What you get for free, and what Scribe asks for
Scribe's free Basic plan lets you capture guides in web apps and share them by link or embed. Its pricing page lists PDF, HTML and Markdown export and screenshot redaction under Pro Personal, which was listed at $35 a month, or $25 a month billed yearly, when we checked on 28 September 2026.
Showsteps has no plans. You install it, press Record, click through the task and export in any format it supports. Nothing is locked, watermarked or capped, and the source is on GitHub under the MIT licence.
Side by side
| Feature | Showsteps | Mimik | Scribe | Tango |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where your guides live | In your browser and in files you save. No network requests after install. | On your device. Its README notes site icons come from Google's favicon service, and optional AI features call the provider you set up. | Scribe's servers. Its docs describe blurring before capture so blurred data never reaches them. | Tango's cloud, hosted on AWS. No on-premises option. |
| PDF, HTML and Markdown export | Free. Also DOCX. | Free. Also DOCX, MP4 and GIF. | Not on the free Basic plan. Included in Pro. | Not on the free plan. Included in Pro. |
| Blur or redact screenshots | Free. Password fields and card numbers, tax IDs, IBANs and keys on the page are masked as you record; draw your own blur or crop. | Free. Smart Blur for emails, phone numbers, SSNs, cards, IP and MAC addresses, plus a manual picker. | Not on Basic. Editing and redacting screenshots is a Pro feature. | Not on the free plan. Annotation and blurring are in Pro. |
| Free plan limits | None. No account, no watermark. | None listed. No account. | Basic: web apps only, no unlimited guides. | Free: 5 shared workflows. |
| Paid price | $0. Optional support. | $0. MIT licensed. | Pro Personal listed at $35 a month, or $25 a month billed yearly. | Pro listed at $26 per user a month, or $22 billed yearly, for 1 to 2 users. |
| Replayable script or skill for an agent | Yes: SKILL.md, steps.json and a Playwright replay.spec.ts, plus a CLI and MCP server. | No CLI, MCP or Playwright export mentioned. Has a live walkthrough inside the extension. | Not listed on its pricing page. | Not listed on its pricing page. Automations are an Enterprise feature. |
| Desktop app capture | No. Chrome tabs only. | No. Browser workflows; also on Firefox and Edge. | Yes, on paid plans. | Yes, on Pro. |
| Team comments, viewer insights, SSO | No. It is a personal tool that produces files. | None mentioned. | Yes, on higher tiers. | Yes, on higher tiers. |
| Share by link | No hosted links. Send the file, or host the HTML anywhere. | None mentioned. Exports files. | Yes. | Yes. |
Details come from each vendor's own pricing, security and documentation pages, and from Mimik's README, as they were on . Plans and prices change; check their sites before deciding. Mimik is a free, MIT-licensed extension with video and GIF export and Firefox and Edge support that Showsteps does not have; see the full comparison. Scribe, Tango and Mimik are trademarks of their owners, and Showsteps is not affiliated with any of them.
Other free, open-source options: Mimik
Showsteps is not the only free one. Mimik is an MIT-licensed browser extension that also keeps guides on your device with no account, and it is further along than we are in some ways. Here is what its README said on 28 September 2026, next to what we do.
| Aspect | Showsteps | Mimik |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | MIT | MIT |
| Where guides live | Your browser. No network requests after install. | Your device. Its README says site icons are fetched from Google's favicon service, and optional AI features call the provider you configure. |
| Browsers | Chrome | Chrome, Firefox, Edge |
| Exports | PDF, HTML, Markdown, DOCX, agent skill, project file | Video (MP4), GIF, PDF, DOCX, HTML, Markdown, project file |
| Redaction | Password fields and card numbers, IBANs and keys on the page masked automatically; draw your own blur or crop | Smart Blur for emails, phone numbers, SSNs, cards, IP and MAC addresses, with toggles; manual blur picker |
| Step text | Written from the page's accessible names; no key needed | Rule-based by default; optional AI descriptions with your own OpenAI or Anthropic key |
| Replay | Playwright script and SKILL.md an agent or CI job can run | Guide Me: live walkthrough inside the extension |
| CLI and MCP server for agents | Yes | None mentioned in its README |
If you need video or GIF output, narration or Firefox, use Mimik. If you want the same recording to become a Playwright test and an agent skill, or you want to script edits and exports from a terminal or an MCP client, that is what Showsteps is for.
One recording, a guide and a skill
Every Showsteps recording exports as an agent skill: a SKILL.md with numbered steps, a machine-readable steps.json, and a Playwright replay.spec.ts that prefers role, label and test-id locators. A person gets the guide; a coding agent or a CI job gets something it can run. Scribe's pricing page does not list an equivalent. Details are on the agents page.
Why local matters for a guide
The guides people write are usually about internal things: the admin console, the billing back end, the way you approve an expense. The screenshots show customer names, account numbers and URLs that are not meant for anyone outside the company. Scribe's documentation describes blurring sensitive data before a screenshot is taken so that it never reaches Scribe's servers, which is a sensible design and also tells you where the unblurred version would otherwise go.
With Showsteps the screenshot is captured by the browser, stored in your browser's IndexedDB, and only leaves when you export a file and send it yourself. There is nothing to procure: no vendor questionnaire, no data processing agreement, no account for a contractor. The privacy comparison goes into it in more detail.
Where Scribe is ahead
Scribe does things Showsteps does not, and may be the better choice if you need any of them:
- Capturing desktop and mobile apps. Showsteps records Chrome tabs only.
- Hosted share links and embeds.
- Team workspaces, comments, viewer insights and SSO.
- Enterprise-managed auto-redaction of personal and health information.
If your work happens in a browser and you mostly send guides as documents, none of that will be missed. If you need a shared, hosted library for a large support team, Scribe is built for that and Showsteps is not.
Moving over
- While you still have a paid Scribe plan, export the guides you want to keep as Markdown or PDF.
- Install Showsteps and re-record the ones that matter. A ten-step task takes about as long as doing the task.
- Use the exports as a checklist for wording, then delete the old guides from Scribe if your policy says to.
There is no importer for Scribe files. Guides you record in Showsteps use an open format (a zip with a guide.json and PNG images), so the same problem cannot happen in reverse.