The Free Zight Alternative Without the 720p Ceiling.
Zight (formerly CloudApp) is a solid async video tool, but its free plan stops at 5 minutes, 720p, and your last 25 captures. Gravity Recorder records in 2K, has no time limit, and keeps every file on your own machine.
| Feature | Zight | Gravity Recorder |
|---|---|---|
| Quality on Free Plan | Up to 720p | Up to 2K (1440p) |
| Recording Length (Free) | 5 minutes | No limit |
| Recordings Kept (Free) | Last 25 captures | Unlimited — they are yours |
| Storage (Free) | 1 GB in their cloud | Your entire disk |
| Where Files Live | Zight cloud (AWS) | Your local folder |
| Price to Lift Limits | From $12.95 / mo | FREE ($0) |
| Editing on Free Plan | Trim/split — desktop app only | In-browser Cut Editor |
| Linux Support | None | Any modern browser |
| Installation | Desktop app or extension | Zero Install |
| Open Source | No | Yes |
What is Zight (and what happened to CloudApp)?
Zight is the tool you may still know as CloudApp. The company rebranded in April 2023 — same team, same product, new name. CloudApp is not a separate product any more; the old domain simply redirects to zight.com and existing logins still work.
Zight is aimed squarely at B2B teams: customer support, sales, customer success, and engineering, all using short screen recordings and annotated screenshots to cut down on meetings. It is genuinely good at that, it has real enterprise compliance behind it, and it is well reviewed.
One thing worth saying plainly, because a lot of comparison pages get it wrong: Zight does not put a watermark on your videos, on any plan, including free. We are not going to pretend otherwise.
The pressure on the free plan comes from somewhere else.
The free plan ceiling
Zight restructured all of its plans in June 2026, so most of the numbers floating around in older blog posts are now out of date. Here is what the current free tier — they call it Share — actually gives you.
720p, and that is the ceiling. This is the big one. Free recordings max out at 720p. In 2026, on a retina display or a 4K monitor, 720p text is soft and code is difficult to read. Recording a terminal or an IDE at 720p is genuinely painful for whoever has to watch it. Getting past this means a paid plan, where quality jumps to 4K.
Five minutes, then it stops. Free recordings are capped at 5 minutes. Fine for a quick bug report. Not fine for a walkthrough, a training video, or anything that needs context.
Only your last 25 captures. Your free history shows the most recent 25 items. Older recordings fall out of view. Your work has a shelf life determined by your plan.
One gigabyte of storage. That is your total allowance in their cloud.
Lifting these limits starts at $12.95 per month.
How Gravity Recorder is different
2K, free. Gravity records up to 1440p at a high bitrate, on the free tier, with no upgrade prompt. Your screen recording of an IDE or a terminal is actually legible — which, for the kind of work most people are recording, is the whole point.
No clock and no cap. Record for as long as you like, as often as you like. There is no 5-minute cutoff and no 25-item history, because your recordings are not living in someone else's quota.
Your files are yours, permanently. This is the deepest difference. Zight stores your recordings in its cloud on AWS, with a storage allowance attached to your plan. Gravity writes the video straight into a folder on your own machine using the File System Access API. There is no allowance to run out of, no history to age out, and nothing to lose if you stop using the product. Uploading to your own Google Drive is opt-in and entirely under your control.
Editing that works in the browser. On Zight's free plan, trim and split are only available in the desktop app. Gravity's multi-segment cut editor runs in the browser tab, free, with no install — remove several sections from a recording, preview, export.
Runs anywhere. Zight ships a macOS and Windows app, a Chrome/Edge/Brave extension, and an iOS app — but there is no Linux app and no Android app. Gravity is a web application, so it runs wherever a modern browser does.
When Zight is the better choice
Zight earns its money on the team layer, and if you need that layer, it is a fair trade.
Pick Zight if you need enterprise controls and compliance — SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, SSO and SCIM provisioning, password-protected links, link expiry, and access restricted to named people. Gravity has none of that.
Pick Zight if you need viewer analytics for a team — knowing who watched, how far they got, and exporting viewer emails. That is a real feature and Gravity does not have an equivalent.
Pick Zight if annotated screenshots are half your workflow. Its screenshot tooling — scrolling capture, blur and redact, stickers, annotations — is a genuinely strong part of the product and Gravity is a video recorder, not a screenshot tool.
Pick Gravity Recorder if you want unlimited, high-quality recording that costs nothing and stays on your own machine.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Zight the same as CloudApp?
Yes. CloudApp rebranded to Zight in April 2023 — the same team and the same product under a new name. The old getcloudapp.com domain now redirects to zight.com, and existing accounts continue to work.
What are the limits on Zight's free plan?
As of Zight's June 2026 pricing update, the free "Share" plan caps recordings at 5 minutes and 720p, retains only your most recent 25 captures, and includes 1 GB of cloud storage. Paid plans start at $12.95 per month and raise quality to 4K. Note that many older articles quote out-of-date limits from before the 2026 restructure.
Can I record in better than 720p for free?
Not with Zight — 720p is the ceiling on its free plan. Gravity Recorder records up to 2K (1440p) at no cost, which makes a real difference when you are capturing an IDE, a terminal, or anything with small text.
Does Zight put a watermark on free recordings?
No, and it is worth being accurate about this: Zight does not watermark videos on any plan, including its free tier. Its free-plan constraints are the 5-minute length cap, the 720p quality ceiling, the 25-capture history, and the 1 GB storage allowance.
Where are my recordings stored with each tool?
Zight stores recordings in its own cloud on AWS, with a storage allowance tied to your plan. Gravity Recorder writes recordings directly to a folder you choose on your own machine, so there is no allowance to exhaust and no history that ages out. Syncing to your own Google Drive is optional.