Tella Review, Pricing & Alternatives (2026)

Tella is a screen recorder, hosted video service, and editor from an Amsterdam startup founded by Grant Shaddick and Michiel Westerbeek in 2020. The founders joined Y Combinator’s Summer 2020 batch, and YC lists seven team members. In April 2025, Shaddick announced a $2.1 million seed round led by Gradient, following earlier funding. Tella started as a collaborative browser video editor and now includes native Mac and Windows apps, a Chrome extension, and a web recorder. Its users include founders, marketers, educators, sales teams, and remote companies that need edited, shareable videos rather than raw captures. A seven-day free trial requires no card; afterward, existing videos remain viewable and shareable, but recording, editing, and exporting stop. Paid plans add storage, transcription, analytics, and advanced controls.

A typical workflow starts with a screen, camera, microphone, system audio, or multi-clip recording. Tella keeps screen and camera material adjustable in the editor, which supports trimming, splitting, transcript editing, captions, layouts, backgrounds, overlays, zooms, cursor effects, blur, highlights, and AI audio cleanup. Auto Cut removes silences, filler words, recording buffers, and detected mistakes. Auto Layouts changes screen and camera arrangements, while Auto Zoom creates editable zooms from clicks and cursor movement. Finished videos receive a hosted link and embeddable player, with analytics for views, unique viewers, watch time, and engagement. MP4 export reaches 4K, and Tella Transfer imports Loom libraries. A seven-day free trial needs no card; after expiry, existing videos remain viewable and shareable, but recording, editing, and exporting stop.

Tella uses a proprietary rendering engine intended to publish high-quality videos close to real time, according to reporting on its 2025 funding. Its product includes transcript-based editing, Studio Voice, automatic captions, an MCP server, and a public API, while the company says transcription supports 106 languages. September 2026 releases listed on Tella’s site added color filters,.cube LUT support, and a Blob camera style. AI agents use credits: Pro includes 3,000 monthly credits and Premium includes 6,000. The company publishes no claim that customer recordings train a general-purpose model. A seven-day trial requires no card, but recording, editing, and exporting stop after expiry. Pro costs $13 per user monthly when billed annually; Premium costs $19, and Enterprise pricing is custom.

Tella has no permanent free tier. Each new account receives a seven-day Pro trial without requiring a card. During the trial, most Pro features are available; after it expires, existing videos remain viewable and shareable, but recording, editing, and exporting stop unless you subscribe. Pro costs $26 per user monthly, or $13 per user monthly when billed annually, and includes unlimited recordings and storage, clips up to six hours, up to 4K recording, transcription in 106 languages, editing, sharing, analytics, and collaboration. Premium costs $39 monthly, or $19 annually, and adds features such as 4K playback, domain restriction, white-labeling, 60 FPS export, advanced analytics, and priority support. Enterprise pricing is custom and includes options such as SSO, SAML, SCIM, onboarding, volume discounts, and a SOC 2 Type II report under NDA.

The main limitation is the absence of a permanent free plan, alongside a six-hour limit per clip and no mobile app. A seven-day trial costs $0 and requires no card, but recording, editing, and exporting stop after expiry, while existing videos remain viewable and shareable. Pro costs $13 per user monthly when billed annually and includes unlimited recordings and storage, editing, hosting, analytics, and up to 4K recording. Loom is better for quick internal updates and Atlassian integrations, while Tella offers deeper visual editing and branded sharing. Screen Studio produces polished Mac-only recordings, and Descript suits broader text-led media editing. Regulated teams should review Tella’s privacy materials before recording sensitive content because hosted links and collaboration involve cloud processing.