One-time purchase screen recorders for Mac: every option in 2026

Screen recorders keep drifting toward monthly billing. Screen Studio retired its one-time license in late 2025, and Camtasia’s new versions are subscription-only. If you’d rather pay once and be done, the options on Mac are shrinking but real. This page lists every one, with the price and the small print, checked on October 19, 2026.

Quick answer

These you can still buy once, today:

• Sgrin: $29.99 one-time (Early Adopter price; regular $59.99). Includes every v1.x update and v2. Native Mac app, 6 MB download, no hosting.
• CleanShot X: $35 once, one year of updates included, optional $19/yr renewal after that. The app keeps working either way.
• Cap: $58 one-time desktop license (or $29/yr). The core app is free and open source.
• Filmage Screen: $29.99 permanent license, one Mac. The $14.99 tier on its store is a 6-month plan, not a lifetime license.
• FocuSee: $199.99 lifetime tier, which covers FocuSee 2.x specifically. Otherwise $19.99/mo or $49.99/yr.
• Free for real: OBS Studio, QuickTime Player (already on your Mac), and Cap’s free core.

One caveat before the table: “one-time” almost never means “all future versions.” The table says exactly what each purchase covers.

The license models, dated

Every figure below was checked on October 19, 2026 at the vendor’s own store or site. The source for each row is in the last column.

Tool	License model	Price	What you get	Source
Sgrin	One-time	$29.99 Early Adopter (regular $59.99)	Every v1.x update + v2; no hosting (local by design)	sgrin.app
CleanShot X	One-time + optional update renewal	$35 once; updates after year 1: $19/yr (optional)	The app forever; 1 year of updates included; Pro tier is $10/user/mo	cleanshot.com/pricing
Cap	Free core · one-time desktop license	$58 once (or $29/yr); free for personal use	A license that never renews; commercial use; free core records locally without limits	cap.so/pricing
Filmage Screen	One-time permanent	$29.99	Permanent license, one Mac; a separate $14.99 tier is a 6-month plan	filmagepro.com store
FocuSee	Subscription, or one-time lifetime tier	$19.99/mo · $49.99/yr · $199.99 lifetime	Lifetime covers FocuSee 2.x only (5 computers); a future v3 costs extra	focusee.imobie.com store
Screen Studio	Subscription only	$29/mo, or $9/mo billed yearly ($108/yr)	One-time licenses are no longer sold (retirement announced Sep 30, 2025); existing licenses stay valid	screen.studio
Loom	Subscription	Free (25 videos, 5-min cap) · $18/user/mo (annual billing saves up to 17%, ≈$15)	Hosting, share links, viewer analytics. The ongoing costs a subscription funds	loom.com/pricing
Camtasia	Subscription only	$179.88/yr individual (Essentials)	Full editor pipeline; no perpetual license on the current store	techsmith.com store
OBS Studio	Free, open source	$0	Everything, forever. No auto-zoom, no polish, all manual	obsproject.com
QuickTime Player	Free, included with macOS	$0	Screen recording and trimming; no zoom, no motion, no editing pipeline	Apple Support

Three recent changes matter before you compare prices anywhere else:

• Screen Studio’s $229 pay-once license is gone for new buyers. The retirement was announced September 30, 2025. Existing one-time licenses remain valid and renewable for updates. Its earlier history matters too: the original $89 one-time license (2022) included one year of updates, so “one-time” already had fine print back then.
• Camtasia has no perpetual license for new versions. The current store sells four tiers, all billed yearly. Subscription-only applies from the 2025 versions onward.
• FocuSee’s lifetime tier is version-locked. The store states the $199.99 purchase grants lifetime access to FocuSee 2.x, with the next major version at an additional cost.

When a subscription is actually the right call

Subscriptions make sense when they pay for something that keeps running:

• Teams that share and track. Loom’s value is not the recorder. It’s the hosting, the instant share links, the comments, and the viewer analytics. Those servers cost money every month, and per-seat pricing is how you pay for them. If your recordings are messages to teammates, that’s a fair trade.
• Heavy editing pipelines. Camtasia’s subscription buys a full-scale editor with a long feature tail. If you produce training courses all year, the comparison isn’t “$180 vs $30.” It’s Camtasia’s editor against whatever you’d bolt together otherwise.
• Ongoing server-side features. FocuSee ties some AI features to credits, which have real compute costs behind them. A vendor charging monthly for those is being honest about the cost structure in a way a fake “lifetime” promise wouldn’t be.

When one-time wins

• You export and host yourself anyway. If the video’s destination is YouTube, a landing page, or your own site, you’re paying twice for hosting you don’t need.
• You use the tool in bursts. A recorder you open once a month doesn’t need a standing $29/mo relationship. At that pace, Screen Studio’s $108/yr works out to $9 per session.
• You want the tool to outlive your budget cycles. A license with no kill switch keeps working whether or not the vendor is having a good year. The longer you stay in one place, the more this matters.
• You just hate renewals. That’s a preference, not a defect, and a common one.

The fine print of “one-time”

Read three things before any one-time purchase, including ours:

1. Which versions are included? FocuSee’s lifetime is explicit: 2.x only. CleanShot X includes one year of updates, then asks $19/yr, which is optional and the app never stops working. Screen Studio’s old $89 license shipped with the same one-year structure back in 2022.
2. Does the app keep working if development stops? A license without a phone-home kill switch survives a vendor’s exit. Check this for any tool you rely on.
3. What’s not included? Hosting, cloud storage, and team features are the usual suspects. They’re the reason subscription products exist, and a one-time product that includes them honestly can’t promise them forever.

The case for and against Sgrin

Sgrin is a native Mac screen recorder built around cinematic demo videos. It proposes a zoom on every click, and you can move, resize, or delete each zoom on a timeline after recording. It records keystrokes on screen, smooths the cursor, adds device mockups, and exports in 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, or any ratio. The app is a 6 MB download.

Where it gives ground, because these limits are the deal:

• No hosting, by design. Everything runs locally. There are no share links and no viewer analytics. If your job is async messaging with tracking, Loom or Cap does that better.
• Mac only, on purpose. No Windows version, no web version.
• Steep system floor. It requires macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later on Apple Silicon. Intel Macs and older macOS versions are out.
• The update promise ends at v2. The $29.99 Early Adopter license includes every v1.x update and v2 at no extra cost. Nothing is promised beyond v2; if a v3 ships, it may be a paid upgrade, like every vendor on this page except OBS and QuickTime. What the license does guarantee is permanence: no subscription, no expiring license, nothing breaks if development stops.
• It’s not an editor. The timeline manages zooms and framing, not cuts, titles, or multi-track composition. If you need that, Camtasia is doing a different, bigger job.

You can judge the trade yourself. The trial is 14 days and needs no credit card.

Free options first

Two of the best options here cost nothing:

• QuickTime Player is already installed. For “record my screen, trim the ends, send it,” done. $0.
• OBS Studio is free, open source, and runs natively on Apple Silicon with more raw control than anything else here. The cost is your time: no auto-zoom, no presets, no opinions. You build the pipeline.
• Cap’s free core records locally without time limits for personal use, open source. Its $58 license is there when you need commercial rights, not to unlock the basics.

If a free tool covers your job today, the one-time-vs-subscription question can wait.

How to decide

1. Job: quick async messages with view tracking → Loom (or Cap’s cloud tiers). The subscription earns it.
2. Job: polished product demo you’ll host yourself → a one-time license. Sgrin for click-driven auto-zoom demos, FocuSee if you’re on its subscription anyway or need Windows.
3. Job: raw capture or streaming → OBS, free.
4. Job: screenshots first, video sometimes → CleanShot X at $35.
5. Job: full course production with heavy editing → Camtasia’s subscription, knowingly.

Sources

All accessed October 19, 2026. Prices change; re-check before buying.

• Sgrin: sgrin.app (own product: one-time Early Adopter $29.99, v1.x + v2 included, 14-day trial without card, macOS 26+ · Apple Silicon)
• Cap: cap.so/pricing
• CleanShot X: cleanshot.com/pricing; absence from the Mac App Store checked via the iTunes Search API lookup (0 results for the app’s store ID)
• Filmage Screen: filmagepro.com/filmagescreen/store
• FocuSee: focusee.imobie.com/go/store.php?product=fs
• Screen Studio: screen.studio (pricing and FAQ); retirement date via pricetimeline.com/news/173
• Loom: loom.com/pricing
• Camtasia: techsmith.com/store/camtasia (the page renders in your local currency; the USD figure is from TechSmith’s US store as indexed on the check date)
• OBS Studio: obsproject.com
• QuickTime Player: support.apple.com/guide/quicktime-player/welcome/mac

Deliberately left out: trial watermark behavior (not tested here) and Reddit quotes (threads are cited only where verifiable, and none are quoted here).