OBS Studio (Open Broadcaster Software), a well-known open-source streaming software, has been helping people stream and record their videos since 2012. Since it's free, millions of users have had the chance to test it and enjoy its interface without worrying about payments and fees.
Its excellent features have made it immensely popular among influencers and artists. However, some users are also curious about if there is a better option than OBS. Let's explore why people want and what are the best OBS alternatives today!
In this article
Reasons People Want an OBS Alternative
While OBS has many fantastic features, it has several downsides.
- Overwhelming UI complexity
- Limited tools and features
- A steep learning curve
- Unstable system and frequent bugs
- No integrated chat systems
All these factors push users in other directions where they can choose more modern and robust platforms.
Factors to Consider When Choosing an OBS Alternative
When considering better OBS alternatives, you must know your ambitions and requirements. Here are the main factors you may need to consider:
- Decide whether to use it as screen recording software or live streaming software
- Ease of use
- Features and tool complexity
- Compatibility with your operating systems
- Speed and possible lag time
- Pricing and package options
- Support, training, and guidance
- Your target streaming platforms
Best OBS Alternatives for Screen Recording
The market is flooded with software options, but many don't necessarily mean high quality, so you must be careful when choosing. Here we picked the best OBS alternatives by their features, whether you are looking for a powerful screen recorder as an OBS alternative, or a live streaming platform, you can find all you want.
| OBS Alternatives | Ease Of Use | User Ratings |
| Wondershare Filmora | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 4.4/5 from G2 |
| Free Cam | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 4.1/5 from G2 |
| Camtasia | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 4.6/5 from G2 |
| Bandicam | ⭐⭐⭐ | 4.4/5 from G2 |
Wondershare Filmora
Wondershare Filmora is a trustworthy, well-furnished video editing software with almost limitless tools and attractive features. When comes to being an OBS alternative, it doesn't limit the screen recording time or videos.
Unlike OBS, it has an easy-to-use UI, more built-in editing features, various preset templates, and more professional support to answer all your questions.
Its customizable recording area and settings let you select which part of your screen to record. You can also capture mouse clicks to add color and excitement to your recordings.
Thousands of reviews testify to Filmora's intuitive interface and fantastic features, with endless people loving its ease of use and power.
Key Features
- Customize the recording area, choose to record the full screen, a specific area, or a target window.
- Record system sound and external audio at the same time.
- Use a record timer to schedule screen recording duration easily.
- Simultaneous system audio and microphone recording.
- Powerful audio editing features such as fade in and fade out, apply crossfade transitions between different audio tracks or lower the volume of one track to make another track clearer with audio ducking.
- Enhance voice clarity with AI voice enhancer and remove background noise at the same time.
- Change voice accents in simple clicks to add versatility to your voice recordings.
Pros & Cons
Free Cam
Free Cam is an OBS alternative that has powerful screen recording and video editing features to capture screen activities. It has all basic screen recording capabilities such as recording a specific window, a whole screen, or a particular area.
It has decent standard features like voiceover recording, trimming, noise reduction, and the ability to upload directly to YouTube, making it a solid choice for some influencers.
It's compatible with Windows 10 but doesn't work on Windows 11 and macOS, so many users avoid it.
Key Features
- Different screen recording modes.
- Record system sounds and add background music to videos.
- Highlight your mouse cursor and turn on mouse click sounds.
- Fine-tune videos with built-in audio and video editor.
Pros & Cons
Learn an in-depth review of Free Cam.
Camtasia
Camtasia is a famous screen recording software that delivers excellent results and doesn't have a steep learning curve, making it a superb choice for many users who are looking for OBS alternatives. It offers drag-and-drop functionality and fancy visual effects to turn screen recordings into almost pro-quality presentations.
Whether you desire to produce social media material or tutorials, Camtasia can get you results, if you know how to navigate it right.
Its preset templates will help you craft captivating visuals that you can customize by adding animations, modern transitions, audio effects, sample music, etc.
The problems you might face link to the limited features that fail to deliver as professional output as some higher-end editing products. No keyframe tracking and poor keyboard commands can make it challenging to be as prompt and proficient as you might like.
Key Features
- Easy-to-use screen-capturing features
- Add cursor effects easily
- Various icons and templates
- Motion backgrounds and music
- Powerful video editing features.
Pros & Cons
Bandicam
Bandicam is a good OBS alternative that is prominent in YouTube streaming circles thanks to its screen-grabbing feature and robust interface. It differs from OBS in terms of feature-richness and its extensive effects.
Its most notable downside is that it only supports the Windows operating system, which can be a determining factor for macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.
Its lack of capacity to record higher-quality games is another aspect ripe for an upgrade. Still, influencers and gamers who use it are content since it's easy to navigate and offers many excellent effects and animations.
Key Features
- Different screen recording modes, including rectangle area, full screen, game recording, and device recording.
- Various real-time drawing features.
- Apply mouse click effects.
- Record microphone input or system sounds.
- Basic video editing features such as trimming and cutting.
Pros & Cons
Best OBS Alternatives for Streaming
| OBS Alternatives | Ease Of Use | User Ratings |
| XSplit | ⭐⭐⭐⭐It's intuitive, though it might lack speedy customer support. | 4.2/5 from G2 |
| SplitCam | ⭐⭐⭐It isn't as user-friendly as all the other options on the list. | 4.2/5 from G2 |
| Vmix | ⭐⭐It might be complex for novice streamers and editors. | 4.3/5 from G2 |
| Lightstream | ⭐⭐⭐⭐It's browser-based and simple to navigate. | 4.7/5 from G2 |
XSplit
XSplit is an excellent OBS alternative for live streaming. Its AI-powered system allows gaming experts to stream their gameplay and presentations live.
A fantastic addition to this premium software is its multilingual customer service, which can assist with any issue you encounter.
This streaming platform's quality astonishes endless users worldwide, providing them with many transition styles and multitrack audio recordings. Separate systems and microphone audio offer many editing possibilities and improve video quality.
Key Features
- It offers professional layouts.
- It allows you to stream on all your favorite platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook.
- Recording high-quality videos.
- Remove, replace, and blur your background on webcam recording with its Vcam app.
Pros & Cons
SplitCam
Splicam is another powerful OBS alternative, which is mainly focusing on live streaming, video recording, gaming streaming, and creating online classes.
This streaming solution provides video streams to multiple channels simultaneously without losing quality. Its built-in audio mixer lets users combine various audio sources from their audio files, games, microphones, etc.
Its smoothness in live streaming on various platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook makes it better than the OBS software. It's more synchronized while using multiple platforms, which can get unbalanced and out of sync with many other software.
Key Features
- It supports splitting webcam which can run several video chats at the same time with one webcam.
- It supports streaming on multiple platforms simultaneously.
- It allows to mixing of audio sources into an audio stream.
Pros & Cons
vMix
vMix is a complete live video production and live streaming software that can be selected as an OBS alternative that delivers professional productions, making it immensely popular among streamers looking to utilize multiple cameras without glitches. Its versatility makes it excellent for online presentations and broadcasting.
You can use four camera setups, switch between them, and use the instant replay feature to have the best broadcasting experience. That's where vMix surpasses OBS; it can handle not one but three live streams.
Key Features
- Connect, capture, or stream your media sources into vMix with camera, audio, and much more.
- It supports SD, HD, and 4K productions.
- It can work on multiple live streams.
Pros & Cons
Lightstream
Announced to create more impactful live streams, Lightstream is an online OBS alternative that is unique for its simplicity and intuitiveness.
Many compare it to OBS because of its delightful overlays and guest hosting. However, regarding the ease of use, it wins the race for many since you don't have to download and set it up.
Its servers perform the encoding, helping your PC avoid heavy use and making it less prone to potential glitches and bugs.
Once you sign up and click Go Live, you'll see how convenient this streaming platform is.
Key Features
- It supports cloud capture for console streams
- Customize the layouts and switch between them easily.
- It supports unlimited streaming hours.
- It offers cloud sync features.
Pros & Cons
Conclusion
We have discussed the best OBS alternatives in this article. If you are looking for an alternative option to screen record, we suggest you try Wondershare Filmora, as it is a full-featured screen recorder and video editor, which is more user-friendly than OBS.
