What is screenpipe?
screenpipe was relicensed in June 2026: code from then on is under the Screenpipe Commercial License, which allows personal, non-commercial, educational and research use and seven days of evaluation at a company, while earlier versions remain under MIT. The repository has also moved from mediar-ai to its own screenpipe organisation, and the company, Negentropy Labs, is in Y Combinator's S26 batch.
The desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux captures your screen when something changes (an app switch, a click, a pause in typing), pairing each screenshot with the accessibility tree and falling back to OCR. It also transcribes system audio and microphone with Whisper Large-V3-Turbo on the device, or Deepgram in the cloud. Everything goes into a local SQLite full-text index you can search in a timeline, through a REST API on localhost:3030, or from Claude, Cursor and other clients through an MCP server.
Pipes are scheduled agents written as markdown files that read your history and act on it, for example a meeting summary, a daily recap or a standup update, with per-pipe rules on which apps, windows and times an agent may see.
How much does screenpipe cost?
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Limited history and scheduled workflows |
| Basic | $21/month | $250/year billed annually; full history, unlimited workflows |
| Business | $42/seat/month | $500/seat/year billed annually; device sync, seat management |
| Enterprise | Custom | Shared team context, SSO, MDM, commercial licence |
Free plan at $0 with limited history; Basic $21/month or $250/year; Business $42/seat/month or $500/seat/year; Enterprise custom, and required for any commercial use of source builds.
Is screenpipe worth it?
screenpipe does what Rewind and Microsoft Recall do on three operating systems with code you can read, and the capture engine shows two years of work: it records on events rather than on a timer, reads the accessibility tree before resorting to OCR, and keeps its estimate to 5 to 20% CPU and 0.5 to 3 GB of RAM. For an agent, the useful part is the MCP server and the REST API on port 3030, which turn what you saw and heard into context a model can search by app, window, URL and time.
The licence is the first thing a company has to deal with. Since June 2026 the whole repository is under the Screenpipe Commercial License. Personal, non-commercial, educational and research use are free, and any organisation can evaluate it for seven days; after that, any business use of source builds needs a paid Enterprise plan, and the licence says Free, Basic and Business subscriptions do not grant that right. Official builds follow separate terms that allow up to four individual licences at one company before a Team or Enterprise plan is required. Versions published before the change stay under MIT and can still be forked, but a fork of that code gets none of the work done since.
Privacy is a matter of configuration, not a default. Frames, audio and the index stay on the device, but the desktop app sends product analytics to PostHog with a stable installation identifier, and crash reports to Sentry, until you switch analytics off in Settings. Cloud transcription, cloud AI and sync send audio and context out when enabled. The pipe permission system is the stronger idea here: allow and deny lists for apps and windows, time ranges and a raw-SQL switch, enforced outside the prompt so an agent cannot talk its way past them.
For a team rollout the README is candid that storage use varies too much to quote and should be measured on a representative day, that Linux capture depends on the distribution and desktop, and that employee agreement on retention and access should come before deployment. A SOC 2 Type 2 report is available under NDA. Against Granola or Otter, which only record meetings, screenpipe captures the whole working day, which is both the reason to use it and the reason legal teams will want to read the configuration first.
Where it earns its place
A freelance consultant who works across a dozen client apps a day
Ask Claude what was said in yesterday's calls and what was on screen during a task
Install the desktop app, then claude mcp add screenpipe -- npx -y screenpipe-mcp@latest; Claude can search screen text and transcripts by time and app. Basic at $21 a month keeps full history; personal use of source builds is free.
An operations director at a 200-person company looking for work to automate
Map which repetitive workflows staff actually do without weeks of interviews
Deploy through MDM on the Enterprise plan, which the licence requires for commercial use, with admin-set app and window filters employees can tighten but not loosen. Pricing is quoted per deployment; agree retention and access with staff first.
A developer building an internal standup bot
Generate a daily update from what they actually worked on
Write a pipe.md with a schedule, an allow-apps list limited to the IDE, browser and Linear, and a prompt; screenpipe runs a coding agent against the local API and posts the summary.
Before you commit
- Setup
- Download the desktop app for macOS, Windows or Linux (AppImage), or run npx screenpipe record then npx screenpipe setup, which installs the skills and MCP configuration into detected agents. 8 GB of system RAM recommended; macOS needs screen and audio recording permissions.
- Integrations
- MCP server for Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Continue, OpenCode and Gemini CLI; REST API on localhost:3030 with search and raw SQL; JavaScript SDK; Obsidian and Notion; Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible server for local AI; Deepgram for cloud transcription.
- Data and privacy
- Frames, audio, transcripts and index stored locally, with optional encryption at rest and end-to-end encrypted sync. PostHog analytics and Sentry crash reports are on by default and can be switched off. SOC 2 Type 2 report under NDA. Source code is under the Screenpipe Commercial License; versions before June 2026 are MIT.
- Cost at scale
- Business is $42 a seat a month, so a 25-person team pays $1,050 a month, but Business does not cover commercial use of source builds or shared context across teammates; that needs Enterprise, priced per deployment and not published.
- Limits
- Storage grows with displays, audio and retention and is not estimated in the docs; Linux behaviour varies by desktop; the main branch is described as moving fast and breaking things, so production builds should pin a release.
What’s good
- Event-driven capture with accessibility text before OCR
- MCP server, REST API and SDK over a local SQLite index
- Per-pipe app, window and time permissions enforced outside the prompt
- Local Whisper transcription with speaker identification
What’s not
- Relicensed in June 2026; commercial use needs an Enterprise plan
- PostHog analytics and Sentry on by default
- Storage use unpredictable; measure before rollout
- Records everything on screen, which needs a workplace policy
Best for
Individuals who want an AI-searchable record of their own computer use, and companies prepared to buy an Enterprise licence to map workflows across staff.
screenpipe alternatives
screenpipe: common questions
- Is screenpipe worth it?
- A capable local record of everything you see and hear that agents can query, but the June 2026 relicence means businesses now need an Enterprise deal to run it from source. We rate it 3.7 out of 5.
- How much does screenpipe cost?
- Free plan at $0 with limited history; Basic $21/month or $250/year; Business $42/seat/month or $500/seat/year; Enterprise custom, and required for any commercial use of source builds.
- What are the downsides of screenpipe?
- Relicensed in June 2026; commercial use needs an Enterprise plan; postHog analytics and Sentry on by default; storage use unpredictable; measure before rollout; records everything on screen, which needs a workplace policy.
- Who is screenpipe best for?
- Individuals who want an AI-searchable record of their own computer use, and companies prepared to buy an Enterprise licence to map workflows across staff.
- How much does screenpipe cost for a team or in production?
- Business is $42 a seat a month, so a 25-person team pays $1,050 a month, but Business does not cover commercial use of source builds or shared context across teammates; that needs Enterprise, priced per deployment and not published.
- Is screenpipe safe for company data?
- Frames, audio, transcripts and index stored locally, with optional encryption at rest and end-to-end encrypted sync. PostHog analytics and Sentry crash reports are on by default and can be switched off. SOC 2 Type 2 report under NDA. Source code is under the Screenpipe Commercial License; versions before June 2026 are MIT.
- What are the best screenpipe alternatives?
- The closest alternatives we have reviewed are claude-mem and deja-vu.
Answers checked Nov 5, 2026.