ScreenArt Pro vs Screenity: the free Chrome recorder with a hosted editor, and the Windows app that keeps the whole job on your PC

Why people compare these two

Screenity has earned its place. It is a Chrome extension with more than eighteen thousand stars on GitHub, the recorder is free and open source under GPLv3, there is no watermark, no account to make and no stated time limit, and the download goes straight to your disk. For “record this tab and send it”, it is the first thing many people install, and it is the first thing many people recommend.

The second half of Screenity is newer. In 2026 the project added a hosted editor: multi-scene layouts, device and browser mockups, auto-zoom from clicks, word-by-word captions, a music library, a reusable cloud media library and link sharing. That half is a paid service, $120 a year, with the servers in Europe and a 7-day trial.

So the comparison has two parts. Against the free extension, ScreenArt Pro is a paid native app with a lot more in it. Against the paid editor, ScreenArt Pro is cheaper, keeps the job on your PC, and does things a browser cannot. This article takes both parts seriously.

The short version in one table

	ScreenArt Pro	Screenity
Price	€1.99 a month, or €24.99 once with two years of updates	Recorder free (GPLv3). Editor $120 a year, shown as $10 a month on yearly billing
Platform	Windows 10 and 11 (x64), native app. Mac planned.	Chrome extension; the editor runs in the browser
Screenshots	Window, area, display; physical pixels at any DPI scale; sRGB-tagged lossless PNG; editable annotation layers; Beautify	Not a screenshot tool
Recording	Window, area, display, with system audio and mic; GPU rendering	Tab, window, app, desktop or camera, with tab audio, system audio and mic
Recorder polish	Auto-zoom on clicks and typing, smoothed cursor scalable past 200%, captions, keystroke badges, 16 intros, 12 transitions	Paid editor: auto-zoom from clicks, layouts, mockups, captions, animations, music
Subtitles	Generated on your PC; SRT and VTT; ripple-cut the transcript	Transcription on Screenity’s servers in Europe; English only for now
Hiding secrets	Smart Redact: automatic detection of emails, keys, tokens, card numbers, IPs; colour-matched covers; stills and video	Live blur drawn by hand while recording
Where the files go	Your disk; nothing is uploaded	Free: your disk. Paid: uploaded to the hosted editor; links and media library on Screenity’s servers
Recording length	No limit stated	Paid editor: up to 1 hour per recording
Export	MP4, WebM with alpha, GIF; 16:9, 1:1, 4:5, 9:16	MP4, GIF, WebM from the extension; MP4 at 1080p from the editor; save to Google Drive
AI agent control	MCP server, 25 tools: capture, sequence, record, replay	None
Account required	No	No for the extension; yes for the editor and sharing

Screenity’s features and prices were read from its own site in October 2026.

What Screenity does well

• The recorder is genuinely free. No watermark, no account, no time limit stated, download whenever you like. For an open-source tool that is a real gift.
• It runs anywhere Chrome runs. A locked-down work laptop that cannot install software, a Chromebook, a Mac, a Linux desktop. Open the extension and record.
• Tab audio is clean. Recording a browser tab with its own audio is something browsers do better than most desktop recorders, because the browser owns the stream.
• The paid editor is thoughtful. Auto-zoom from clicks, device mockups, word-by-word captions and a media library are the right features for a product demo, and the European hosting with no US transfers is a stance that most hosted tools do not take.
• Live blur and a cursor spotlight are there while you record, which is more than most free recorders offer.

If you need a recording from inside a browser on a machine you do not control, Screenity is the answer and this article will not talk you out of it.

Where the browser is the limit

A Chrome extension records what Chrome hands it. That is fine for a tab, and it is where everything else gets harder.

The pixels are the browser’s choice

ScreenArt Pro captures through Windows Graphics Capture at the physical pixels of each display, across monitors with different scaling, and writes an sRGB-tagged lossless PNG for stills, so a 12px label is as crisp as it was drawn and the colours survive. Enhanced Render reconstructs captured UI text and flat geometry at the output resolution where it is confident, labelled as derived. The promise on the home page is “the highest-quality screenshots on Windows”. A browser extension has no screenshot mode at all, and for video it gets the frames Chrome’s screen-share picker produces, at the size and rate Chrome decides.

Screenshots and video are one project

Screenity is a recorder. The demo video is one half of the job; the other half is the twelve screenshots in the docs, the release notes and the landing page. ScreenArt Pro’s editor is laid out like every editor you know, a tool rail on the left, the picture in the middle, an inspector on the right. Counters renumber when you reorder them; arrows, boxes, highlights and captions are layers you move, restyle or delete until you export; the original capture is always one comparison away. Beautify puts the capture on a backdrop, rounds the corners, drops a soft shadow, lets a window light fall across the card and tilts it in 3D. A brand kit saves the look so the screenshots and the video match.

Redaction that finds the secret for you

Screenity’s live blur is a rectangle you draw while recording, which means you have to know the secret is coming, in the moment, with the recording running. ScreenArt Pro’s Smart Redact runs text recognition on your PC and finds email addresses, API keys, bearer tokens and JWTs, card numbers and IBANs, phone numbers, IP addresses and connection strings with a password in them, then covers each in the colour sampled from around it, so the cover reads as part of the page. It runs on stills and on every frame of a recording, so a token that scrolls into view at 1:42 is covered at 1:42. Blur, Pixelate and a Secure cover are there by hand too.

A recorder built for demos, rendered on your GPU

Screenity’s auto-zoom and captions live in the paid, hosted editor. ScreenArt Pro’s live on your PC and are already on the timeline when the take opens: a zoom that follows your clicks and typing, a smoothed cursor you can scale past 200% or render as glass, captions and keystroke badges, subtitles generated on your PC with SRT and VTT export and a transcript you can ripple-cut, a Clean up voice pass for the mic, sixteen intro styles, twelve transitions, a 3D card with motion blur, all rendered on the GPU, exported as MP4, WebM with transparency or GIF in 16:9, 1:1, 4:5 or 9:16. The recording page has the details.

Your AI agent can take the screenshots

ScreenArt Pro runs as an MCP server, the open protocol Claude, Codex and most coding assistants use to call tools. Added in Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Codex or any MCP client, your agent can list your windows, read the labels on them, and save a cropped, annotated, branded screenshot of each step, singly or as a numbered set with a manifest, with Smart Redact applied by default. It can record a scripted walkthrough with the real pointer and replay a task you rehearsed once. You approve each session, anything that moves the mouse asks again, and Esc stops everything. Nothing is uploaded. The automation page lists all 25 tools. A browser extension has no equivalent; an agent cannot drive Chrome’s screen-share picker.

The privacy case, made plainly

Screenity deserves credit here. The free extension keeps the recording in your browser and downloads it to your disk, and the paid service says it is hosted in Europe, encrypted in transit and at rest, with no US transfers and no trackers. That is better than almost every hosted recorder in this series.

It is still a hosted editor. To use the auto-zoom, the layouts, the captions or the link, the recording goes up to Screenity’s servers, and so does the transcript, generated there. From that point:

• The recording exists on a server you do not control. Every demo you polish is a copy on someone else’s disk, under their retention policy.
• The link is a publication. Share with a link is the point of the paid plan, and once a link is forwarded there is no access list to pull it back from.
• What is in the frame goes with it. The CC line, the terminal, the billing page. Live blur only helps if you drew it in time.
• Hosted means a vendor’s terms, uptime and future. Pricing changes, plan changes and shutdowns are not in your hands.
• It is a compliance question. For anyone under customer-data, health, finance or residency rules, a recording of a production system on a third-party editor is a question you have to answer, even when the server is in Europe.

ScreenArt Pro removes the question. Recording, editing, text recognition, subtitles, redaction and rendering run on your PC. There is no upload path in the app at all. When you share, it is through your Drive, your Slack, your Notion or your own site, with the access rules and retention your organisation already has.

Where Screenity is still the right choice

• You cannot install software. A managed laptop, a Chromebook, a Mac or Linux desktop. Screenity runs where Chrome runs; ScreenArt Pro runs on Windows.
• The thing you are recording is a browser tab with its own audio, and you want it clean, fast and free.
• You want an open-source recorder you can read, fork and build yourself.
• You want a hosted link with European hosting and are happy to pay $120 a year for the editor around it.

Price, in full

Screenity’s recorder is free. The editor, sharing and media library are $120 a year, shown as $10 a month on yearly billing; monthly billing costs more, the page says yearly saves 29%. Two years of the editor is $240.

ScreenArt Pro has two plans, and the whole app is in both:

• €1.99 a month. Every update for as long as you subscribe. Cancel from your account.
• €24.99 once. Two years of updates, then keep the last version you installed for as long as you like.

€24.99 once is about a fifth of one year of Screenity’s editor, less than a single year of Snagit ($39), and less than CleanShot X’s first year on a Mac ($35). Polar is the merchant of record, so there is a VAT-compliant invoice at checkout, and both plans have a 14-day refund. No account is needed to run the app.

Who should pick which

• A developer or founder on Windows making demo clips and documentation screenshots: ScreenArt Pro. Stills and video in one project, redaction that finds the secret, rendering on your GPU.
• A documentation or support team: ScreenArt Pro, for the MCP server and Record & Replay.
• Anyone recording work systems or customer data: ScreenArt Pro. Nothing is uploaded.
• Someone on a locked-down machine, a Chromebook, a Mac or Linux: Screenity. It is the best free recorder that runs where Chrome runs.
• Someone who wants an open-source recorder for a quick tab recording: Screenity, and keep the free tier.

The bottom line

Screenity is a great free recorder that lives, by design, inside a browser, with a hosted editor at $120 a year for the polish. ScreenArt Pro is the native Windows app that captures at the physical pixels, edits screenshots and video in one project, covers secrets automatically in every frame, generates subtitles on your PC, and lets an AI agent take the screenshots and record the walkthrough. Nothing is uploaded. €1.99 a month or €24.99 once.

Install it, record the same window, and watch the zoom, cursor, captions and redaction land on the timeline before you touch anything.