly limited to share links rather than direct assignment publish. Pricing is the other concern — Atlassian-era Loom is more expensive per seat than education-specific products, and the Business plan features that justify the price are tuned for workplaces.

What Is Screencastify

Screencastify is a Chrome extension whose entire identity has shifted toward K-12 education over the past several years. Install the extension, click the icon in the Chrome toolbar, and you are recording — no app to install, no separate window to manage. The product runs only inside Chrome, which sounds like a limitation until you remember that nearly every Chromebook in every US classroom runs Chrome by definition.

The product layers education-specific features on top of the recorder. Videos save directly to Google Drive by default. Assignments publish straight to Google Classroom with one click. Embedded quiz questions can be inserted at specific timestamps inside a recording, and student responses flow back to the teacher's Screencastify dashboard. FERPA and COPPA compliance documentation is detailed and oriented at district procurement.

Strengths. Google Workspace integration is the dominant strength. For Chromebook-heavy schools, the workflow from "record" to "graded" lives entirely inside Google. Quiz embedding turns passive lecture videos into interactive assignments without a separate tool. The free tier is generous for occasional recording — unlimited 30-second clips, plus longer recordings up to five minutes.

Weaknesses. Chrome-only limits where you can record. Faculty on iPads, Windows desktops outside Chrome, or Macs who prefer Safari are excluded. Recording quality for high-resolution displays is acceptable but not elite — output is web-tuned rather than archival. The Pro plan at 14 dollars per month per teacher is competitive, but the feature set outside the Chrome extension is thin compared to a full desktop recorder. Editing tools are functional for classroom use but limited compared to dedicated editors.

Recording Quality And Platform

Loom's recorder works on essentially every device a teacher or student is likely to use. The desktop apps capture at higher fidelity than the Chrome extension, but both are tuned for fast cloud upload and playback. On a Retina or high-resolution display, text gets a small but visible compression hit. Audio capture is reliable on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android, including system audio on most platforms.

Screencastify only records from Chrome on macOS, Windows, ChromeOS, and Linux. There is no mobile recording. The Chrome extension architecture means the recorder cannot capture audio from outside the browser tab in the same way a desktop app can — system audio capture is constrained to what the browser can pipe through. For a teacher recording slides, a math whiteboard, or a Google Doc walkthrough, this is fine. For recording a separate macOS app, it is not.

For Chromebook-only environments, Screencastify's platform constraint stops being a constraint. There is nothing else to record. For mixed-device faculties, Loom's reach is the practical advantage.

Editing Capabilities

Both products take a "minimal editor" approach, but they aim at different uses. Loom's editor lets you trim the start and end, remove an interior section, blur a region, and add a captioned title. That is the full set. The implicit assumption is that if a take is bad, you re-record.

Screencastify's editor is more education-specific. Trim and crop are present, plus drawing tools that let you annotate the video after recording, blur tools for student privacy, and the embedded quiz feature that turns video moments into interactive checkpoints. Quizzes are the differentiated feature — multiple choice or short answer questions appear inline at timestamps the teacher chooses, with student responses tracked.

If you are recording a five-minute concept explainer and want students to answer two comprehension questions before continuing, Screencastify lets you do that natively. Loom requires a separate quiz tool. If you are recording a 25-minute lecture with no comprehension checks, both tools edit equivalently.

Sharing And Collaboration

Loom's share story leans on the link plus comments model. Click stop, the link is in your clipboard, students click and watch on a hosted page that supports timestamped comments and emoji reactions. Viewer analytics show watch percentage and drop-off. The model works well in higher ed where student engagement on video is genuinely a metric some instructors track.

Screencastify shares default into Google Drive and Google Classroom. The link plus viewer page exists, but the more common workflow is "publish as a Classroom assignment" with the embedded quiz acting as the submission. Comments go in Classroom, not in the video itself. Teacher dashboards show quiz responses rather than view percentages.

For schools that grade through Classroom, Screencastify's path is clearly faster. For schools that use Canvas, Schoology, or other LMS systems, Loom's link approach is more universal — you paste a link wherever links go, and Loom does not assume you live in any particular ecosystem.

Pricing And Value

Loom for Education offers verified institutions discounted seats off the standard Business plan, which lists at 15 dollars per user per month. Free for Education exists at 25 video and 5-minute caps, suitable for occasional use. Enterprise tiers for districts are custom-priced, and reports through 2025 indicate per-user-per-year costs in the three hundred dollar range for larger contracts.

Screencastify's plan structure is friendlier to individual teachers and small departments. Free covers unlimited 30-second clips, useful for short comprehension checks. Starter at 10 dollars per month adds longer recordings and basic editing. Pro at 14 dollars per month adds the full editor, embedded quizzes, and unlimited recording length. School and District plans are quoted directly.

For a 50-teacher school running on Chromebooks, Screencastify Pro at 14 dollars per month per teacher is roughly 8,400 dollars per year. Loom Business at 15 dollars per month per teacher is 9,000 dollars per year before education discounts. The numbers are close, so the deciding factor is feature fit rather than price.

For mixed budgets, our roundup of the best AI screen recorders in 2026 includes options that span both education-specific and general-purpose recorders, with pricing tiers below either of these.

Privacy And Data

Education buyers care about privacy more than most categories. Both products have done the compliance work, but they emphasize different aspects.

Loom is SOC 2 Type II certified and has documentation around COPPA and FERPA, but the product is not built education-first. Default share visibility is "anyone with the link," which has caused issues when teachers share videos that should have been workspace-restricted. Loom for Education adds workspace controls and content moderation, but the underlying defaults need to be adjusted.

Screencastify leans into education compliance as a core selling point. FERPA and COPPA documentation is detailed and oriented at district procurement. Content stored in a teacher's Google Drive inherits the district's existing privacy controls, which is often easier to defend in a procurement review than a separate hosting platform.

For districts with strict student data agreements, Screencastify's "your data lives in your existing Google Workspace" model is structurally easier to approve. For higher ed where students are adults and FERPA requirements are different, Loom's defaults are usually fine.

Specialized Features For Education

Screencastify's specialization shows up in three places. Embedded quiz questions are the headline — multiple choice or short answer questions inserted at specific timestamps inside a recording, with student responses captured in the teacher dashboard. Direct Google Classroom assignment publish skips the "paste a link" step. Built-in drawing tools let teachers annotate during or after recording without a separate whiteboard app.

Loom's specialization is async work, not classrooms. AI features include auto-titles, summaries, and chapter generation, which are useful for long lectures but not classroom-tuned. The viewer engagement data is genuinely valuable for instructors tracking which students actually watched assigned recordings, but it is not bundled into a gradebook. LMS integrations exist for share-link embedding but stop short of native assignment workflows.

For a teacher whose recording-to-grading loop happens entirely inside Google Classroom, Screencastify removes friction Loom does not address. For a higher ed instructor recording supplemental lectures distributed through email, course websites, and various LMSs, Loom's neutral link is more flexible.

Best For Different Personas

K-12 teachers in Chromebook districts. Screencastify, by a wide margin. The Google Workspace integration and embedded quiz feature are designed for exactly this audience.

K-12 teachers in mixed-device districts. Loom. Recording from a personal MacBook and having it work on an iPad without device-specific gymnastics is worth the per-seat cost.

Higher ed faculty. Loom in most cases. Cross-platform reach, more granular viewer analytics, and the absence of a Chrome-only constraint match how university instructors actually work.

Instructional coaches and curriculum designers. Either, depending on district. Coaches who produce content for multiple districts often standardize on Loom for portability.

Special education and accessibility-focused educators. Loom has stronger captioning automation through its AI features. Screencastify's accessibility features are improving but lag.

Tutors and small private operations. Screencastify's free tier is more usable for occasional recording. Loom's free tier hits limits faster.

District IT and procurement. Often easier to procure Screencastify because the data path lives inside Google Workspace agreements that are already in place. Loom's separate vendor agreement is an extra step.

Migration Considerations

Moving from Loom to Screencastify usually happens when a school standardizes on Chromebooks and Google Classroom. The migration is straightforward — Loom lets you download MP4s from your library, and Screencastify accepts uploads into your Drive. The harder part is workflow change. Teachers used to Loom's "record from any device" habit need to retrain on Chrome-only recording, which is a real friction point if any teachers use iPads for whiteboard recording.

Going from Screencastify to Loom is more common in higher ed environments where the Chrome-only constraint becomes limiting. The migration is again a download-and-upload exercise. Embedded quizzes do not survive the move — you would need to rebuild them in a separate quiz tool or rely on Loom's comments for comprehension checks.

A pattern emerging in 2026 is hybrid use: Screencastify for K-12 grade-level instruction with embedded quizzes, Loom for school-wide announcements or faculty-only training where cross-platform reach matters. The combined cost for a small school is manageable, and each tool gets used for what it does best.

For broader options beyond these two, our Loom alternatives roundup covers six tools across price points, including ones that work for teachers who want richer editing or different platform support. Distributed faculty and remote-teaching scenarios also appear in our piece on screen recording for remote teams, which generalizes async video to non-classroom contexts.

FAQ

Q: Is Screencastify only for teachers?

No, but the product has been positioned around education since 2021 and most of its feature roadmap targets K-12 and higher ed. Non-teachers can use it as a Chrome screen recorder, but features like embedded quizzes, FERPA documentation, and Google Classroom publish are tuned for classroom use. For non-teaching use cases, a more general recorder usually fits better.

Q: Can I use Loom on a Chromebook?

Yes. The Loom Chrome extension runs on ChromeOS and is a reasonable fit for Chromebook-heavy schools that prefer Loom's hosting and analytics over Screencastify's classroom integration. The desktop apps do not exist for ChromeOS, so the extension is the only option there.

Q: Does Loom support FERPA compliance?

Loom has FERPA-related documentation and offers Loom for Education with appropriate data agreements for verified institutions. That said, FERPA compliance depends on how the tool is configured and what student data flows through it. Districts should review their specific data agreements before standardizing. Screencastify's FERPA documentation is more detailed and oriented at school procurement.

Q: Can students record videos in Screencastify?

Yes, Screencastify supports student recording with teacher-managed permissions. Students can record screen-and-webcam responses to assignments, and the recordings flow back to the teacher's dashboard for review. This use case is also possible in Loom but requires more workspace configuration.

Q: Which has better video quality for HD lectures?

For 1080p slide-based recording, both are roughly equivalent — quality is web-tuned rather than archival in both products. For higher resolution capture from a Mac with a Retina display, Loom's desktop app produces noticeably cleaner output than Screencastify's Chrome extension, which is constrained by browser capture APIs. Neither is the right tool for 4K source material destined for permanent archives.

Q: Can I integrate either with Canvas or Schoology?

Loom links can be embedded in any LMS that accepts URLs, which covers Canvas, Schoology, Blackboard, and others. Screencastify has direct integrations with Schoology and Canvas in addition to its native Google Classroom publish. For non-Google LMSs, Screencastify's integration story is competitive with Loom's.

Q: What about Screenify Studio for educators?

Screenify Studio is a newer entrant that combines Loom-style async sharing with editing closer to a desktop recorder — auto-zoom, AI captions, and smart clipping. It is not an education-specific product like Screencastify, but its free tier and editing depth make it appealing for higher ed instructors who want better-looking recordings than Loom produces. The platform reach also exceeds Screencastify since it runs natively on Mac rather than in Chrome only.