Vidora vs Cap.so: The Loom Downloader Showdown for 2026

1. What Cap.so actually is

Cap.so is an open-source screen recorder positioned as a Loom alternative for recording. It has a desktop app that captures your screen, a marketing site, and a small constellation of related tools on subdomains. Among those is a free online Loom downloader at cap.so/tools/loom-downloader.

The downloader itself is a standard paste-URL online tool. You give it a Loom share link, their servers fetch the page, extract the video URL, and hand you a download. It is not architecturally different from savethevideo.com or any other online downloader. What sets it apart in Google rankings is the domain authority of cap.so as a whole product, which lends weight to the tool subpage.

This matters because users often pick the top Google result assuming higher rank means better tool. For public Looms that assumption is harmless. For private and workspace Looms it leads to a quick disappointment when the download fails.

2. Loom coverage compared

Loom hosts videos in several visibility tiers, each behaves differently with downloaders.

Cap.so wins parity on public content. Vidora is the only path for workspace and password-protected Loom, by the same logic that applies to any extension-versus-online comparison: only an extension shares the authenticated session with your browser.

If you want the dedicated install page for the Loom downloader extension, see our Loom Downloader page. For the step-by-step tutorial across methods, see How to Download Loom Videos.

3. Privacy: where the URL goes

When you paste a Loom URL into Cap.so, that URL hits Cap.so's servers. The URL contains the Loom video ID and sometimes a shared token. Cap.so logs the request at the infrastructure level: IP, timestamp, URL. Their privacy policy governs what happens to those logs.

For public marketing Looms this is harmless. For internal team Looms, sales call recordings, training videos that should not leave your organisation, or anything that touches confidential information, the URL itself is sensitive and a third party should not see it.

Vidora is local. The extension processes everything in your browser, the segment downloads go directly from Loom's CDN to your disk, no URL or metadata reaches Vidora's servers. The only external Vidora call is a license verification on install, never during downloads.

This is the standard privacy story for browser extension downloaders. It is not unique to Vidora, but it is structurally absent from any online tool, including Cap.so.

4. Pricing model

Cap.so's online Loom downloader is free. The site is part of Cap.so's growth strategy: get users to the marketing site, expose them to the screen recorder product. The downloader itself does not have a paid tier. There are ads but they are lighter than typical paste-URL sites because the page exists to convert users to the screen recorder, not to maximise ad impressions.

Vidora is 9.99 dollars one-time, lifetime license, no ads, 30-day money-back. See the pricing page for the breakdown.

Cost economics: if you download two public Looms a year, free wins. If you download regularly from your team workspace, free is not even an option because Cap.so cannot reach workspace content. The price tag becomes secondary to whether the tool can do the job.

5. Real-world use cases

Three scenarios where the tools diverge in practice:

Scenario A: archiving a public Loom announcement from a vendor

Both tools work. Cap.so is faster (no install). For a one-off, Cap.so wins on convenience.

Scenario B: saving your team's sprint demo Loom from the workspace

Cap.so fails (no workspace session). Vidora works because you are already logged in to your Loom workspace in the browser, the extension sees the same HLS manifest your player sees, downloads complete.

Scenario C: downloading a Loom that requires a password from a client

Cap.so fails. Vidora works once you have entered the password on the Loom page. The extension reuses the session token from your browser.

If your work involves any of scenarios B or C, the comparison is decided on capability, not price or convenience.

6. Who should pick each

Pick Cap.so if:

• You only download public Loom share links, occasionally.
• You do not want to install anything.
• You also need a screen recorder (Cap.so's main product) and want one brand for both.
• Budget matters and you want a free tool.

Pick Vidora if:

• You need to download workspace or password-protected Loom videos.
• You care about privacy and prefer that download URLs stay on your machine.
• You also need to download HLS streams from other platforms (Vimeo, Wistia, Bunny.net, course platforms).
• You download Loom regularly and want zero ads.

7. Frequently asked questions