A Gyazo alternative with no install and no history cap

Gyazo is a link machine, and the links are the part it charges for. Capturing is unlimited on the free plan, but reaching your own history is not: only your most recent handful of images stays browsable, and the rest is a paid feature. It also wants an app installed. This is one of the alternatives that keeps the useful half, a capture that turns into a shareable URL, without the install and with your explanation travelling alongside the picture.

What Gyazo does well

Gyazo has the shortest path from something on your screen to a URL that anyone in the world can open. One keystroke, drag a region, and the link is on your clipboard before you have finished letting go of the mouse. No save dialog, no filename, no upload step you have to think about. There are apps for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android and extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Edge, and it also does short video clips and GIFs the same way.

For the specific habit of "look at this thing" in a chat window, it is close to frictionless, and that is why people who use it use it constantly.

Where it stops

The friction shows up later. Capture is unlimited on the free plan; access is not. Only your most recent images stay reachable in your library, ten of them at the time of writing, and video on the free plan is capped at a few seconds. Nothing is deleted, but a capture from last month is effectively gone unless you happened to save the URL somewhere yourself. That is a strange shape for a tool whose whole promise is that the link is the artifact, and it tends to bite well after the habit is established.

It also needs an app on every machine, which is a cost paid by whichever colleague, client or contractor only ever needed to send you one screenshot.

The bigger limit is the same one every quick-screenshot tool has: what arrives is an image. Your reader gets a picture and has to reconstruct why you sent it. Which page was that? What should it have looked like? Was the problem the thing in the middle or the thing at the edge? You retype that in the chat message next to the link, and the moment the thread scrolls away, the picture and its meaning have come apart. Hand the same link to an AI coding agent and a text-only agent cannot see the image at all.

The same capture in CobaltCapture

CobaltCapture uses the browser's native screen-capture API, so there is nothing to install and no extension to approve. Pick a window or a screen, drag to crop, and the frame becomes an item in a review. If the image is already on your clipboard, paste it in; on a phone, take a normal device screenshot and add it from the photo picker.

Then you say what it means. Each screenshot has its own comment field, and in Chrome or Edge you can dictate rather than type, which is the fastest way to get the reasoning out of your head while you are still looking at the screen. Numbered pins and annotations go on the image itself, arrows, boxes, circles and text labels, all burned into the exported picture so the marks survive into a PDF or a ticket.

What you share is a link that carries the whole thing. A public review URL, plus a cleaner stakeholder version at /s/<slug> with the editing controls removed, which is the one to send a client. Export as PDF or Word for people, push it to a repository as a GitHub issue, or export Markdown, which an AI coding agent reads as text rather than as a picture it cannot open. When you are gathering client feedback across several screens, one review beats a chat thread full of loose links.

If you want the Gyazo reflex specifically, there is a single-screenshot flow at /shot: capture one image, drop one pin, type one line, and copy a picture that is also a link. One paste shows the image and still resolves if the recipient's client blocks images.

Who should stay on Gyazo

Stay on Gyazo if the one-keystroke link is the entire workflow and you are content to pay for history when you eventually want it. Nothing here beats it on raw speed, and its short video clips and OCR have no equivalent in a still-image tool. If your team already lives in a shared Gyazo library, that is worth more than any single feature on this page.

Switch when you keep finding yourself typing three sentences of context underneath every link you paste, when a review is several screens rather than one, or when the reader is a coding agent. Running both is fine, and common: Gyazo for the throwaway "look at this", CobaltCapture when someone has to act on it.

Feature comparison

	Gyazo	CobaltCapture
Install required	Desktop or mobile app, or extension	None
Speed to a shareable link	One keystroke	Capture, note, publish
Captures on the free plan	Unlimited	Unlimited
Access to your own history	Most recent only, without Pro	All reviews on your account, with Pro
Short video clips	Yes, capped on free	No, stills only
Annotation	Editing is a paid feature	Pins, arrows, boxes, circles, text
Per-screenshot commentary	No	Yes, typed or dictated
Multiple screens in one artifact	No	Yes, one review
Stakeholder-only URL	No	Yes, at /s/<slug>
Export formats	Image files	Markdown, PDF, Word
Readable by an AI coding agent	No	Yes, native Markdown

Category facts change. Check each vendor's own site for the current state of their plans and limits.

Get started

cobaltcapture.com. Free to try, no install and no signup. Free reviews stay live for seven days; Pro keeps them live and is $5 a month.

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• Loom alternative
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Frequently asked questions

Does Gyazo have a free plan?

Yes, and capturing is unlimited on it. The limit is on getting back to what you captured: the free plan only lets you reach a small number of your most recent images, ten at the time of writing, and video capture on it is capped at a few seconds. Older links still exist, but browsing and managing that history is a paid feature, as are OCR, editing and password protection. Check Gyazo's own pricing page for the current numbers.

What happens to my old Gyazo screenshots on the free plan?

They are not deleted. They fall off the end of what you can see in your library, so unless you saved the link somewhere yourself you have no practical way to find a capture from last month. That is the moment most people go looking for an alternative, and it usually arrives long after they have built the habit.

Is there a free alternative to Gyazo?

Several, depending on the job. For instant local capture with no account at all, use your operating system's built-in tool, Flameshot, Greenshot or Shottr. For the capture-and-get-a-link habit without an install, CobaltCapture does that in the browser, free to try with no signup; free reviews stay live for seven days, and Pro at $5 a month or $50 a year keeps them live.

Does CobaltCapture need an app or an extension?

No. It uses the browser's own screen-capture API, so there is nothing to install and no extension to approve, and you do not have to sign up to try it. You can also paste an image in from the clipboard, drag one onto the page, or pick a file, which is the flow on a phone, where no browser can screen-capture.

Can I get a shareable link as fast as Gyazo does?

Close. There is a single-screenshot flow that captures one image, takes one pin and one line of text, and copies a picture that is also a link back to the full review, so one paste into a chat or a ticket shows the image and still works if images are blocked. It is a step longer than Gyazo's one keystroke, and the step is the part where you say what the screenshot means.

Does CobaltCapture record video like Gyazo?

No. It captures still frames only. If short screen recordings are what you use Gyazo for, this does not replace that. The argument for stills is that a reviewer reads five annotated screenshots in half a minute rather than watching a clip, and that an AI coding agent can read screenshots and notes as text but cannot watch a recording at all.

When should I stay on Gyazo?

Stay on Gyazo if the one-keystroke capture-to-clipboard-link is the whole workflow and you are happy paying for history when you need it, or if you rely on its short video clips, OCR or team library. It is genuinely the fastest way to turn something on your screen into a URL. The switch makes sense when the link needs to carry an explanation, when several screens belong in one document, or when the reader is a coding agent.