Arcade vs Riverside

Arcade is an interactive demo and product video platform from Arcade Software, founded in early 2021 by former Atlassian colleagues Caroline Clark and Rich Manalang. Its seed round was led by Upfront Ventures with Sequoia and Bond. The original job is simple: record clicks in your product with a browser extension and turn them into a clickable, embeddable walkthrough that prospects can try on a website, blog or social post before signing up.

Today Arcade sells two product lines. Interactive demos add branching, hotspots, AI voiceovers, AI translations, lead forms, CTAs, MP4 and GIF export and engagement insights. AI video builds editable launch videos, changelogs, tutorials and talking-head clips from your product and brand, and can be requested from Claude or ChatGPT through the Arcade MCP. Demo plans run Free, Growth (per seat) and Enterprise; AI video has a separate Free and credit-based Pro plan.

Arcade suits product marketers, sales engineers and growth teams at product-led SaaS companies who want demos live in hours. It is not an in-app onboarding tool like Userflow or Stonly, and async screen recording for internal updates is cheaper in Loom. Custom domains, SSO and the native Salesforce integration sit on Enterprise only.

Buying tip: demo subscriptions do not include AI video credits, and monthly credits do not roll over. Arcade says more than 37,000 teams use it, with logos such as Atlassian, Zapier, Retool and Carta, so check which product line you actually need before buying both.

Riverside is a remote recording studio founded in Tel Aviv in 2019 by brothers Nadav and Gideon Keyson. It records each participant's audio and video locally on their own device, in up to 4K video and uncompressed audio, and uploads the files progressively during the session, so internet hiccups do not ruin the final tracks the way they do in Zoom recordings.

Guests join from a browser or mobile app without creating an account. After recording, Riverside provides separate tracks per person, transcription in more than 100 languages, a text-based editor that cuts video by editing the transcript, Magic Audio and noise removal, and Magic Clips that turn long episodes into vertical social clips. Producers can run sessions with a producer mode, teleprompter and live streaming to YouTube, LinkedIn, X and other platforms, and the company has added webinars and AI tools for show notes and summaries. The free plan includes limited recording hours with a watermark; Pro, Grow and Webinar add monthly hours, 4K recording, AI features, live streaming and webinar tools; Business adds team management, SSO and support.

Riverside is the default choice for video podcasters, content marketers and media teams interviewing remote guests. Monthly hour limits, large file sizes and an editor that is less powerful than Descript are the main drawbacks. SquadCast, now part of Descript, and Zencastr are the closest recording rivals, while Zoom and Google Meet are enough for internal meetings that do not need production quality.