Read AI vs tl;dv

Read AI

The free tier is unusually generous on breadth — meeting coach, engagement scores, cross-tool search — and stingy on depth, with only five transcripts a month, so it works as a trial rather than a long-term free plan. Pay for Pro if you live in back-to-back calls and want the same assistant reading your inbox and Slack; stick with a cheaper transcriber if all you want is notes.

Pros

• +Covers meetings, email and messaging in one assistant with cited answers across all three
• +Native desktop and mobile apps plus a Chrome extension, not only a web dashboard
• +Public API, webhooks, Zapier, MCP connectors and CRM integrations for getting data out
• +Engagement and sentiment metrics that most transcribers do not attempt
• +SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR and HIPAA claims, with training on customer data off by default

Cons

• −Free tier caps transcripts, reports and live notes at five a month
• −Audio and video playback only from the $22.50 Enterprise tier, which needs five licences
• −No refunds, card-only billing, and every licence in a workspace must be on the same plan
• −Engagement and sentiment scoring on colleagues raises consent questions in some workplaces

tl;dv

tl;dv earns its place when the recording has to end up somewhere else, in a CRM field or a shared clip, rather than sitting in an archive nobody reads. As a pure note-taker it is unremarkable.

Pros

• +Clip-and-share is faster in practice than pointing colleagues at a timestamp
• +CRM sync is a first-class feature rather than a Zapier afterthought
• +Free tier is a real plan, not a trial
• +Desktop apps and an extension cover the three major conferencing platforms

Cons

• −Billing is euro-only, which creates FX exposure for non-EU buyers
• −The API is v1alpha1 and explicitly unstable
• −Free plan cannot retrieve meeting content through the API at all
• −The 40% annual discount is permanent marketing, so the monthly rate is the real price

Is Read AI cheaper than tl;dv?

Read AI starts at $15/seat/mo. tl;dv has a free tier; what its paid plans cost is not confirmed by us yet.

Does Read AI or tl;dv have a free tier?

Both: Read AI has a free tier, and tl;dv has a free tier.

Which has a public API, Read AI or tl;dv?

Both ship a public API, so either can be built on; the fact table above shows the platforms each one runs on.