Loom Starter 25 videos and 5 minutes: when indies should buy Business

When a solo founder records product walkthroughs, customer replies, or contractor handoffs, the search often becomes how many Loom videos the free tier keeps and how long each screen recording can run. This page does not re-teach async demo workflow. It freezes Starter limits as of 2026-09-30 on loom.com/pricing and spells out when Business is the rational next buy. Re-open the pricing page before you pay; numbers move.

What Starter includes

Loom labels the free tier Starter at $0. Official cards list up to 25 videos per person, 5 minutes per video recording length, up to 50 workspace members, video quality up to 720p, unlimited screenshots, transcriptions in 50+ languages, and comments with emoji reactions. The card also mentions unlimited meeting length—do not confuse that with the 5-minute screen-recording cap. Business shows $18 per user per month for unlimited videos, unlimited recording time, basic waveform editing, remove Loom branding, upload and download, and unlimited members. Annual billing toggles still govern the invoice you actually see, so do not order from memory.

For most indie pairs, the wall is rarely member count first. It is the 25-video library and the five-minute narrative. A demo that must cover signup, checkout, and failure paths feels tight at five minutes. Weekly customer questions pile up until deleting old clips risks losing context. Treat those frictions as observable signals instead of accepting slogans about free forever.

A 25-video skeleton that still ships

Keep a personal library for current mainline demos and retros, and a shared library for clips you can safely forward. Name files with date plus scene, such as 2026-09-30-checkout-fail, never Untitled. Split folders across product demos, customer answers, contractor handoffs, and internal retros. For demos, keep only the current release and the previous one; archive or link older assets to object storage. Reuse customer answers instead of recording the same explanation five times. After a contractor confirms they watched a handoff, decide whether that clip still deserves a Starter slot.

The 25-video cap is per person, not a shared pool. Partners should not burn each other’s quota explaining the same feature. When a customer needs a long-lived asset, confirm whether Business download and de-branding are the capabilities you are actually buying. Starter already includes transcriptions and comments, so async discussion can stay on the timeline without another meeting.

Write deletion ownership down. Every Friday: keep one demo for the shipped mainline, convert stale answers to docs, and remove finished contractor clips from the shared library. If a screenshot explains the step, use unlimited screenshots and reserve video slots for motion that must be seen.

Five minutes, quality, and branding

Five minutes fits a single feature or a short answer, not a full onboarding epic. If the story needs login, empty states, paywalls, and error recovery, split into two or three short clips and cross-link them in the description before you pay for duration. 720p is enough for most product UI. If you need ad-grade footage, Loom may be the wrong primary tool—do not misread a marketing-film need as a mandatory Business upgrade.

Starter carries Loom branding. Internal collaboration can usually tolerate it. Sales pages or formal customer-success emails that cannot show a brand bar are a cleaner Business trigger via Remove Loom branding. Upload and download sit on Business; if your pipeline is “edit locally then distribute,” free will stall. If your pipeline is “record then share a link,” Starter can last longer.

When to buy Business—and when not to

Buy Business if for two consecutive weeks you hit these signals: you bounce off 25 videos even after archiving; a single demo stably needs more than five minutes and split clips still confuse customers; you must remove branding or download masters; you need stable paid Creator seats rather than Creator Lite only. Also upgrade when release notes cannot ship without a meeting because docs and free video quotas both fail.

Stay on Starter if short-clip chains work, screenshots replace part of the talk track, branding is acceptable, and weekly cleanup keeps you under 25. After upgrading, write a retention policy: what must download to cloud storage, what may stay as links, who can delete production demos. Re-check the live $18 per user per month price and annual toggle. If what you actually need is a landing-page motion tool or an ad editor, switch tools instead of forcing Loom.

How to spend quota in a ship week

Treat quota like a budget in ship week. Monday records only mainline changes. Tuesday merges frequent customer questions into one reusable answer. Wednesday prefers read-only access plus screenshot checklists for contractors, with video only for critical click paths. Thursday archives stale demos and merges duplicates. Friday closes with one sub-five-minute status update instead of another sync. If two ship weeks of that discipline still hit 25 videos or five minutes, Business has a clearer case.

When sharing links, state the viewing purpose and expected lifetime. Temporary answers can expire in two weeks; contractual deliverables should download once you are on a plan that allows it. Starter fits short understand-and-move loops, not a permanent media library. Write that expectation into customer-success copy so recipients do not treat Loom links like a drive.

Keep this separate from workflow posts

Toolvori already publishes a Loom async demo workflow article. This tutorial answers only Starter quotas. Document per-person caps, naming, and Friday cleanup in your ops handbook and re-verify pricing quarterly. If short clips and screenshots remove the need to pay, do not buy optics. Write the purchase reason as one sentence, such as buying de-branding and downloads for customer archives, or buying unlimited duration for a checkout-failure path.

Pin the official numbers for loom-free-indie-video-limits in your knowledge base with the observation date and URL. When someone claims “free is always enough” or “you must upgrade now,” open the pin instead of arguing from memory. Limits change; habits beat slogans. Treat upgrade triggers as a checklist: you hit the wall for two consecutive weeks, it blocks mainline delivery, short-clip and screenshot discipline is exhausted, and Business maps to the exact blocker. In the first week after paying, wire de-branding or download archival into the release flow so the subscription does not become shelfware.