Best tl;dv alternatives in 2026, by why you are leaving

The best tl;dv alternative depends on why you are leaving. No bot in the call: Reline, Granola or Jamie. A free plan that keeps going: Fathom or Reline. A lower price: Otter or Reline. More languages: Jamie or Avoma. Deeper CRM and sales tools: Avoma or Fathom Business. Leaving Avoma instead? Fathom, tl;dv and Reline cover its main gaps.

tl;dv is a capable meeting recorder with a free plan that many people start on. The reasons to leave usually fall into five groups, and each one points to a different replacement:

• The bot. tl;dv joins Zoom, Google Meet and Teams calls as a bot by default. Its desktop app for Mac and Windows can record without a bot, but that mode captures audio only, with no video, screen share or chat, per tl;dv's help center.
• The free plan stops giving AI notes. Recordings and transcripts are unlimited, but automatic AI notes cover only your first 10 meetings; after that, only the first 10 minutes of each meeting get AI notes. These limits apply for the life of the account and never reset, and free recordings are deleted after 3 months.
• Price. Pro is €29 per seat a month, or €18 billed annually. Business is €39 a month, or €29 billed annually.
• Languages. tl;dv transcribes in 30+ languages, fewer than several alternatives below.
• CRM depth. Revenue teams that need call scoring, deal tracking and automatic CRM updates often outgrow it.

Prices are per seat per month, from each vendor's own pricing page on 20 October 2026. Plans change often, so check the live page before you buy.

First, check whether you need to leave at all: tl;dv's own desktop app on Mac and Windows records system audio and your microphone without a bot. If you want a tool where nothing ever joins the call, on every plan, three alternatives are built that way:

• Reline captures your microphone and the call audio locally on macOS, Windows, Linux (beta) or in the browser, then transcribes live in the cloud, keeps the recording next to the AI summary, and lets you press play on any transcript line.
• Granola records device audio with no bot on every plan, including free. Per its pricing page, audio is deleted after transcription, so there is nothing to replay later.
• Jamie is a Mac and Windows desktop app that, per its docs, needs no virtual bot in the meeting, with EU hosting on all plans.

Bot-free does not mean consent-free. A local recorder is less visible than a bot, so you stay responsible for telling people you are recording and for following the law where you and they are.

tl;dv's free plan is generous on raw transcripts and strict on AI: full AI notes for 10 meetings, ever, then the first 10 minutes of each meeting. Other free plans are built differently:

• Fathom: free forever with unlimited recordings and transcripts, per its pricing page. The best fit if you mostly want recordings at volume.
• Reline: 10 hours of transcription a month with full AI summaries and Lenses, renewing every month, and transcripts are never auto-deleted. The best fit if you want AI notes every month, not only in your first weeks.
• Otter: 300 minutes a month, but each conversation stops at 30 minutes on the free plan, which ends before many meetings do.

tl;dv Pro costs €18 per seat a month billed annually and €29 month to month; Business costs €29 and €39. Cheaper seats that record meetings:

• Otter Pro: $8.33 a month billed annually, $16.99 monthly, per Otter's pricing page.
• Reline Professional: $12 a month billed annually, $15 monthly, with unlimited recording, transcription and storage.
• Granola Business: $14 a month.
• Fathom Premium: $16 billed annually, $20 monthly; Team is $15 and $19, with a 2-user minimum.

Compare like for like: tl;dv lists prices in euros, most others in US dollars, and storage, history and AI limits differ by plan.

tl;dv lists 30+ transcription languages. Jamie lists 99+ languages for notes and transcripts on all plans, Avoma lists 70+ for transcription and translation, and Reline transcribes 60+ languages with automatic language detection. Otter's pricing page lists six: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese. If your calls switch languages mid-meeting, test with a real recording before you commit.

If tl;dv is too light for a revenue team, move up, not sideways. Avoma syncs with Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, Pipedrive and Copper, includes a meeting scheduler, and sells Conversation Intelligence and Revenue Intelligence as add-ons. Fathom Business ($25 billed annually, $34 monthly) updates CRM fields automatically after meetings. Otter Pro lists Salesforce and HubSpot integrations, subject to user limits.

Reline is not the pick here. It integrates with Slack, Linear and Notion and offers an MCP server for AI assistants, but it has no CRM sync.

Reline is a notes app first: bot-free local capture, a live transcript that separates your voice from the other side of the call (Me vs Other), AI summaries next to the kept recording, reusable Lenses, a Notion-style editor your team writes in together, and chat across notes, folders and workspaces. Transcription, AI and storage run in the cloud; only the capture happens on your device.

What it does not do: it records audio, not video; there is no mobile app; there is no CRM sync; and the Linux app is in beta. If those matter to you, Fathom, tl;dv or Avoma will serve you better.

Stay if you want video recordings and clips, unlimited free transcripts and can live with 3-month retention, or a European vendor: tl;dv says it is SOC 2 Type II and GDPR compliant, keeps its data centers in Europe and lets you choose whether its AI runs in Europe or the US. Its free plan even includes 20 integration credits that can run HubSpot, Salesforce and Salesloft workflows.

People leave Avoma for different reasons. There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial of the Organization plan, after which you can view but not record. A recorder seat costs $19 to $39 a month billed annually, and Conversation Intelligence and Revenue Intelligence are separate add-ons at $29 a seat each, billed annually. Its Assistant joins calls as a bot unless you use Zoom cloud recording, which needs a paid Zoom plan.

• A sales team that needs CRM automation for less: Fathom Business, $25 a seat billed annually, with CRM field sync.
• A free plan with lighter sales tooling: tl;dv, with free recordings and CRM workflow credits.
• No bot on any platform and a shared notes workspace: Reline, free to start.

One thing Avoma does well: viewers and listeners are free on every plan, so you only pay for the people who record.

1. Download what you want to keep first. tl;dv's free plan deletes recordings after 3 months and warns you 4 weeks before.
2. Pick your reason for leaving from the sections above and trial only the tools that solve it.
3. Run the new tool next to the old one for a week of real meetings.
4. Tell participants how you record, especially once no bot announces itself.
5. Cancel the old seats once the new workflow sticks.