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Pricing — one plan, one price

Pay once.
Record forever.

A flat $39 license. No seat math. No per-minute cloud tax. No subscription renewals at 2 a.m. that you forgot to cancel. DarthScreenCapture is local-first screen recording built in Tallinn since 2018 — and the price has stayed flat for four years running.

Start Recording Free Compare the two tiers →
  • $39 one-time license
  • 30-day no-questions refund
  • 3 majors free version upgrades included
  • Local processing — nothing uploaded, ever

Free vs Pro

The same recorder. Different ceilings.

Lossless 4K60, local processing, no upload — that ships in both tiers. The free tier caps where most screen recorders charge by the minute; Pro unlocks the rest. Pick the row that matches your output.

SPEC · WHAT'S IN THE BOX
TIER 01

Free

$0/ forever

Start Recording Free

For evaluating the recorder on a single machine.

TIER 02

Pro License

$39/ one-time

Buy once, record forever

One device. 3 major upgrades included. 30-day refund.

Capture engine
Lossless 4K60 capture
✓
✓
GPU-accelerated encode (under 3% CPU, 2020 MBA)
✓
✓
Three-second cold-start to first frame
✓
✓
macOS · Windows · Linux
✓
✓
Free-tier limits
Max continuous recording length
10 min / clip
Unlimited
Watermark on export
"Recorded with DarthScreenCapture"
Removed
Export formats
MP4, WebM, GIF
+ MOV, MKV, PNG sequence, raw frames
Instant GIF export
—
✓
Audio & automation
Per-region audio capture
System audio only
System + mic + per-app routing
CLI flags & CI integration
Read-only playback
Full `darth record --region … --audio …` surface
Documented REST API
—
✓
Workflow & integrations
Linear, Jira, Sentry, Loom-import
Read & attach
Native write & comment threads
Commercial use on client work
Personal & evaluation only
Unlimited, no attribution
Support SLA
Community Discord
Email response within 1 business day
Start Recording Free
Buy once, record forever

No seat math. One license = one device. Need to move machines? Deauthorize from the old box and re-activate — flat license transfer, no extra fee. Volume licensing for 25+ seats is handled by humans at [email protected].

The numbers behind one flat $39

Proof the product is established enough to charge for.

418,000+

Active installs across macOS, Windows, and Linux as of Q1 2025.

#1

G2 Screen Recording Software grid, Spring 2024 — out of 47 vendors.

6.4%

Average free-to-paid conversion over the rolling 12 months — benchmarked, not hyped.

30 days

No-questions refund window. Email [email protected], get the $39 back.

// Choose your path

Who picks Free, who picks Pro

Two honest profiles. Pick the one that sounds like your week.

// 01 / free

The solo educator and marketer

You record a tutorial once a week, trim a mistake, export an MP4, and email it to a student list. You don't have a CI pipeline. You don't ship regression videos on every PR. You just need crisp 1080p capture, a watermark on exports under three minutes, and zero invoice approvals.

  • Unlimited recordings, up to 10 minutes per clip
  • Watermark on exports over 3 minutes
  • Lossless 1080p30 capture on macOS, Windows, Linux
  • GIF export, drag-and-drop to your editor
Start Recording Free 93MB installer · no card required
// 02 / pro · $39 once

The engineering team shipping bug-repro clips

You generate screencasts from a CLI in GitHub Actions, you attach lossless 4K60 captures to Linear tickets, and your PM wants a regression video on every release branch. You need the REST API, the documented flags, a commercial license, and exports without a watermark. You pay once and never negotiate seats.

  • Everything in Free, minus the watermark, plus 4K60 capture
  • Documented REST API and CLI flags for CI
  • Commercial-use license for whole teams
  • One-time $39 — used by 41,200+ engineering teams at Stripe, Vercel, HashiCorp
Buy the $39 license 30-day refund · no subscription

// Pre-purchase

Questions engineers ask before the $39

Specific answers, no marketing fluff. If your question isn't here, write to [email protected].

  1. What does the 30-day refund actually cover?

    Email us within 30 days of purchase from the address you paid with and we refund the full $39. No usage gate, no exit interview, no restocking fee. You keep the free tier either way. The refund window exists because the one-time model means you only get one shot at convincing us — we treat that seriously.

  2. Can I move my license to a new machine or hand it to a teammate?

    Yes. The license is tied to an email key, not a hardware fingerprint. Deactivate on the old machine from Settings → License, activate on the new one. You can transfer the seat once per 90 days. Two engineers at the same company sharing one key in rotation is fine; sharing across companies is not — buy a second key at the same $39 price.

  3. Does the Pro license let me ship recordings in commercial products?

    Yes. The paid license includes a commercial-use grant for the recordings you produce — tutorials you sell, SaaS demo videos embedded in paid product tours, marketing assets, internal training for paying customers. The license does not let you redistribute the recorder binary itself or resell the software. If you need a site-wide redistribution clause, write to us.

  4. What happens when I downgrade, switch OS, or stop updating?

    Downgrade: your key keeps working on whatever version you last activated; new features ship to free and pro in parallel, so a downgrade is effectively a re-install of the free build. Cross-platform: one $39 key covers macOS, Windows, and Linux for the same person. Updates: every paid user gets the current major version forever; we publish a transparent changelog and a 12-month deprecation window before any breaking change.

$ dsc install --tier free && dsc record

$39 once, or free forever. Either way, the recorder is open in three seconds.

93MB installer · 3-second cold start · 30-day refund on the paid key · 418,000+ installs on macOS, Windows, Linux.

Start Recording Free Buy the $39 license

No subscription. No per-minute cloud tax. No enterprise SSO tier — that's a product we haven't shipped, and we won't pretend otherwise.