Loom is built for async screen shares, Tau for timelapse. An honest comparison for developers and creators deciding which one they actually need.
Loom and Tau both let you record your screen. But they're solving completely different problems, and choosing the wrong one will leave you frustrated.
Here's the honest breakdown.
What Loom is built for
Loom is a SaaS tool for async communication. The workflow is:
- Record your screen (and optionally your face) at full frame rate
- Stop recording — Loom instantly uploads and gives you a shareable link
- Share the link — teammates can watch, comment, and react
This is excellent for code reviews, bug reports, feature walkthroughs, and anything where you'd otherwise write a long Slack message. The friction to share is near zero.
Where Loom falls short if you want timelapse
It's not a timelapse tool. Loom records at full frame rate. A 2-hour coding session becomes a 2-hour video. Nobody watches that. Timelapse compresses time — 2 hours becomes 60 seconds of shareable content.
Subscription pricing. Loom's free tier limits recordings to 5 minutes and has restricted features. The Business plan is $18 per user per month (as of October 2026). Over a year, that's $216 for a tool that doesn't do what a timelapse app does.
Videos are hosted on Loom's servers. Your content lives on Loom's infrastructure. If you want a local file to post to Twitter, YouTube, or your portfolio, you're exporting from a web app, not outputting directly.
No editing for timelapse use cases. Loom has basic trimming. It has no timer overlays, no GIF export, no frame interval control.
5-minute limit on free tier. A timelapse of a day's work doesn't fit in 5 minutes — and the full-rate recording it would require would be orders of magnitude longer anyway.
What Tau does
Tau is a desktop timelapse app. It captures frames at intervals — 1 frame every 5 seconds, every 10 seconds, whatever you set — so a 4-hour session becomes a 60-second timelapse naturally.
The full workflow:
- Record: Screen, camera, or both simultaneously. Runs in the background while you work.
- Edit: Trim start and end. Add a stopwatch, clock, or countdown overlay. Attach audio.
- Export: MP4, GIF, or WEBM — saved locally, ready to post anywhere.
One-time payment. No subscription. No cloud dependency.
The honest comparison
| Tau | Loom | |
|---|---|---|
| Native timelapse (frame intervals) | ✅ | ❌ |
| Screen recording | ✅ | ✅ |
| Camera / face recording | ✅ | ✅ |
| Screen + camera together | ✅ | ✅ |
| Built-in timelapse editor | ✅ | ❌ |
| Timer overlays | ✅ | ❌ |
| Export to GIF / WEBM | ✅ | ❌ |
| Local file output | ✅ | Requires download |
| One-time payment | ✅ | ❌ |
| Instant shareable link | ❌ | ✅ |
| Team comments and reactions | ❌ | ✅ |
| Free tier | ❌ | ✅ (limited) |
Which should you use?
Use Loom if: you need to quickly record and share a short explanation with your team — a bug walkthrough, a feature demo, a code review comment. The instant shareable link is genuinely great for that use case.
Use Tau if: you want to document and share your process as a timelapse. A coding session, a design sprint, an art piece. Something compressed and worth watching, exported locally as an MP4, GIF, or WEBM that you post wherever you want.
The simplest way to think about it: Loom replaces a Slack message. Tau makes content worth posting.
Get Tau at trytau.app — macOS and Windows, $16.99€14.99 one-time.