OBS Studio

OBS Studio recorded most of the conference talks you have watched and powers most of the livestreams you have seen. Scenes, sources, live compositing, multi-track audio, and output to a file or to anything that speaks RTMP. GPL-2.0, free for over a decade, with no upsell attached anywhere in it.

Download and run, nothing to host. Windows, macOS, and Linux, with hardware encoding on all three. The plugin ecosystem covers virtual cameras, background removal, stream deck control, and most things you might want bolted on. The cost is not money, it is the first hour: OBS hands you a mixing desk rather than a record button, and you have to understand scenes and sources before you capture anything worth keeping.

For anyone recording regularly, that hour pays back permanently. Solo creators and developers making demos, talks, or tutorials: this is the ceiling of what free gets you and the ceiling is very high. Teams: same answer, with nothing to license and nothing to administer. If what you actually want is a share link and a two click workflow, CapSoftware/Cap fits better, and webadderallorg/Recordly if the goal is a polished product demo with automatic cursor zooms.

The catch: OBS records, it does not really edit. No timeline worth the name, no cursor zoom, no captions, no trimming beyond the crude. It hands you a file and considers its job done. It also has no sharing layer whatsoever, which is precisely the part Loom charges for.