Screenpipe Review 2026: Pricing, Features, Pros & Cons
Screenpipe records everything on your screen and microphone, indexes it locally, and lets an AI answer questions about your own working life. It is open source, free, and — unlike every polished competitor — never sends your recordings anywhere. That trade buys you real privacy and costs you setup time, disk space, and a support contract. Here's an honest assessment of where that lands in 2026.
Quick Verdict
Best for: Developers, researchers, and privacy-conscious power users who want searchable total recall without handing a vendor a recording of their entire working life — especially anyone who wants to query that history from Claude or Cursor over MCP. Not the right choice if you want a double-click install, if you need capture away from your desk, or if you can't spare the disk and battery that continuous local capture costs.
What Is Screenpipe?
Screenpipe is an open-source personal AI layer that continuously captures what happens on your screen and through your microphone, then builds a searchable memory of it. Instead of trying to remember which app a piece of information was in, you ask a question — what was that error, what did the client say, what did that dashboard show last month — and the tool retrieves it from your own history.
The defining architectural choice is that all of this runs locally. Capture, transcription, and indexing happen on your machine, and the recordings do not go to a vendor's cloud. Because the project is open source, that claim is verifiable rather than a promise — you can read the capture path and block network access to confirm it. In a category built entirely on recording your private working life, that distinction is the product.
On top of the capture stream sit a timeline view, a plugin ecosystem for post-processing your own data, and an MCP server that lets Claude Code or Cursor query your history directly from the editor. The cost of all this is honesty about resources: continuous capture plus local models consumes substantial storage and compute, and the setup is a developer experience, not a consumer one.
Screenpipe Pros & Cons
✓ Pros
- •Everything stays on your machine: Screenpipe captures screen and microphone continuously and processes it locally — the recordings, the transcripts, and the index never leave your device unless you deliberately wire up a cloud model. For a category where the whole premise is "record my entire working life," this is the difference between a useful tool and an unacceptable risk. Rewind and Limitless both ask for more trust than this does.
- •Genuinely open source, so the privacy claim is checkable: The code is public, which means the claim that nothing is uploaded is auditable rather than a marketing promise. You can read the capture path, block network egress at the firewall, and verify the tool still works. Very few products in the personal-AI space can survive that kind of inspection, and for anyone under NDA or handling client data it is the only version of this idea that passes review.
- •Native MCP server for Claude and Cursor: Screenpipe exposes an MCP server, so your coding agent can query your own screen history directly — "what was that error I hit on Tuesday," "what did the client say about the invoice flow." That turns passive recall into something an agent can act on inside the editor you already work in, which is a materially different workflow from opening a separate timeline app and scrolling.
- •Free, with no per-seat or per-hour meter: There is no subscription gate on the core product. Compared with the $20–30/month that hosted recall tools charge, and given that the value scales with how long you've been recording, a free local tool that you can run for years without a renewal decision is a real advantage.
- •Search across things no other tool indexes: Because capture happens at the OS level, Screenpipe sees content inside apps that don't expose it — a Figma comment, a Zoom chat that vanished, a native desktop client with no export. Anything that hit your screen is searchable, including material that has since been deleted at the source.
- •Plugin ecosystem and a hackable core: A growing community builds pipes and plugins on top of the capture stream, so you can post-process your own data — auto-generate standup notes, extract action items, feed a personal knowledge base. If you want to build personal AI workflows rather than consume a fixed feature set, this is the most extensible option in the category.
✗ Cons
- •Technical setup, not a double-click install: Getting Screenpipe running well means dealing with permissions, model choices, and configuration, and troubleshooting means reading GitHub issues rather than opening a support chat. Non-technical users will bounce. Rewind's install experience is dramatically smoother, and that gap is the single biggest reason most people won't adopt this.
- •Heavy on disk and compute: Continuous screen capture plus local transcription and indexing burns real storage and real CPU or GPU. On a laptop you will notice fan noise and battery drain, and you need to actively manage a retention policy or watch tens of gigabytes accumulate per month. Budget for the disk before you commit to always-on recording.
- •Recording other people raises consent and legal questions: Continuous microphone capture during meetings means recording colleagues and clients, and in two-party-consent jurisdictions that is not a grey area. The tool won't manage this for you — there's no built-in consent prompt or meeting-aware pause. You need your own policy, and "I forgot it was running" is not a defence.
- •Search quality depends on your local model: Recall is only as good as the transcription and embedding models you run locally, and local models still trail hosted frontier models on messy audio and dense screenshots. Expect to re-query and to occasionally miss something that a cloud-processed competitor would have found.
- •No polished mobile or cross-device story: This is a desktop tool. There is no meaningful phone capture, and syncing a searchable memory across two machines is something you assemble rather than switch on. Limitless, built around a wearable, covers away-from-desk capture that Screenpipe structurally cannot.
- •Young project, moving fast, thin support: Releases move quickly, interfaces change, and when something breaks you are the support tier. That's an acceptable trade for developers and a bad one for anyone who needs their memory system to be boring and dependable. Keep an eye on releases before upgrading a working setup.
Screenpipe Pricing 2026
Open source (self-run)
- •Continuous screen and audio capture
- •Searchable activity history
- •Fully local processing
- •MCP server for Claude and Cursor
- •Timeline view and plugins
Developers and power users who want total recall without a cloud
Your real cost: hardware
- •Tens of GB per month of capture
- •Local transcription CPU/GPU load
- •Noticeable battery impact on laptops
- •Retention policy is your job
Budgeting honestly — the software is free, the resources aren't
Hosted alternatives
- •Rewind, Limitless and similar
- •Much easier setup
- •Cloud processing and sync
- •Vendor holds your recordings
Non-technical users who'll trade privacy for convenience
Screenpipe itself is free and open source. The comparison column reflects typical hosted-recall subscription pricing in 2026 — check each vendor for current numbers.
Screenpipe vs Rewind vs Limitless
| Feature | Screenpipe | Rewind | Limitless |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fully local processing | ✅ Yes, by design | ⚠️ Local capture, cloud AI features | ❌ Cloud-backed |
| Open source | ✅ Yes | ❌ Proprietary | ❌ Proprietary |
| Price | ✅ Free | ❌ Subscription | ❌ Subscription + device |
| Setup difficulty | ❌ Technical | ✅ Consumer-grade | ✅ Consumer-grade |
| MCP / agent integration | ✅ Native MCP server | ⚠️ Limited | ⚠️ Limited |
| Away-from-desk capture | ❌ Desktop only | ⚠️ Desktop + some mobile | ✅ Wearable |
| Search quality | ⚠️ Depends on local model | ✅ Strong | ✅ Strong |
| Extensibility / plugins | ✅ Hackable, plugin ecosystem | ❌ Closed | ❌ Closed |
| Disk footprint control | ⚠️ Manual retention policy | ✅ Managed | ✅ Managed |
| Support | ❌ Community only | ✅ Vendor support | ✅ Vendor support |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Screenpipe safe to run on a work machine?
Technically it's the safest option in the category — capture and processing happen locally, the code is open source so the no-upload claim is auditable, and you can block network egress at the firewall and confirm it still works. The risk isn't exfiltration, it's what accumulates on the disk: a continuous, searchable record of every credential, customer record, and private conversation that crossed your screen. If that laptop is lost or seized, so is all of it. Use full-disk encryption, set a short retention window, and check your employer's policy before recording work systems.
Is Screenpipe really free?
The software is — it's open source with no subscription, no per-seat fee, and no usage meter, which is a meaningful contrast with hosted recall tools charging roughly $20–30/month. The cost you actually pay is hardware: continuous capture plus local transcription and indexing consumes tens of gigabytes per month and real CPU or GPU time, with visible battery impact on a laptop. Budget disk space and accept some performance overhead, and the ongoing cash cost is genuinely zero.
How does Screenpipe compare to Rewind?
Rewind is the polished consumer product: easy install, strong search, vendor support, and a subscription. Screenpipe is the open, local, free alternative that asks more of you — configuration, model choices, disk management, and GitHub issues instead of a support inbox. Pick Rewind if you want it to just work and you're comfortable with the vendor's trust model. Pick Screenpipe if the privacy properties are the point, if you want to query your own history from Claude or Cursor over MCP, or if you plan to build custom workflows on top of the capture stream.
Can Screenpipe record meetings and calls?
Yes — it captures microphone audio continuously, so meetings land in the searchable history alongside whatever was on screen. That's exactly where you need to be careful. Recording a call captures other people, and in two-party-consent jurisdictions that requires their agreement. Screenpipe has no meeting-aware pause or consent prompt; the policy is entirely yours to enforce. If you use it this way, tell participants, and pause capture for conversations you shouldn't be keeping.
Does Screenpipe work with Claude or Cursor?
Yes, via a native MCP server — that's one of its genuinely differentiated features. Your coding agent can query your own screen and audio history directly, so questions like "what was the error I hit on this file last Tuesday" or "what did the client actually say about the invoice flow" get answered inside the editor rather than by scrolling a separate timeline app. Recall quality still depends on the local transcription and embedding models you've configured.
What is Screenpipe best used for?
Developers and researchers who want total recall of their own work and are willing to run infrastructure to get it privately. Strong use cases: reconstructing what you did last week for a standup or invoice, finding content in apps that don't export it (Figma comments, vanished Zoom chats, native desktop clients), recovering material deleted at the source, and building personal AI workflows on the capture stream via plugins. It's a poor fit for non-technical users, for anyone needing away-from-desk capture, or for anyone who needs their memory system to be boring and dependable.
Compare AI Memory Tools
See how Screenpipe stacks up against Rewind, Limitless, Mem, and the rest of the personal-AI recall category.
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