tl;dv alternatives in 2026: video, seats and data location

Short answer first: tl;dv records video as well as a transcript, keeps its data mainly in EU data centres, and charges 29 US dollars a seat a month or 18 on yearly billing as its pricing page renders it, while the structured data in the page's code says euro. Its free plan keeps recordings for three months and writes full AI notes for ten meetings in all. If you want no video of colleagues, Tactiq keeps only text taken from the call's captions; if you want more free time, MeetGeek gives three hours a month; and Notibo deletes the audio once the notes are saved.

All prices, limits and language counts here were taken from each vendor's own website and help centre on 30 September 2026. Where two pages of one vendor contradict each other, both are quoted and the page is named. A number that no vendor page states is written "not published".

What does tl;dv record, and how long does it keep it?

tl;dv, short for "too long, didn't view", records online meetings as video with a transcript and AI notes. It is made by Tldx Solutions GmbH in Aachen, Germany, and its homepage says it is designed for sales, customer success and internal meetings. With auto-recording on, its bot joins every scheduled meeting as a participant, and tl;dv's help article on why it uses a bot argues that this keeps the recording under the inviter's control.

• Video comes from the bot. The free plan on the pricing page lists unlimited video recordings, and the same page caps each recording at three hours on every plan.
• The desktop recorder is audio only. The article on recording without a bot says the desktop app, on Mac or Windows, records your microphone and the computer's sound on any platform, and keeps no video, screen sharing or chat.
• Free recordings are deleted after three months. The free plan limits say you are notified four weeks before deletion and can download the recordings only within those four weeks, even after upgrading to Pro.
• Free video is archived after three days. The same article says the transcript and notes stay open, while unarchiving the video to watch it can take up to an hour and a half.

The same article on recording without a bot warns that, depending on the platform, recording notices may not appear automatically, and that informing participants is your responsibility. That holds for every tool in this article that works without a bot. The rules on consent differ by country and workplace; the meeting notes comparison has a section on permission to record.

For a sales team, a video library of calls is the point: a clip of a customer's reaction to send to a colleague, a demo to replay. For a researcher, a project group or the board of an association, video of colleagues is often more than anyone asked for, and on the free plan it is gone after three months anyway.

What does a tl;dv seat cost, and what does the free plan allow?

Each plan on tl;dv's pricing page is priced per seat and month, with up to 40 per cent off for yearly billing. The free plan has no time limit, but its AI allowances are counted over the life of the account, which matters more than the headline "unlimited recordings".

• Pro is 29 US dollars a seat a month, or 18 on yearly billing. It adds unlimited AI notes, custom note templates, unlimited uploads and storage, and multi-language support.
• Business is 39 US dollars a seat a month, or 29 on yearly billing. It adds advanced transcription, custom vocabulary, insights across many meetings and team management.
• Enterprise is priced on request. It adds single sign-on, an organisation admin role and privately hosted AI.
• Free limits never reset. The free plan limits give full AI notes for the first ten meetings, then notes for only the first ten minutes of each, plus ten AI prompts, five uploads and four clips, and no overlapping meetings.

The currency needs a second look. Opened in a browser in Denmark, the pricing page shows the amounts with a dollar sign, and the price feed the page loads names the currency as US dollars whether it is fetched from the United States or from Denmark. The free plan article, too, puts Pro at "just $18 a month". The structured data in the page's code, the part search engines read, labels the same amounts as euro from both countries, with Pro at 216 a year and Business at 348 a year per seat. Check the currency at checkout.

Which languages does tl;dv list, and where does the data live?

tl;dv's homepage says it transcribes 30+ languages and names 24 of them. The fuller list is in the help centre's article on changing the transcript language: 42 entries, which make 32 languages once the six kinds of Arabic, four of English and two each of Portuguese and Spanish are merged. Danish, Bulgarian, Hindi, Indonesian, Polish, Turkish and Ukrainian are on it; Vietnamese, Finnish and Swahili are not. The article adds that tl;dv's premium transcription model detects even more languages, without listing them, and the languages page says notes and reports are supported in over 30 languages, naming only a few.

Meetings that switch language are handled by that premium model. A help article on the Whisper model, dated June 2025, says it detects the language and copes with several in one meeting, and places it on Business and Enterprise; the pricing page today lists multi-language support from Pro.

On data, tl;dv's privacy policy is specific.

• Data centres in Germany and Finland. The privacy policy, published 9 September 2026, says data is processed and stored mainly in the European Economic Area, and names Google Cloud and Wasabi data centres in Germany and Hetzner data centres in Germany and Finland.
• The AI step is your choice of region. The same policy says summaries may come from Anthropic models through Google Cloud Vertex AI, and that parts of transcripts are processed in the EU or the US, depending on the AI hosting location set in your preferences.
• No training on customer content. The policy says tl;dv does not use recordings, transcripts or notes to train AI models, and neither may its AI providers. The security page repeats that no customer data trains the AI.

The policy also lists AssemblyAI and ElevenLabs as transcription providers. tl;dv's trust centre places both in Europe, for paying customers, and lists Anthropic in the US, with an EU-hosted option for customers who need EU data residency.

When should you look past tl;dv?

tl;dv fits a sales or customer team that wants a searchable video library of calls. The situations below point elsewhere, and each maps onto a column of the table that follows.

You would rather not keep video of colleagues

Video of an internal meeting keeps faces and reactions that nobody needs in order to act on the decisions. If the purpose is a record of what was said and agreed, a tool that keeps only text, or deletes the audio once the notes exist, holds less about the people in the room.

You record a few meetings a month

A seat costs the same whether you record two meetings a month or forty, and the free plan's ten full AI notes are counted over the life of the account, not per month. Someone who records occasionally is better served by a free allowance that renews each month.

Your language is not on the list

If your meetings are in Vietnamese, Finnish or Swahili, tl;dv's list does not name them, and whether the premium model detects them is not stated. A meeting that moves between two languages needs that model too. The language comparison counts the lists of the main note takers side by side.

How do tl;dv and the alternatives compare?

Language counts in the table are entries on each vendor's own list, which say what is supported, not how well.

How does Tactiq take notes without a bot?

Tactiq, at tactiq.io, is a browser extension for Chrome and Edge, made in Sydney, that turns a meeting's live captions into a transcript. Nothing joins the call, and its homepage says no audio is recorded, which keeps it light but ties the extension to what the meeting platform provides.

• The extension reads the platform's captions. Tactiq's Zoom help article says it captures live captions to build the transcript, that the host must have Zoom's automated captions switched on, and that the extension works when you join from Chrome or Edge.
• A Mac app listens instead. Help articles from August 2026 describe a Mac app, labelled beta, that captures the computer's audio to transcribe calls in the Zoom and Teams desktop apps. The Teams article for the extension names Chrome, Edge and the Teams web app, and still says the Teams desktop application is not supported.
• No audio is kept, by the homepage. The FAQ on Tactiq's homepage says it does not record or store meeting audio; the transcript is written live and saved as text.
• Free gives 10 transcripts a month. The pricing page lists 10 transcripts and 5 AI credits a month free, though its FAQ says transcription carries on past the limit while the AI features pause. Pro is 12 US dollars a month, or 8 billed yearly, Team 20 or 16.67 for up to 20 users, and Business 40 or 29.17.

Tactiq's pages give more than one language figure. The homepage says 60+, while the help centre's language article says more than 30 and lists them per platform: 63 entries for Google Meet, 41 for Teams and 32 for Zoom. Danish is on the Teams and Zoom lists but not the Meet one. It transcribes one language at a time.

On data, Tactiq's privacy policy says data is stored in Google Cloud and that some service providers store data outside Australia, including in the United States. Its trust centre lists Google Cloud in the United States as the host of its whole infrastructure, and its privacy centre says meeting data is not used to train large language models.

Tactiq's notification article says the extension posts a message in the meeting chat when it starts transcribing, always on the free plan, while paid plans can switch it off. With or without that message, telling the meeting falls to the person running the extension.

Is MeetGeek a closer match?

MeetGeek, at meetgeek.ai, is closest to tl;dv in shape: a bot that records Zoom, Meet and Teams, plus a Chrome extension and desktop recorder that work without it, where telling the meeting is again up to you. Its limits are set in hours and months rather than in lifetime allowances, which suits someone who records a few meetings each month.

• Free gives three hours a month. The pricing page lists 3 hours of transcription a month, transcripts kept 3 months, audio kept 1 month and 2 hours per recording, with bot and bot-free recording.
• Pro is 15.99 US dollars a month, or 9.99 billed yearly. It gives 20 hours a month, keeps transcripts a year and audio six months, and charges 0.50 US dollars for each extra hour.
• Video is a Business feature. Business is 27 US dollars a month, or 17 yearly, with unlimited transcription, HD video kept 12 months and 3 hours per recording. Free and Pro keep no video.
• The language list has 142 entries. The pricing page claims 100+ languages, and the language settings article lists 142 entries, which make 75 languages once regional variants are merged, 22 kinds of Spanish, 18 of Arabic and 16 of English among them; summaries cover all but Norwegian and Persian.

MeetGeek's pages disagree on one point: the pricing page lists automatic language detection on the free plan, while the language article says it is available to paid users. On data, the privacy policy, updated 1 August 2026, says MeetGeek runs on AWS and that account information and video are stored in Ireland, while the FAQ on the pricing page speaks of EU and US data hosting without saying who gets which. Its data privacy page says customer data does not train its models unless you ask.

How do Fathom and Fireflies handle video and storage?

Fathom records video through its bot, and its bot-free capture, a beta for Macs and English-language meetings, can be set to audio only or transcript only, with telling the meeting left to you. Its free plan keeps recordings until you delete them, the opposite of tl;dv's three months, and its trust centre says all data is stored in the United States. Premium is 20 US dollars a month on the pricing page. The Fathom comparison covers its summary limits.

Fireflies keeps video on paid plans, though its pricing page lists video recording on the Pro card while the FAQ on the same page puts it on Business. The free plan gets 400 minutes of storage in total, and the privacy policy places data on servers in the United States and other countries. The Fireflies comparison covers its seats and calendar bot.

Which should you pick?

The two questions that decide this are whether anyone will ever watch the video, and where the data may be stored.

If you need the video

• If replaying the call matters, as in sales demos or customer research, tl;dv's bot keeps video, and paying for Pro keeps it past three months. Fathom keeps free recordings until you delete them, and MeetGeek keeps video only from Business up.
• If the video must be stored in the EU, tl;dv's privacy policy names data centres in Germany and Finland and lets you choose the AI region, and MeetGeek's privacy policy puts video in Ireland.

If text is enough

• If you only need what was said, Tactiq's extension keeps text from the captions and, by its homepage, stores no audio, as long as your meetings run in a browser with captions on. Its trust centre puts its hosting in the United States.
• If you record a few meetings a month, MeetGeek's three free hours renew monthly, where tl;dv's ten full AI notes do not.
• If the meeting happens in a room or in a language outside tl;dv's list, look for a tool that records a microphone and lists your language, and check its list before you pay.

Whichever way you lean, run one real meeting through the tool before paying for a year.

Where Notibo fits

Notibo is not a meeting bot, records no video and has no team library, calendar connection or CRM sync. If you want a video archive of calls or a bot that records meetings you are not in, tl;dv or one of the others is the right tool. Notibo is for a record in text of a meeting you take part in: from your own computer with nothing joining the call, around a table in a room, or in a language other tools leave out.

It runs in the browser on a computer, with nothing to install. For an online meeting you use Chrome or Edge, pick the tab with the Teams, Zoom or Google Meet call and switch on tab audio; your microphone is recorded along with it. On Windows you can share the whole system sound instead, which also covers a desktop meeting app, while on a Mac only a browser tab gives sound. Safari and Firefox record the microphone only. For a room, the computer's microphone is enough, and so is a phone. There Notibo opens in the browser or from the home screen, with no app store involved, and it has to stay in front for the length of the recording.

The result is a transcript in the language spoken, from 78 languages, or 89 entries when regional variants are counted, plus notes with a summary, the main points and the action items. Nothing is translated. Speakers are separated only where Notibo can tell the voices apart, so a meeting with several people should not depend on it. A recording can run for up to two hours, and the notes can be corrected and exported as PDF or Word.

The audio is deleted from storage as soon as the transcript and notes are saved, or after one day if processing fails, so nobody can play the meeting back, and no video is ever kept. Files are stored in the EU, on Supabase in Frankfurt; transcription and the AI notes run on US processors under standard contractual clauses, and the processors are named in the privacy policy. Notibo trains nothing on your meetings.

Pro is free for 14 days with no card, and after that the account keeps 30 minutes a month for free. Pro costs 9.99 euro a month or 88.99 euro a year, one price per person, with no seats. Because no bot appears in the call, tell the others you are recording before you start.