The best free webcam software for Windows 10

Best for capturing online calls, webinars, and streaming videos

G2 rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars, 41 positive reviews out of 44

The best thing about Movavi Screen Recorder isn’t its flexibility or extensive file format support. It’s that the learning curve is virtually flat: this is an app you can install and use without having to work out what button does what. It can capture your webcam, your display, or both simultaneously; you can schedule recordings in advance; you can annotate as you record, and there’s a useful audio-only recording option too. The free version is fully functional so you can put it through its paces without having to spend any money, and it can record both Full HD and 4K video.

OS: Windows, macOS X

Formats: MP4, AVI, MOV, MKV, GIF, MP3, PNG, BMP, JPG

Price: Free / $64.95

Features:

• Webcam and display capture
• Record scheduling
• Audio-only option
• Full HD and 4K

Pros:

• Very flexible
• Very fast and easy to use
• User friendly
• Excellent file format support, including HD
• Free version is fully featured

Cons:

• Free version has watermark

Best for Logitech webcam owners

Logitech Capture is available for both Windows and Mac, and it’s designed to work specifically with Logitech’s own webcams. There are lots of useful features here, including multi-source recording – not just desktop or window plus webcam, but two webcams if you have them – and vertical video capture for when you’re making movies to be seen on mobile phones. It enables you to livestream and to add live text overlays, and you can customise your settings and save up to six different camera profiles if you like to have a different look for different kinds of video. It’s very capable, although it’s the kind of app you’ll want to spend some time learning to appreciate what it can do.

OS: Windows, macOS X

Formats: MP4

Price: Free

Features:

• Multiple sources
• Vertical mode for phone viewing
• Multiple camera profiles

Pros:

• Very capable
• Portrait recording
• Multi-source recording

Cons:

• Doesn’t work on M1 Macs
• Overkill for some

Best for special effects and family fun

CNet rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Many webcam recorders can make videos, but can they make you look good too? YouCam can. Its Live Makeup feature can make subtle enhancements to your skin tone to make sure that every side is your good side. The app also has lots of special effects and filters, which make it a good option for messing around with the family, but it’s also a serious tool that you can use for business. There’s a dedicated presentation mode that helps you turn slideshows into something more visually interesting and a good collection of video enhancement features to help you get the best from your recordings. There’s a 30-day free trial so you can put the app through its paces and see quite a lot of pop-up messages urging you to buy the whole thing.

OS: Windows 7 or later

Formats: WMV, AVI, MP4

Price: $34.99

Features:

• Live makeup
• Presentation mode
• Good filters

Pros:

• Lots of fun
• Business-friendly options
• Lots of effects

Cons:

• Trial version really wants to sell you the app

Best for quick webcam recording

TrustPilot rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars

Webcam recording doesn’t get much simpler than this. Simply point your web browser at Screencapture.com and you can record your webcam with a single click (or three clicks if you include giving the browser permission to use your webcam and microphone). There are no editing features and no on-screen controls other than a stop-recording button; when you do that you can then download your video as an MP4 file. This isn’t a great option for Mac users, though: it doesn’t work in the Safari web browser, and while you can get around that by opening it in Google Chrome instead the downloaded MP4 file isn’t supported by the QuickTime Player on your Mac so you’ll need additional software to play it.

OS: Windows, Mac (via browser)

Formats: MP4

Supported devices: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera

Price: Free

Features:

• Not many: it’s designed to be extremely simple

Pros:

• Fast and effective

Cons:

• Very basic; webcam only
• Doesn’t work in Safari on Mac
• File format won’t open in QuickTime on Mac

Best for making learning fun

G2 rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

ManyCam is the kind of webcam application we’d turn to in education or training, thanks to the inclusion of a whiteboard that’s ideal for sketching, scribbling, and doodling. It can handle multiple simultaneous video sources and stream live to Facebook and YouTube, it enables you to use multiple layers and adjust their opacity, it can replace the background of your feed with a virtual location and there’s also chroma key support for green or blue screen effects. Not all of these features are available in the standard edition, though: if you want the virtual backgrounds, chroma key, and the ability to record in 4K, you’ll need the Studio version, which is $59 a year.

OS: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android

Formats: GIF, FLV, MKV, MOV, MP4

Price: free download; from $29 per year

Features:

• Chroma key
• YouTube and Facebook streaming
• Virtual backgrounds

Pros:

• Useful whiteboard for education/training/meetings
• Multiple video sources
• Multiple layers
• Live streaming

Cons:

• Standard version doesn’t include background blur or chroma key

Best for PC hobbyists

Snapfiles rating: 4 out of 5 stars

YawCam gets its name from Yet Another Webcam Software, and it’s a Windows webcam app written in Java. It’s a fairly simple freeware app in terms of what it does – if you’re looking for multi-camera footage with all kinds of special effects and other goodies, this is not the webcam program for you – but it has its own built-in web server, the ability to upload to FTP sites, motion detection and an online scheduler. You can also use it to make time-lapse movies. What it can’t do is output in any of the video formats you’d expect: the output options here are JPG, GIF, and PNG images, although you can stream live to the internet. That means YawCam is best suited to applications such as public webcams or security cameras rather than making video podcasts or game speed runs.

OS: Windows XP/2000 or later

Formats: GIF, JPG, PNG

Supported devices: PC only

Price: Free

Features:

• Built-in web server
• Automatic FTP upload
• Motion detection

Pros:

• It’s free
• It can stream live
• It can make time lapse

Cons:

• No video file export
• Feels very old

Best for multistreaming

You can tell that SplitCam has been around for a while: its marketing materials on splitcamera.com make great play of its compatibility with Windows 7, ICQ, and MSN Messenger. That latter service was closed in 2014. But the app itself has been in continuous development, and the most recent version at the time of writing was released in April 2021. That’s for version 10, for Windows 10; there’s also a Mac version but that’s version 0.9, which is a beta version.

The big draw here is multistreaming, which enables you to stream one video source to multiple live services or to multiple apps simultaneously without melting your computer. SplitCam also has virtual webcam features to mix your webcam with other sources such as your screen, media files, or apps, and there’s full desktop sharing too. Having multiple sources also means handling multiple audio sources too, and SplitCam’s built-in audio mixer makes that easy. It looks and feels like a premium app, but it’s freeware: the only cost is if you want it sent to you on a disc instead of downloading it.

OS: Windows 10, macOS X

Formats: MP4

Supported devices: PC, Mac

Price: Free

Features:

• Multiple streaming destinations simultaneously
• Virtual webcam
• Desktop sharing
• Audio mixing

Pros:

• It’s free
• One app, multiple livestreams
• Good audio features

Cons:

• Mac version is a beta

Best for keeping things simple

This Windows 10 camera app is Microsoft’s own image and video app, and it integrates well with OneDrive cloud storage so you can access your content from anywhere and any device. The video recording feature has a useful auto-stitch feature: you can pause and resume your recording whenever you like, and the Camera app sticks the bits together into a cohesive whole.

Microsoft’s camera app for PC is all very polished and works very well, but the Windows 10 Camera app is designed to be simple and doesn’t offer much in the way of features. We’ve also seen users complain that the file sizes can be massive: because Windows 10 Camera is designed to work with every PC, it doesn’t use some of the more efficient but processor-intensive compression you’ll find in many paid-for Windows webcam apps.

OS: Windows 10

Formats: MP4

Platforms: Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, Xbox One/X/S

Price: Free

Features:

• OneDrive integration
• Auto-stitch recordings

Pros:

• It’s really simple
• It’s really easy

Cons:

• It’s really basic
• Video files can be very large

Best for home security camera recording

TechRadar rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Debut looks a bit dated but it’s a solid and straightforward screen recorder that includes some advanced options, including scheduled recording and lots of export options. In addition to your webcam it supports multi-screen setups and it can also grab footage from IP cameras, so you can use it to tune into and record from internet-enabled security cameras too. However, while it supports multiple video sources it can only record from one source at a time. You can still record your screen and webcam simultaneously thanks to its virtual webcam, which puts you in a screen overlay as you record your PC screen.

There’s lots to like here, with lots of control over resolutions and video size, aspect ratio and frame rate, and you can also adjust the brightness and contrast to make footage more vivid. It’s worth noting that while this app is free, that’s only for non-commercial use. For commercial users, you need the $39 Pro version.

OS: Windows, macOS X

Formats: AVI, MPG, MP4, MOV

Price: Free for non-commercial use

Features:

• Scheduled recording
• Multi-camera recording
• Virtual webcam
• Image adjustments

Pros:

• Works with IP cameras and connected video sources, e.g. video recorders
• Direct upload to YouTube, Vimeo, and Flickr
• Green screen and audio-only options

Cons:

• Looks a bit old-fashioned

Best for messing around

Webcam Toy’s name is a bit of a giveaway: this is a webcam app that’s designed for having a bit of fun rather than doing anything serious – so while it enables you to add all kinds of special effects while you clown for the camera, there’s no video recording facility here. Instead, the app takes one or more still images that you can share to your socials or download as JPEGs to your computer or mobile device.

OS: Any (web browser)

Formats: JPG

Platforms: Any

Price: Free

Features:

• Live filters
• Still image capture
• Social media sharing

Pros:

• Over 80 effects
• Instant results
• Easy to use

Cons:

• Static images only

Best for arty filters

MyCam is a webcam application that enables you to apply a range of artistic filters to your video, with a library that includes filters to distort, blur, recolour and transform the footage from your webcam. We particularly like the ones that make the video look like it’s hand-drawn or painted. These filters are possible because unlike some of the apps we’ve looked at here, MyCam can take advantage of the power of your PC’s graphics card to apply its effects. It’s not the most comprehensive webcam application we’ve looked at but its filters and effects are fun. The free version is fully featured but watermarks your projects; you can get rid of the watermarks by getting the paid-for version, which isn’t very expensive.

OS: Windows

Formats: MP4, GIF

Price: Free (watermarks) / $9.99

Features:

• Real-time artistic filters
• Hardware acceleration

Pros:

• It’s cheap
• It’s fun
• Effects are very good

Cons:

• It’s quite basic

Best for big ideas

Capterra rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars

Bandicam is designed specifically for recording PC screens or webcams, and to capture games that use DirectX/OpenGL/Vulkan graphics technologies. It can record 3D games at up to 4K Ultra HD resolution, it can shoot video at up to 480fps and it can also record external connected devices such as your games console or an IP camera. It uses a very high compression ratio that makes its video files much smaller than many rivals, and it has a range of advanced features, including chroma key, scheduled recording, and narration recording.

OS: Windows

Formats: AVI, MP4

Price: $39.95

Features:

• 3D game recording
• Connects to external devices
• Chroma key
• Record scheduling

Pros:

• Great for games
• High compression makes smaller files
• Very flexible

Cons:

• A bit much for basic recording

Best for simple filters

Photo Booth Pro is very like MyCam in that it’s really a webcam application for messing around in real-time rather than a dedicated screen recorder. Video recording is a very recent addition to the app, which was previously focused on producing static images and photo strips, and it’s as straightforward as the photo effects: find a filter you like, record it and then save it or share it to your socials. It’s fun to mess around with but limited in what it can do.

OS: Windows 10 Anniversary Update

Formats: JPG

Price: Free

Features:

• Live filtering
• Social media sharing
• Static images and photo strips

Pros:

• Fun filters
• Really easy to use
• Easy sharing

Cons:

• Very basic

Best for editing while you’re online recording

TechRadar rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars

As you’d expect from a web grabber, Apowersoft Free Online Screen Recorder enables you to record all kinds of on-screen activities: demos, online calls, streaming videos, and more (but not games). But it also has an extra useful feature, which is the ability to edit your recordings in real time.

Unusually for a browser-based editor, Apowersoft has extensive file exporting options comparable to a desktop app. You can upload your recording to Google Drive, Dropbox, YouTube, or Vimeo, which covers the essentials for most people.

This is a really good option, not least because it doesn’t have time limits or watermarks, although to run it you will need to install a browser plugin.

OS: Windows, macOS X

Formats: MP4, WMV, AVI, FLV, MPEG, VOB, ASF, and GIF

Price: Free

Features:

• Real time video editing
• YouTube and Vimeo uploading
• Google Drive support

Pros:

• Can record almost anything
• Lots of output formats
• No watermarks

Cons:

• Launcher installation required
• Can’t record games

Best for Mac users on a really tight budget

Camwiz Webcam Recorder has been around for a long time, but it hasn’t been updated in six years – something that’s apparent if you open it on a Mac with a Retina display, which makes the user interface so small you can’t read any of the text labels on the controls. It works well enough and exports as MOV files at up to 1080p HD resolution, and we had no problems with either our built-in webcam or an external USB one, but there are many more modern options in the Mac App Store.

OS: macOS X 10.9 or later

Formats: MOV

Price: Free

Features:

• External camera support
• Audio-only record option
• Night vision mode

Pros:

• Simple to use

Cons:

• Very dated
• Interface is microscopic on Retina displays
• Basic

Best for keeping an eye on multiple cameras

If you use webcams for security, IP Camera Viewer enables you to monitor four of them simultaneously and supports over 2,000 different camera models from all the leading names, including stand-alone IP cameras and USB webcams. You can make per-camera adjustments to improve the picture, and if your camera supports it, you can also control pan, tilt and zoom. However, the app doesn’t support recording: for that you’ll need WebCam Monitor from the same provider, which costs £50.

OS: Windows 7 or later

Formats: n/a

Supported devices: More than 2,000 cameras

Price: Free

Features:

• Per-camera image adjustments
• Can control tilt, pan and zoom of compatible cameras
• IP camera support

Pros:

• Watch 4 cameras at once
• Useful image enhancement
• Wide range of supported cameras

Cons:

• A viewer, not a recorder