OBS vs ShadowPlay vs Medal [2026]: 3 Free Recorders

OBS Studio, NVIDIA’s ShadowPlay and Medal all record gameplay for $0 at the core tier, but they solve three different problems. OBS gives you scenes, plugins and full control. ShadowPlay gives you the lowest-friction capture on a GeForce card. Medal gives you a clip you can share with one link. The newest NVIDIA App build we found is beta 11.0.9.565, and OBS Studio shipped 33.0.0, followed about a week later by the 33.0.1 hotfix.

This is a narrow comparison of the replay buffer and capture workflow in those three tools. If you want a wider ranking that includes paid recorders, our best screen recorder for PC list covers nine of them by free-tier limits. Here we stay on one question: which tool should sit in the background while you play, and which one should you reach for when you also stream.

Every figure below comes from the makers’ own pages, release notes and documentation, checked on November 3, 2026. We did not run our own benchmarks, and none of the three vendors publishes a head-to-head performance test. You will not find invented frame-time charts in this article. Where a number is missing from the vendors’ pages, we say so and give the reasoning instead.

OBS vs ShadowPlay vs Medal at a glance: the short answer

Pick Medal if you want clips shared fast on any GPU, ShadowPlay if you own a GeForce card and want the lightest setup, and OBS Studio if you stream, use scenes or need control over every setting. That is the whole decision for most players. The rest of this article shows the specs behind it.

The three tools overlap more than their marketing suggests. All three can run a background recorder that keeps the last stretch of play and saves it on a hotkey. The differences show up in length limits, hardware support, audio handling, and what happens to the clip afterward.

Three questions settle most cases. Do you stream, or only record? Does your PC have a GeForce card? And do you share clips, or cut them in an editor first? A streamer on a GeForce card who edits everything lands on OBS. A non-streamer on a GeForce card who posts quick clips lands on ShadowPlay or Medal, depending on how much sharing help they want. A player on an AMD or Intel card who posts clips lands on Medal, because that is the only one of the three built for all three GPU vendors.

Notice what is missing from those questions: price. Since all three cost $0 at the core, the choice is about workflow, hardware and what happens after you save. That is also why the argument for a single winner is weak. The better framing is which tool wastes the least of your time.

One caution before the details. Medal publishes its own comparison page against ShadowPlay, and that page is written by a vendor with a stake in the result. We use it for Medal’s feature list, not for its verdicts. The NVIDIA and OBS figures come from NVIDIA’s and OBS’s own pages.

Spec comparison table: OBS Studio 33.0.1, NVIDIA App and Medal

The table below puts the three tools side by side on fourteen points. Each row uses only what the vendors’ pages state, and anything the sources do not publish is marked as such rather than guessed.

Three rows deserve comment. The “Core price” row is the reason this comparison exists, since none of the three charges to record. The “Replay buffer” row hides the real gap, because Medal and OBS let you pick the length while ShadowPlay’s ceiling is stated in a store listing rather than a spec sheet. And the “Scenes and overlays” row is where OBS stands alone.

The OBS container row follows the project’s own explanation of Hybrid MP4, introduced in OBS 30.2. Its author described it as resilient against data loss like MKV, but widely compatible like regular MP4. That matters for replay saves, because a crash mid-session should not cost you the file.

What changed in the last 90 days

OBS had the busiest quarter. The 33.0 cycle ran from a beta in late September to the 33.0.0 stable release on October 23, 2026, and the 33.0.1 hotfix landed about a week later. NVIDIA moved its App in beta, and Medal kept shipping documentation and partnership updates.

OBS Studio 33.0 and 33.0.1

OBS 33.0.0 updated the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) behind browser sources and docks from 127/6533 to 150/7871. The release notes call it a massive update, covering a gap from the July 2024 release to September 2026. The same release redesigned plugin loading, and the notes say existing third-party plugins keep loading from the legacy locations until OBS Studio 34.0.

The release also added support for newer NVIDIA Broadcast SDKs, checks for missing encoders when you load a profile, hotkeys for source audio monitoring, and experimental NVENC support for ARM64 builds. For Linux users, the official Ubuntu package now targets Ubuntu 26.04 and no longer supports Ubuntu 24.04 in that package channel.

The 33.0.1 hotfix fixed regressions in browser functionality, login-related crashes, plugin loading and other stability problems. One fix addressed a crash on startup when logged into a service integration. If you stream through Twitch or YouTube integrations, 33.0.1 is the build to run, not 33.0.0. If you currently use a fork, our OBS vs Streamlabs comparison covers what the fork adds on top of this base.

Earlier, OBS 32.2 on July 21, 2026 updated the NVIDIA SDK to version 13 and raised the minimum supported NVIDIA driver to version 570. If your GPU drivers are older than that, update them before you touch the encoder settings.

NVIDIA App beta 11.0.9.565

The latest NVIDIA App beta added native support for RTX Spark PCs and a beta DLSS Frame Generation Performance Mode. Neither is a capture feature, so it changes little for ShadowPlay recording, even though the overlay is where ShadowPlay lives.

The most relevant capture change is older. NVIDIA announced a beta update that added ShadowPlay recording at up to 4K and 240 fps on qualifying GeForce RTX 50 and 40-series systems. Reports of that update describe 1440p at 240 fps for GPUs with a single NVENC encoder and 4K at 240 fps for those with dual encoders. Treat the exact encoder split as reported, not confirmed.

We found no dated ShadowPlay change in the months leading up to November 3, 2026. NVIDIA’s pages do not mark ShadowPlay as renamed, retired or sold separately. It remains the capture feature inside the NVIDIA App.

Medal’s recent updates

Medal’s June 2026 Premium update kept the price the same and removed the 30-minute clip upload limit. In October 2026, Medal announced a Voicemod partnership, which gives Premium members 30 days of Voicemod Pro, with the reverse offer for Voicemod Pro members, subject to region and terms. Medal also documents continued background recording support for EA Sports FC 26 and FC 27 on PC.

Replay buffer compared: how each tool saves the last seconds of play

All three tools run a rolling recording and save the tail of it when you press a key. The difference is how much you configure and how long the tail can be. For anyone searching for how the OBS replay buffer stacks up against the alternatives, this is the section that answers it.

OBS needs the most setup. You enable the replay buffer in the Output settings, set a maximum replay time, optionally cap memory use, and then start the buffer before the moment you want to catch. OBS cannot recover play from before the buffer was running. Longer buffers, higher resolution and higher frame rates all increase memory use, so a long buffer at a high setting asks more of your machine than a short one.

ShadowPlay’s Instant Replay is the simplest of the three on a supported GeForce card. According to the Microsoft Store listing for the NVIDIA App, dated October 21, 2026, Instant Replay can save up to the last 20 minutes of gameplay. We treat that as a single-source figure, since NVIDIA’s download page lists Instant Replay without repeating the number.

Medal documents its range on its own pages. Press F8 and Medal saves the last 15 seconds to 10 minutes, with the length and hotkey adjustable in settings. Its background recording saves the last 30 seconds by default. For a whole match, Medal recommends a full-session recording instead of a replay save.

Memory, disk and what the buffer costs you

A rolling buffer has to live somewhere. OBS keeps the replay buffer in memory by default, which is why it offers an optional memory cap, and a long buffer at a high resolution and frame rate asks for more RAM than a short one. Neither NVIDIA nor Medal publishes a RAM figure for its buffer in the pages we checked, so we cannot give you a number. What you can do is watch your memory use for a few minutes with the buffer running, then lengthen the buffer step by step until the number stops being comfortable.

Disk behaviour differs too. When you press the save key, each tool writes the tail of the buffer to a file. A 10-minute save at a high bitrate makes a large file in one burst, so save to a drive with room to spare and not to a nearly full system disk. That advice follows from how rolling buffers work, not from any vendor figure.

The practical read: if you want the longest tail, ShadowPlay’s stated 20 minutes beats Medal’s 10 minutes. If you want to pick your own limit and know exactly where it is stored, OBS is the one. If you want it to just run, Medal and ShadowPlay both start with the game.

Capture limits and published figures: the benchmark gap

No vendor in this comparison publishes a controlled head-to-head benchmark of CPU load, GPU load or dropped frames, and the sources we checked contain none. Rather than invent a chart, this table collects the figures each vendor does publish. Three separate sources supply them: NVIDIA’s download page and announcements, Medal’s documentation, and the OBS release notes.

Medal’s documentation also states support for Windows 10 or later. We have only a single page behind that claim, so read it as Medal’s own statement. For capture ceilings, ShadowPlay publishes figures up to 4K at 240 fps on qualifying cards, while OBS is defined by whatever your hardware and encoder can sustain.

Why do the ceilings differ so much? ShadowPlay talks to NVIDIA’s own encoder blocks, and NVIDIA controls both the hardware and the software. Medal and OBS must work across several GPU families, so their documented limits are written to be safe across a range of cards. That is analysis on our part, not a vendor statement, but it explains why the NVIDIA tool has the highest published numbers and the multi-vendor tools publish fewer.

What the table does not tell you is the cost of each recorder on your machine. A hardware encoder moves most of the work off the CPU, and all three tools use hardware encoding where they can. The overhead on your particular system depends on the game, the GPU, the resolution and what else you run. If you need an exact number, record a minute of your own game with each tool and compare frame times in your own overlay. That test costs nothing and tells you more than any vendor chart.

Encoders, codecs and file formats

OBS offers the widest encoder menu, ShadowPlay uses NVIDIA’s hardware encoder only, and Medal uses whichever GPU encoder your card provides. All three can produce files that edit cleanly, but the container each one writes matters more than most players expect.

NVIDIA states that RTX 40-series GPUs record in AV1. NVIDIA reportedly limits the 4K 240 fps beta to cards with dual NVENC encoders. For anyone planning to edit the footage, our H.264 vs H.265 comparison explains the size and compatibility trade-off that applies to these captures as well.

Medal supports NVIDIA, AMD and Intel GPU encoding and saves its clips as MP4 files. That is a deliberate choice for sharing, since MP4 plays almost everywhere. OBS writes to the container you pick. Hybrid MP4, added in OBS 30.2, was built to avoid the data loss that a crash can cause in plain MP4 while staying compatible. If you record long sessions, that setting is worth knowing about. Expect to choose between MP4 and MKV on this list, and keep the editor you plan to use in mind when you do.

One more consideration for editors: the file you save is the file you cut. A clean, widely compatible MP4 from Medal drops into most editors without a conversion step. An MKV from OBS is safer against a crash, but some editors want it remuxed or converted before they open it. OBS can write Hybrid MP4 to get the crash resilience without that step, which is why the format exists.

Render settings

This table lists what each tool’s own pages publish. It is a reference for choosing a target, not a recommendation of one value.

The OBS 32.2 release notes set the NVIDIA driver floor at version 570. A stale driver is the first thing to check when NVENC options vanish from the encoder list.

Audio, scenes and overlays: where OBS pulls ahead

OBS is the only one of the three that composes a picture. If you need a webcam in the corner, a browser source for alerts, a game capture and a second scene for a break screen, OBS is the answer, because neither ShadowPlay nor Medal builds scenes.

That matters most for streamers. OBS 33.0 is built around sources, scenes and docks, and the CEF update to 150/7871 affects every browser source you use for alerts and chat. If you build your own screens, our guide to a starting soon screen in OBS walks through the scene setup that a recorder like ShadowPlay cannot replicate.

Audio works differently across the tools. OBS handles multiple tracks and, as of 33.0, has hotkeys for source audio monitoring. Medal records game, microphone and Discord audio on separate tracks, according to its October 19, 2026 comparison page. That separation is useful when you edit voice chat out of a clip. The NVIDIA pages we checked do not describe ShadowPlay’s audio track layout, so we make no claim about it.

Monitoring is worth a line of its own. The 33.0 release added hotkeys for source audio monitoring, which lets you check a source without opening the mixer. For a creator who records commentary over gameplay, that saves a trip into the menus mid-session. Neither of the other two tools offers a mixer of this kind in the pages we checked.

A common pattern is to run OBS for the stream and a lightweight replay tool for clips, but running two recorders against one GPU adds load. If you stream with OBS, the simpler path is to enable its replay buffer and drop a separate clipper. If you do not stream, the scene system adds nothing and ShadowPlay or Medal is the lighter choice.

Editing and sharing: where Medal pulls ahead

Medal treats the clip as a shareable object. Its October 19, 2026 comparison page lists a built-in editor, automatic highlights and shareable clip links. Its documentation, last updated October 27, 2026, says Premium provides unlimited cloud storage and share links that never expire. We treat that storage claim as a single statement from Medal’s own docs.

The June 2026 update was a Premium change, not a free-tier one. Medal’s own announcement states that clip upload limits moved from 30 minutes to unlimited. Its documentation for the free tier says desktop recordings can be captured, but uploading desktop screen recordings requires Premium.

OBS has no editor and no sharing layer. You save a file and open it in an editor. That is fine if your workflow already includes one. Our list of free video editing software covers six options for the cut. If you add a short branded opener to clips, the intro themes list the resolution, length and frame rate of each, and the sample intros show how they look before you commit.

ShadowPlay sits between the two. NVIDIA’s download page lists Highlights alongside Instant Replay, manual recording and screenshots, but we found no sharing or cloud layer described there. You get the file in your Videos folder, in one subfolder per game, and take it from there.

Pricing and licences: $0 at the core, Premium for Medal

Recording itself costs nothing in any of the three tools. Money enters only through Medal Premium, and the table shows where each tool’s free tier stops.

OBS presents itself as a free and open-source application, and we found no paid plan for it. ShadowPlay is described by Medal’s comparison page as free for NVIDIA GPU owners and included in the NVIDIA App. You pay for the GeForce card, not for the software.

Medal’s paid tier is the only real price. According to Medal’s announcement of its June 2026 Premium updates, Medal Premium costs $9.99 per month or $7.99 per month billed annually, and that price did not change with the June update. The announcement lists unlimited upload duration, original-quality uploads including 4K, and unlimited auto-generated subtitles. Because the price figure comes from one announcement, confirm it on Medal’s plan page before you subscribe.

What does the paid tier cost you compared with doing nothing? For a player who only saves clips locally, nothing. For someone who uploads long desktop recordings or wants unlimited cloud storage, Premium is the only way in. For a streamer, none of it matters, since OBS already handles recording at no charge.

Six real-world scenarios from the vendors’ own docs

The following cases come from the workflows the vendors document, not from our own sessions.

1. Clipping a goal in EA Sports FC 26 or FC 27. Medal’s guide tells players to install Medal, play, then press F8 right after the goal or say “clip that”. Medal saves the last 15 seconds to 10 minutes as a clip you can edit and share with one link.
2. Saving a League of Legends play. Medal’s League of Legends developer page, updated November 1, 2026, describes clips from the previous 15 seconds to 10 minutes in the documented workflow. That fits a sequence that ends before you can react.
3. Moving from ShadowPlay to Medal. Medal’s migration note says ShadowPlay saves to Videos in one subfolder per game. Medal imports MP4 files, and videos over 10 minutes come in as full session recordings. Move clips in batches if you have many.
4. High-refresh competitive play. NVIDIA’s announcement added ShadowPlay capture at up to 4K and 240 fps for qualifying RTX 50 and 40-series cards. A player on a 240 Hz monitor can capture at the display’s rate.
5. Streaming with browser alerts after the OBS 33 update. The 33.0.1 hotfix fixed a startup crash when logged into a service integration and restored browser panel behavior. A streamer who updated to 33.0.0 and saw crashes had a fix within a week.
6. Keeping old plugins through the plugin overhaul. The OBS 33.0 notes say existing plugins keep loading from legacy locations until OBS Studio 34.0. A creator with a long plugin list gets time to migrate rather than a hard break.

A seventh case belongs to Linux users. The official OBS 33 Ubuntu package targets Ubuntu 26.04, so a machine still on Ubuntu 24.04 needs another install route, not the package channel.

Which tool fits which creator: seven use-case picks

The right pick depends on what you do after you press save. These recommendations map each creator type to one tool and give the reason.

1. Competitive FPS player on a GeForce card. Choose ShadowPlay. It stays out of your way, reaches 4K at 120 fps manually and reaches 4K at 240 fps in the beta, and it costs nothing.
2. Player on an AMD or Intel GPU. Choose Medal. ShadowPlay depends on an NVIDIA card, and Medal supports NVIDIA, AMD and Intel GPU encoding.
3. Twitch or YouTube streamer. Choose OBS Studio 33.0.1. Scenes, browser sources and the service integrations live there, and its replay buffer covers clips too.
4. Creator who posts clips daily. Choose Medal. The built-in editor, automatic highlights and one-link sharing cut the time between the play and the post.
5. Long-session recorder for VODs. Choose OBS with Hybrid MP4, or Medal’s full-session mode. The former protects against crashes, and the latter keeps the same quality settings as clips.
6. Mac user. Choose OBS. It runs on macOS 13.0 or newer, while ShadowPlay needs a GeForce GPU and Windows.
7. Tutorial maker who needs voice separation. Choose Medal for separate game, mic and Discord tracks, or OBS for multi-track control.

Stream and capture work often overlap with the wider streaming category. Browse our OBS and screen recording section for the setup guides that sit around these three tools.

Pros and cons of each tool

Each tool trades something for what it gives. The lists below separate the gains and the costs, based on the sources above.

OBS Studio

• Pros: free and open source, widest control, scenes and browser sources, plugin system, Hybrid MP4 to protect long recordings, runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.
• Cons: most setup of the three, the replay buffer must be started before the moment, longer buffers use more memory, and the 33.0 plugin overhaul means plugin checks after you update.

NVIDIA ShadowPlay (NVIDIA App)

• Pros: free for GeForce owners, highest published capture ceiling, AV1 on RTX 40-series, Highlights, 4K at 240 fps in the beta on qualifying cards.
• Cons: NVIDIA GPUs only, no scene system, and the app update stream is in beta at the time of writing.

Medal

• Pros: replay buffer from 15 seconds to 10 minutes, runs on NVIDIA, AMD and Intel GPUs, separate audio tracks, built-in editor, shareable links, no upload limit on clips since the June 2026 update.
• Cons: desktop-recording uploads need Premium, the paid tier costs $9.99 a month (or $7.99 billed annually, per Medal’s announcement), and there is no scene system.

The short version of the trade: OBS costs you time, ShadowPlay costs you hardware loyalty, and Medal costs you a subscription if you want the extras.

Scorecard: where each tool is strong, middling or light

This scorecard is our reading of the sources above, expressed in plain words and not in invented scores. It summarises where each tool is strong, middling or light.

Migration guide: moving between the three tools

Switching costs are low because all three output standard video files. The steps below cover the three common moves.

From ShadowPlay to Medal

1. Install Medal and sign in.
2. Open your Videos folder. ShadowPlay saves one subfolder per game there.
3. Move clips into Medal’s import folder in batches, since Medal imports MP4 files.
4. Check any clip over 10 minutes. Medal imports those as full session recordings, not clips.
5. Set the replay length and hotkey in Medal’s settings. F8 is the default.

From Medal or ShadowPlay to OBS

1. Install OBS Studio 33.0.1 and update your NVIDIA driver to 570 or newer if you plan to use NVENC.
2. In Output settings, switch to Advanced mode and enable the replay buffer.
3. Set a maximum replay time, and cap memory if your machine is tight.
4. Assign the Save Replay Buffer hotkey.
5. Start the buffer before you play. OBS cannot recover earlier footage.
6. Choose Hybrid MP4 for the recording format if you record long sessions.

From OBS 32 to OBS 33

1. Back up your profile and scene collection.
2. Check that your plugins support OBS 33. Legacy plugin locations work until OBS Studio 34.0.
3. On Ubuntu, confirm you are on 26.04 before using the official package.
4. Install 33.0.1 rather than 33.0.0 to pick up the hotfix.
5. Open each browser source once, since the CEF update changes the engine underneath them.

Verdict: use OBS to stream, ShadowPlay to capture, Medal to share

For most players the answer is a split by job. OBS Studio 33.0.1 wins on control, scenes and platform reach. ShadowPlay wins on the published capture ceiling and ease on a GeForce card. Medal wins on GPU support and the path from play to shared link.

The numbers that decide it: ShadowPlay manual recording reaches 4K HDR at 120 fps and 8K HDR at 30 fps, and the beta reaches 4K at 240 fps on qualifying cards. Medal saves 15 seconds to 10 minutes on any of three GPU vendors. OBS sets no fixed ceiling and leaves it to your hardware. All three are free at the core.

Our recommendation, in order:

• Streamers: OBS Studio 33.0.1, with its replay buffer on.
• GeForce owners who do not stream: ShadowPlay, because it is the lightest option.
• AMD and Intel players, and clip sharers: Medal.

A caveat on recency. The NVIDIA App build we found is a beta, so features can shift before a stable release. OBS 33.0 is new, and the 33.0.1 hotfix shows that early builds had rough edges. Medal publishes no version number we could cite. Recheck the vendor pages before you commit to a workflow that depends on a specific limit.

Common questions

Is ShadowPlay still a separate product in 2026?

No. NVIDIA’s pages present ShadowPlay as the capture feature inside the NVIDIA App, with Instant Replay, manual recording, screenshots and Highlights. We found no page that marks it as retired or renamed.

What is the newest OBS Studio version?

OBS Studio 33.0.1 is the newest version we found, a hotfix that followed the 33.0.0 major release shortly after. OBS Studio 33.0.0 was the release that introduced the 33.0 changes.

How long can each replay buffer be?

Medal saves the last 15 seconds to 10 minutes, with 30 seconds as the default. OBS lets you set a maximum replay time and an optional memory cap. The Microsoft Store listing for the NVIDIA App says Instant Replay can save up to the last 20 minutes.

Is OBS better than ShadowPlay for recording games?

It depends on the job. OBS gives more control and works on any GPU vendor. ShadowPlay is simpler on a GeForce card and lists the higher capture ceiling, at 4K HDR 120 fps or 8K HDR 30 fps for manual recording.

Do I have to pay for Medal?

No for the core product. Medal’s core recording is listed at $0, with replay buffer, auto-clipping, desktop capture and sharing. Uploading desktop screen recordings requires Medal Premium.

Can I use all three at once?

You can install all three, but running several recorders against one GPU adds load and can cause conflicts over hotkeys and capture. Pick one for background replay and keep OBS for streaming.

Does OBS record AV1?

OBS depends on your encoder. NVIDIA states that RTX 40-series GPUs record AV1, so an RTX 40-series card gives you that option in tools that expose it. Check the encoder list in OBS Output settings to see what your card offers.

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