Greenshot vs ShareX

Greenshot

• Windows users who want a free screenshot tool with a built-in editor
• Technical writers, testers and developers documenting software
• Teams that attach screenshots to Jira tickets

ShareX

• Windows users who capture, annotate and share screenshots many times a day
• People who upload captures to their own storage or a self-hosted service
• Recording short clips or GIFs for bug reports and documentation

Greenshot

• The full version is for Windows. The Mac app costs $1.99, was last updated in June 2020 and has fewer features, per its App Store listing.
• There is no Linux version, and the FAQ says none is planned.
• Capturing a complete scrolling web page is documented only for Internet Explorer.
• The OCR plug-in depends on Microsoft Office Document Imaging (MODI), an optional component of Office 2003 and 2007.

ShareX

• Windows only: the site describes it as a screenshot tool for Windows, with downloads on the website, GitHub, Microsoft Store and Steam.
• Files are uploaded to third-party services the user chooses and configures, so each destination's own terms and privacy policy apply.
• OCR can only use the recognizer languages installed in Windows.
• The docs say scrolling capture can fail or produce inaccurate results on pages with static, animated or hover-triggered elements.

Greenshot

Region, window and fullscreen capture

Captures a selected region, the active window or the whole screen with the Print key and its modifiers, and can capture the last region again.

Image editor

Opens each capture in an editor for drawing rectangles, ellipses, lines, arrows and freehand lines, adding text, cropping and enlarging the image.

Highlight and obfuscate

Highlights text or an area, turns the surroundings to grayscale or magnifies a selection, and hides sensitive details by pixelizing or blurring them.

Export destinations

Saves to a file, copies to the clipboard, prints, attaches the image to an email, sends it to Office programs or uploads it to photo sites.

Jira upload

Can be configured to upload screenshots to a Jira Server or Jira Cloud instance, and lists recently viewed tickets in the destination picker.

Mac version

A separate Mac app captures a region, window or the full screen, annotates and obscures parts of the image, and exports to a file, the clipboard or email.

ShareX

Capture methods

Captures the full screen, the active window or monitor, a drawn region, the last or a custom region, or a scrolling page, and has an auto capture mode.

Screen recording and GIFs

Records the screen as video or as an animated GIF. Bundled tools include a video converter, a video trimmer and an animated GIF trimmer.

Annotation and image editor

Region capture and the built-in editor add arrows, text, step numbers, highlights and speech balloons, and hide details with blur, pixelate or a smart eraser.

After-capture and after-upload tasks

Each capture can run a set chain of tasks: copy to the clipboard, save to a file, open in the editor, run an action, upload, then shorten or copy the resulting URL.

Uploads and custom uploaders

Uploads images, text, files, folders and URLs to a chosen destination. Custom uploaders, shared as .sxcu files, send uploads to services that are not built in.

OCR and other tools

OCR uses the engine included with Windows and runs locally. Other tools include a color picker, ruler, QR code scanner, hash checker and pin to screen.

Greenshot

• Greenshot for Windows$0

  The full Windows app, free and open source under the GNU GPL for private and commercial use.

• Greenshot for Mac$1.99

  one-time purchase (US Mac App Store)

  A separate macOS app, priced to cover the team's costs. Its listing warns that it has fewer features than the Windows version.

ShareX

• ShareX$0

  The complete app as a setup or portable download, or from the Microsoft Store or Steam. Open source under the GPL-3.0 license.