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Five tools, one table. What each one captures, how it redacts, whether it gets text out of an image, and what it costs — including the rows where Snapix comes up short.
14 days, every feature, no credit card
| Feature |  Snapix |  CleanShot X |  Shottr |  Snagit |  macOS Screenshot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capture | |||||
| Area, window and full-screen capture | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scrolling capture | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ and panoramic | ✗ |
| Screen recording | ✗ by design | ✓ MP4 and GIF | ✗ | ✓ video and GIF | ✓ mic audio only |
| Editing and redaction | |||||
| Annotation editor | ✓ 16 tools | ✓ the most polished | ✓ capable, utilitarian | ✓ the deepest | ✓ Markup, basic |
| Blur and pixelate | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ and object removal | ✓ and Smart Redact | ✗ none at all |
| Numbered step markers | ✓ placed by hand | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Edit the text inside a screenshot | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Getting text out | |||||
| OCR | ✓ on-device, one gesture | ✓ on-device | ✓ on-device | ✓ Grab Text | ✓ Live Text, via Preview |
| Files and sharing | |||||
| Cloud sharing built in | ✗ no cloud product | ✓ optional, off by default | ✗ your own S3 bucket | ✓ Screencast, opt-in | ✗ |
| Capture history | ✓ | ✓ up to a month | — | ✓ on-disk library | ✗ |
| Pin a shot above other windows | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✗ |
| Price and platform | |||||
| Runs on | macOS 14+ | macOS 13+ | macOS 10.15+ | Windows and macOS 14+ | macOS |
| Price | $29.88/year or $79 once see pricing | $35 once, then $19/yr for updates | Free to use, or $12 once | $39/yr, subscription only | Free |
| Keeps working if you stop paying | ✓ with the lifetime license | ✓ on your last version | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Free trial | ✓ 14 days, no credit card | ✗ 30-day money-back instead | ✓ the free version, no time limit | ✓ 15 days | ✓ |
Checked against each vendor's own pages on July 31, 2026. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we will fix it.
We make one of these. Here is the honest answer anyway — four of the five picks below are somebody else's app.
Snapix Ours
Your day is capture → annotate → blur something → copy the text out. You want that handled on your Mac, and you would rather the tool had no cloud product built into it. You do not need to record video, and you are fine paying — monthly, yearly or once — for an app that stays small.
What Snapix does → CleanShot X
You want screen recording, scrolling capture and the most polished editor on the Mac, bought once rather than rented.
Snapix vs CleanShot X → Shottr
Free is the right price for personal use, and you want the screen ruler, pixel-distance measurement and color picker that CleanShot X does not have.
Snapix vs Shottr → Snagit
You write documentation for a living, need step-by-step guides recorded as you click, or run Windows and Mac side by side.
CleanShot X vs Snagit → macOS Screenshot
You take the occasional region shot with ⌘⇧4 and never need to blur anything, scroll a long page, or find a capture again later.
Every built-in shortcut →The long versions — pricing maths, what each app actually does, and who wins each round.
Pricing, recording, scrolling capture and pixel tools — and which one fits how you work.
Subscription versus one-time, speed and weight — and who each one is actually built for.
Features, pricing, privacy and free trials — including where CleanShot X still wins.
Shottr is free and genuinely good. Here's exactly what paying for Snapix adds.
There is no single winner, and any page that gives you one is selling something. CleanShot X is the best all-rounder if you also record your screen. Shottr is the best free one. Snagit is the best for documentation teams. Snapix is the best fit when your work is capturing, annotating, redacting and pulling text out — and you want that handled on your Mac rather than by a service.
Yes, for personal use. Shottr is free to use with no time limit; after 30 days it starts asking you to upgrade, and its $12 one-time license is required for commercial use. Beyond that, the tool already on your Mac (⌘⇧4 and ⌘⇧5) is free and more capable than most people realise — though it cannot blur, cannot capture a scrolling page, and keeps no history.
Only if you hit its limits, and most people do in four places: there is no blur or pixelate anywhere in the built-in stack, no scrolling capture, no capture history, and getting text out means opening the file in Preview and selecting it by hand. If none of those matter to you, save your money — see the built-in shortcuts.
Snagit has the deepest text suite — it can rewrite the text inside a screenshot. For simply getting text onto your clipboard, Snapix, CleanShot X and Shottr all run OCR on-device in one gesture, which is faster than the Preview detour macOS asks for. Snapix uses ⌘⇧2. Here is how that compares to Live Text.
Snapix has no cloud product built into it — captures, annotations and OCR are processed on-device. To be fair to the others: CleanShot X and Snagit are local-first too, with uploading as a deliberate action, and Shottr uploads only to a bucket you point it at yourself.
It comes down to one question: do you need screen recording? Shottr has none, and that is the single most common reason people pay for CleanShot X. If you do not record, Shottr covers most of the same ground for free (or $12 once, the license commercial use requires) and adds pixel tools CleanShot X lacks. Full breakdown: CleanShot X vs Shottr.
TechSmith stopped selling perpetual licenses with Snagit 2025 in February 2025. It is $39/year for individuals, $48/user/year for business, and the app stops working if you stop paying. Legacy perpetual licenses are supported through December 31, 2026 — which is why "Snagit alternative" searches spiked. See CleanShot X vs Snagit.
Developers, filing the bug
Support, walking someone through
Teams, reviewing the work
Freelancers, sending the update
