Snagit vs Snipping Tool: Battle of the Screenshot Tools

If you‘ve ever needed to capture something on your computer screen, you know how invaluable a good screenshot tool can be. Whether you‘re creating user guides, collaborating with colleagues, or just saving something for later reference, being able to quickly grab an image of your screen is hugely helpful.

Two of the most popular screen capture utilities are Snagit and the Snipping Tool. Snagit is a paid app from TechSmith loaded with advanced features, while Snipping Tool is Microsoft‘s free built-in screenshot tool for Windows. So which one is right for you? Let‘s pit them head-to-head and find out!

Platform Support: Snagit Snags the Win

First up, let‘s talk about what systems you can run these tools on. Snipping Tool comes bundled with Windows itself, so it will work on any PC running Windows Vista or later. That‘s great if you‘re a Windows user, but Mac users are out of luck.

Snagit, on the other hand, has versions available for both Windows and Mac. So if you work across different platforms or ever need to capture screens on a Mac, Snagit is the clear choice. Having used it on both operating systems, I can say the experience is nearly identical. Points to Snagit for broader compatibility.

Ease of Use: Snipping Tool for Quick Snips

Next let‘s look at ease of use. When it comes to dead-simple screenshotting, you can‘t beat the Snipping Tool. Just open the app, pick your capture mode, select the area you want to snip, and you‘re done. The interface is very basic but that makes it intuitive. Perfect for quick captures.

Getting started with Snagit involves a bit more of a learning curve. It has a ton of features and customizable settings to discover. But once you have it configured to your liking, capturing screens is a snap. You‘ll just want to spend a little time up front exploring what it can do.

I will say that Snagit feels noticeably slower on older PCs compared to the lightweight Snipping Tool. So if you have an aging machine, Snipping Tool may be the snappier option for you.

Capture Modes: Snagit Reigns Supreme

Snipping Tool keeps things simple with four capture modes:

• Rectangular snip – Select any rectangular region
• Freeform snip – Draw a freeform shape around what you want to capture
• Window snip – Capture a specific program window
• Fullscreen snip – Grab your entire screen

It also allows you to set a delay timer of 1-5 seconds if you need a moment to prepare your screen.

That covers the basics, but Snagit goes way beyond. In addition to region, window, and fullscreen captures, it can also:

• Grab vertical or horizontal scrolling areas, like a long web page
• Stitch together a panoramic capture as you pan your screen
• Capture your system‘s menu as a dropdown
• Extract text from within an image

And that‘s just for starters! Suffice to say if there‘s something on your screen you want to capture and keep, Snagit almost certainly has a way to do it. The sheer flexibility of its capture options is amazing.

Editing Features: No Contest

Once you‘ve got your screenshot, chances are you‘ll want to make some edits or annotations. Let‘s see how our contenders stack up.

Snipping Tool‘s editing is extremely basic. You can draw freehand lines, highlight areas, erase doodles, and that‘s about it. For anything more advanced you‘ll need to open the image in another app. Recent versions can kick the image over to Paint 3D for you, which helps, but is still pretty limited for common screenshot markup needs.

This is where Snagit really shines. Screenshots go straight into its full-featured editor, complete with tools perfectly suited for visual communication:

• Extensive stamp collection (arrows, icons, numbers, symbols, etc.)
• Intuitive text boxes and call-outs
• Blur and pixelate tools to mask sensitive info
• Step tools to quickly create numbered how-tos
• Crop, resize, rotate, and all the other standard editing functions

Having a dedicated editor makes it so fast and easy to polish up your screenshots without needing to rely on other software. When it comes to built-in editing and annotation, it‘s Snagit by a mile.

Image Quality: A Tie for General Use

So how about the actual screenshots produced by each app? Both output images at 96 DPI by default, perfectly adequate for typical screen capture usage. And to the naked eye, you‘d be hard pressed to see any difference in quality between them.

If you need lossless images or have strict requirements around resolution and compression (like for print publishing), Snagit does provide control over the image format and DPI, up to 600. Snipping Tool has no quality settings to tweak.

So while Snagit is more flexible, the default output is going to be just fine for probably 95% of users. No clear winner here unless you have specific high-quality needs.

Textual Powers: Snagit Reads Between the Lines

One of Snagit‘s coolest and most unique features is Grab Text. This allows you to capture and extract the actual text content from dialog boxes, error messages, articles, or anything else on your screen.

Just select the area, choose Grab Text, and Snagit OCRs the text for you to paste as fully editable plain text anywhere you want. Such a time saver versus having to manually transcribe text from an image! Unfortunately, the Snipping Tool is not capable of this wizardry.

Video Recording: Snagit Goes Beyond Still Shots

What about when a still image isn‘t enough? Sometimes showing is better than telling. For those times, Snagit has you covered with built-in video recording.

Snagit can record a feed of your screen, webcam, or both simultaneously. So you can capture a software walkthrough, give a video tutorial, or record a presentation with a picture-in-picture view of yourself presenting. You can even add audio narration on the fly.

The finished videos are easily shareable in common formats. It‘s a powerful communication tool to have integrated right alongside screenshots. The Snipping Tool is strictly limited to still image capture, so Snagit wins this round handily.

Help & Support: Snagit Helps You Help Yourself

Ideally, these apps are simple enough you‘ll never need support. But if you get stuck, it‘s good to know help is available.

As part of Windows, you can access Microsoft‘s standard support channels if you have trouble with the Snipping Tool. But let‘s be honest, wading through generic Windows help articles or sitting on hold with phone support is nobody‘s idea of fun.

In contrast, Snagit has a dedicated support team ready to assist with any issues via email or live chat on weekdays. The user guides and video tutorials are excellent and cover every feature exhaustively. And their massive public documentation library has you covered for self-serve help.

While you hopefully won‘t need it often, Snagit definitely makes it easier to get support if you need it. The win goes to Snagit.

Value: You Get What You Pay For

Finally we come to price. As a pack-in with Windows, Snipping Tool costs nothing beyond your Windows license. That‘s a hard price to beat.

Snagit runs $49.95 for a perpetual license, which covers you for the current version plus any updates. Subsequent major version upgrades are offered at a discount. This allows you to install and use the software on up to two computers.

While it‘s hard to compete with free, I believe Snagit provides excellent value for the money if you do any amount of screen capturing and editing regularly. The time it will save you in productivity is easily worth the one-time cost.

The Verdict

Snipping Tool is a perfectly capable, built-in option for basic Windows screenshot needs. If all you require is an occasional quick screen grab, it will serve you well at no additional cost. It‘s fast, simple, and outputs decent quality images.

But if you find yourself taking a lot of screenshots and spending time editing or marking them up, Snagit is the power user‘s choice, hands down. Its impressive array of capture and editing tools, handy text extraction and video capabilities, and multi-platform support make it well worth the reasonable price for anyone who relies on screenshots for work or hobby.

Of course, you don‘t have to take my word for it. If you‘re on the fence, give Snagit a test drive yourself with the free 15-day trial and see if it can level up your screenshots. Something tells me you won‘t want to go back to Snipping Tool after.

So which screenshot sidekick will you choose? Let me know in the comments. And happy snipping!