ScreenFlow vs OBS Studio

$199 for the app, with Super Pak near $275 and Super Pak with premium support near $325 on Telestream's store in August 2026. The Stock Media Library is a separate add-on near $99 per year. Older $129 and $169 references are stale, and promotions can shift the total slightly. Trial is free with watermarked exports.

OBS records and streams with great control, but it does not ship a timeline editor for lesson-style cuts. You will cut elsewhere, in Resolve, Final Cut or another editor. That split suits live producers more than tutorial editors.

ScreenFlow is built for recorded lessons, not live production. You can record cleanly, but scene switching, multiview and live plugin control are not its strengths.

The interface is a blank canvas of sources, scenes and docks. It is powerful once learned, but new users face encoder choices, permissions, audio routing and scene order before the first clean recording. Expect a tutorial or two.

Mac only. If your team includes Windows or Linux, you cannot standardise capture on ScreenFlow alone, and you will need a second tool for those machines.

Features arrive with Telestream updates and the stock library, not a broad third-party plugin market. That keeps the app predictable but less extensible than OBS.

You can capture iOS via window capture, virtual camera or capture devices, but it takes manual wiring. It works, just not as directly as ScreenFlow's built-in path.

Recording formats and stream outputs are flexible, with many encoder and container choices. Finishing, captions and polished exports happen in another app after capture, which adds a step but gives you full editor control. You choose container, encoder and bitrate, then handle captions and polish in your editor.