Should you build your own Arcade?
Build an interactive product story from captured screens and hotspots
The core loop is buildable, but a dependable replacement becomes a real weekend or multi-day project. For Arcade, build an interactive product story from captured screens and hotspots. The hard boundary is capture polish, hosted playback, analytics, personalization, and collaboration, plus capture polish, hosting, and collaboration.
ENOriginal research content in English. Original prompt preserved in English.
Build a personal replacement for Arcade in an empty repository.
Use Tauri 2, React, TypeScript, ffmpeg, and SQLite; do not offer alternative stacks.
The core loop is: capture a screen or window with microphone audio, trim the result, annotate key moments with hotspots into an interactive product story, and export a shareable local video.
Make the first run work locally with one documented command.
Store all user data locally by default and make export straightforward.
Put secrets in .env, ship .env.example, and never commit credentials.
Offer screen, window, or region capture plus optional microphone audio.
Show an always-visible recording timer and make stop available from the tray.
Create a non-destructive trim view with crop, zoom, cursor highlight, and text callouts.
Render locally through ffmpeg with sensible H.264 and WebM presets.
Generate a poster frame, transcript, and Markdown summary beside each video.
Provide copy-file-path and reveal-in-folder actions instead of mandatory cloud upload.
Include clear empty, loading, success, and recoverable error states.
Add input validation, safe filenames, and graceful handling of unavailable APIs.
Write focused tests for the core transformation and one end-to-end happy path.
Create a README with setup, architecture, permissions, data location, and backup steps.
Do not add accounts, billing, telemetry, analytics, or a hosted control plane.
Deliberately leave out public cloud hosting.
Deliberately leave out viewer identity and engagement analytics.
Deliberately leave out enterprise workspaces and SSO.
Finish by running the tests and listing the exact commands used.The prompt opens pre-filled in your agent. Review it before running. · this prompt is generated from the build plan · improve it via PR
What would building your own look like?
Capture a screen or window with microphone audio, trim the result, annotate key moments with hotspots into an interactive product story, and export a shareable local video.
What you will need
- macOS or Windows screen-recording permission
- microphone permission
- ffmpeg
- local disk space
People still pay for Arcade because the recording itself is easy; the subscription removes upload, transcoding, sharing, organization, and support work. The recurring cost buys OS permissions, codecs, rendering performance, uploads, storage, links, and viewer analytics, not just the visible interface.
xcapture polish, hosted playback, analytics, personalization, and collaboration
xinstant hosted sharing
xviewer analytics
xteam libraries
xcross-device capture
How much does Arcade cost?
- Monthly billing
- $50/mo$50/mo · per person
- Per year
- $600/yr$600/yr
- Annual billing
- $510/yr15% cheaper than paying monthly
- On a Brazilian card, with 3.5% IOF
- R$261/moR$2,665/yr
Saved to My list. You will see a notice on this site when the price changes.
You complete the purchase on Arcade’s site. Vibe Radar does not handle payments.
| Plan | Monthly | Annual (per month) | What is included |
|---|---|---|---|
| free | $0/workspace | $0/workspace | 1 user; 1 published interactive demo plus 1 video; unlimited views; 200 AI credits/month |
| growth | $50/user≈ $50 | $42.50/user≈ $42.50 | Up to 10 users; unlimited demos and videos; 800 AI credits/month; 1 brand kit |
| enterprise | custom | - | Custom users, demos, security and support; up to 10 brand kits and 100,000 AI credits/year |
Free tier1 user, 1 published interactive demo, 1 published video, unlimited views and 200 AI credits/month
Billing termsmonthly + annual; paid creators are seat-based
Additional costsVideos and generated visuals consume credits, roughly 50 credits per 30 seconds of video or per generated visual, while each additional creator requires a paid seat.
verified 2026-10-20 · source ↗
Is it cheaper to build or buy Arcade?
Adjust the numbers: hours to build, your hourly rate, running costs and the subscription price.
Over 24 months, subscribing is cheaper.
Starting hours estimated from the analysis (one sitting). Does not price what you give up (support, integrations, security).
Can I rebuild Arcade?
Kinda. The core of Arcade is buildable in a weekend with the prompt on this page, but there are real gaps: capture polish, hosted playback, analytics, personalization, and collaboration, instant hosted sharing. Read the honest list above before committing.
How much does Arcade cost?
Arcade costs about $50/mo (Growth, checked 10/20/2026), which is $510 per year.
What do I lose by replacing Arcade?
Honestly: capture polish, hosted playback, analytics, personalization, and collaboration; instant hosted sharing; viewer analytics; team libraries; cross-device capture. If any of those are load-bearing for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to Arcade?
Yes: Cap (Open-source screen recording and sharing product with modern desktop architecture.). Using prior art is also vibecoding; the prompt is for when you want it exactly your way.