Tight Studio - a Screen Studio alternative, is now free after a year of weekly releases and thousands of users
Hi everyone! My name is Ethan, and I’m a developer based in the SF Bay Area. Here is my Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanjyx/ Here is my github: https://github.com/ethanjyx I launched Tight Studio a year ago as a paid app. Since then it won Product of the Day on ProductHunt and grew to thousands of users. I've watched a wave of vibe-coded screen recorders pop up with lifetime deals, and it's anyone's guess whether they'll still be maintained a year from now. Today we decided to take Tight Studio most of capabilities free. No lifetime deal, just free forever. We do offer some unique capabilities to monetize to sustain our development, but we want to keep the free tier as generous as possible. For whatever you need in Screen Studio, it's all free in our product, except sharable links which has server costs. Problem: Tight Studio turns rough screen recordings into polished product demos, tutorials, and walkthroughs. You record your screen, and the editor handles the smooth zooms, fluid cursor movement, captions, and even the voiceover. Comparison: Screen Studio: For whatever you need in Screen Studio, it's all free in our product, except sharable links which has server costs. We are more feature rich and move much faster than them. The reason I started Tight Studio is because there are many missing features I see in Screen Studio, such as adding intro/outro slides, adding text annotations, adding voice over, etc. Open-source newcomers (Recordly, Openscreen): promising, but early-stage. Tight Studio has been shipping for a year, won Product of the Day on ProductHunt, and is battle-tested by thousands of users. If you need something more stable for production use cases, give us a try. Pricing: Again, for whatever you need in Screen Studio, it's all free in our product, except sharable links which has server costs. The core editing and recording features are free forever. Yes we do want to keep it as generous as possible forever. Optional paid tiers to sustain our development, for power users and business teams (unlimited multi-clip recording, unlimited share links, AI voiceover) start at $19/mo: https://tight.studio/#pricing (Pricing up to adjustment) Free forever: Auto zooms based on cursor activity, or add them manually anywhere on screen Smooth cursor movement with click animations Custom stylish cursor icons Custom background images Automatic professional captions, editable like text Video annotations with arrows, text and shapes Dynamic camera layouts and positions Save your projects and edit them later Background music Video clipping tools iPhone recording and device mockups Shareable links (up to 5 links, 7-day expiration for free) Changelog: https://tight.studio/changelog/ AI Disclaimer: Code Completion Try it now: https://tight.studio
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Thanks for making this!
my pleasure!
Screen Studio user here, love the generous free tier! Always good to have a free plan that users can try out before deciding whether they can upgrade. The features look great, some more suggestions if you can add: iPhone/Mac mockups to fit the recordings in them to make them look prettier. Screenshot functionality? I love the Screen Studio but paying for a screen recorder then a separate image grabber then a separate editing tool feels like too many tools. Maybe I am aiming too far in the dark but an all-in-one combined tool could be a game-changer.
Does the Pro plan with recurring subscription use on device AI for voiceovers or AI Cloud Servers?
Good question! we use AI cloud servers.
I was literally searching alternatives today and this was the first post in my feed on Reddit. Algos I guess but can’t wait to test it out! Thanks
Thanks for making this free, looks great from the vid and look forward to trying it. I currently use Screenforge, how does it compare? Looks like there might be a few more options in TS?
Hey u/blunds78! Good question. There's real overlap on the basics. Screenforge and Tight Studio both do the auto-zoom-follows-your-cursor thing, cursor effects, camera overlay, nice backgrounds, and basic timeline editing (split/trim/rearrange). If that's all you need, Screenforge is a solid free option. Where Tight Studio goes further is everything after the recording: - Captions + transcript editing - AI captions with built-in styles, and you can edit your voiceover like text. Flubbed a sentence? Edit the script instead of re-recording, and AI narration (or a clone of your own voice) fills it in. - Annotations, dynamic text, and background music - for turning a raw capture into a finished tutorial or demo. - Multi-clip projects - record in takes, add intro/outro clips, rearrange everything on one timeline. There's also a teleprompter while you record, and you can pull in iPhone recordings. - Sharing - one-click share links so you don't have to export + upload somewhere, plus team workspaces if you make videos with other people. One more thing worth weighing: Screenforge launched about 3 months ago, while Tight Studio has been shipping for almost a year. That matters more than it sounds for this category - building a video editor is genuinely hard, and most of the work is in the long tail of edge cases (weird display configs, codec quirks, long recordings, timeline edge cases). We've had a year of real users hammering on those, so the product is battle-tested in a way a 3-month-old tool just hasn't had time to be yet. Happy to answer anything specific you're comparing on.
Thank you for making this free
This is one of the best apps in this category
Video's looking smooth, I've tried one time purchased screen recording Apps, they do the job but so many bugs at the same time, I'm going to give yours a try and hopefully you will have another paying customer soon.
Hi thanks for making this mostly free! How does this compare to screenkite?
thank you! that's a great question. ScreenKite is a solid recorder and the team is shipping fast - credit to them. A few differences that come to mind: Stability and polish: we've been around for a year with lots of paying users, while ScreenKite is only 2-3 months old. Last time I tried it I did run into bugs. Feature-wise, a few things I see: - the smoothness of the zoom and cursor feel - shareable links - you get a hosted link to send around (5 free), vs exporting a file to Google Drive - custom cursor icons are missing from ScreenKite - ScreenKite doesn't support adding background music Honestly I'm biased here, so the best way to tell is to try both and get a feel yourself. If you hit any issue or have a feature request, we are usually super responsive to feedback and address things quickly. Happy to help if you run into anything!
Weekly releases for a year is genuinely hard discipline -- most indie devs burn out at month 3. The free pivot makes sense; paid screen recorders compete against Loom which is already embedded in every enterprise stack. Free + reputation as the dev who actually ships is a better growth path than fighting that pricing battle.
Thank you for this. I will try it out. Appreciated the kind gesture of making it free.
This is amazing. I’ll definitely try it out. Is there a way to record a webcam and add it to the timeline like in screen studio? Also, let me suggest a smaller price tier. Or a yearly license somehow for the extra (serverless) features . Would love to contribute 😊
Can you cut and add text screen between the cuts so you introduce a new section?
this is amazing, thank you!!
sure thing, let me know if you have any feedback!!!
Thanks buddy, you dont know how much i have hated screen studio. Downloaded it and it has device option.
Thanks!! i already paid for screen studio, but i will try it!
Great you offer a free tier. But for the pro version of Tight Studio you are about twice as expensive as Screen Studio?
How do we know it'll still be maintained a year from now?
Please consider contributing your app to the MacApp comparisons listing in the r/MacApps sidebar by using the appropriate contribution form listed there.
Why are you doing it free?