How Orrel compares
Orrel vs CleanShot X: screenshots, recording and more
CleanShot X is a dedicated capture app with scrolling capture, a webcam overlay and cloud links. Orrel covers everyday screenshots, markup and recording alongside search, tidying and PDF tools. A fair comparison with sources.
CleanShot X is a well-regarded capture app for the Mac. Orrel includes screenshots, markup and screen recording too, as part of a broader set of file tools. This page compares them fairly. Facts about CleanShot X come from its own pricing and features pages, linked at the end, checked on 25 October 2026.
The short version
- Choose CleanShot X if capture is central to your work: tutorials, documentation, support. It has features Orrel lacks, including scrolling capture, a camera overlay, pinned screenshots and cloud sharing links.
- Choose Orrel if you want solid everyday screenshots, markup and recording, plus search, Desktop and Downloads tidying, PDF tools, conversion and a localhost monitor, for a one-time price.
Capture and recording
| CleanShot X | Orrel | |
|---|---|---|
| Area and window screenshots | Yes | Yes |
| Scrolling capture | Yes, vertical and horizontal | No |
| Copy text from screen | Yes, on-device | Yes, on-device |
| Markup | A wide range of tools, including blur and pixelate | Crop, arrow, rectangle, ellipse, line, text, highlighter, pixelate and blur, numbered steps |
| Pin a screenshot on screen | Yes | No |
| Screen recording with computer audio and microphone | Yes | Yes (microphone on macOS 15 or later) |
| Camera overlay | Yes | No |
| Record as GIF | Yes | Make a GIF from a recording, up to 30 seconds |
| Video editing | Video editor with smart zooms, transcription | Trim, compress, GIF |
| Cloud upload and share links | Yes, CleanShot Cloud | No |
Everything else
CleanShot X is a capture app. Orrel's capture tools sit beside features CleanShot X does not set out to offer: plain-language search across your Mac, automatic tidying of Desktop and Downloads with screenshots named after their text, Clean Up for large files and duplicates, PDF merging, compression and passwords, image, video, audio and document conversion, Markdown preview in Finder, a localhost and process monitor, and an MCP server for AI assistants.
Price
CleanShot X's pricing page lists CleanShot Basic at $35 one-time, with one year of updates and 1 GB of cloud storage, and update renewals at $19 a year after that. CleanShot Pro is $10 per user per month billed annually, with continuous updates, unlimited cloud storage and team features. The page does not say how many Macs a Basic licence covers.
Orrel is $15 for one Mac, $30 for three or $50 for five, one-time, with updates included and no account. There is a 7-day free trial with everything included.
Where Orrel falls short for capture-heavy work
If you write documentation or record tutorials every day, the missing pieces matter: no scrolling capture for long pages, no webcam bubble, no zooms or captions in recordings, and no share links. Orrel records whole windows rather than single browser tabs, as macOS does. In those cases CleanShot X is the better tool, and you might still find Orrel useful for its file features.
Sources
- CleanShot X pricing. Checked 25 October 2026.
- CleanShot X features. Checked 25 October 2026.
Questions
Does Orrel have scrolling capture?
No. Orrel captures an area or a window. CleanShot X's site lists scrolling capture, vertical and horizontal.
Does Orrel upload screenshots to a link?
No. Orrel has no cloud service. You copy, save or drag the capture into another app yourself.
Can I keep using macOS shortcuts with Orrel?
Yes. Orrel's shortcuts are Shift-Command-2, Option-Shift-Command-2, Control-Shift-Command-2 and Option-Shift-Command-5, so they do not clash with the macOS Shift-Command-3, 4 and 5. You can turn Orrel's off in its settings.