Comparison
A tl;dv alternative for people who want notes, not video
tl;dv is a video product with a transcript attached. A bot joins your call, records audio and video, and you get clips you can share with timestamps. That is genuinely useful for some teams. It is also a lot of tool, and a lot of money, if what you needed was a good record of what was said.
If you have never actually sent someone a video clip of a meeting, you are paying for the wrong product. TNN gives you the transcript, the notes and the summary, locally, for one payment.
If clips are the workflow, stay with tl;dv. TNN records no video at all and that is not on the roadmap.
Video is the whole premise, and the whole cost
tl;dv's bot joins your call and captures audio and video together, producing a synchronised transcript you can scrub through and clip from. Free covers a lot on paper, with limits of 40 recordings a week and three hours per meeting. Pro is $18 per user per month billed annually, $29 monthly. Business, which is where CRM sync, coaching and playbook tracking live, is $59 per user per month annually and $98 monthly.
Video is why the pricing looks like that. Storing and streaming recorded calls is expensive, and you are paying for it whether or not you ever open one.
So the first question is honest and slightly uncomfortable: in the last three months, how many meeting videos have you actually watched back or sent to someone? For a sales team running deal reviews, the answer is a real number. For most other people it is zero, and they are on a video plan because that is what the category sells.
| tl;dv | TNN | |
|---|---|---|
| Bot in the participant list | Yes, joins Zoom, Meet and Teams | No, captures system audio |
| Records video | Yes, video plus synced transcript | No, audio and text only |
| Where recording is processed | tl;dv's cloud | On your Mac, on the Neural Engine |
| Pricing | Free tier (40 recordings/week, 3h per meeting). Pro $18/user/mo annually ($29 monthly), Business $59 annually ($98 monthly) | One payment, $49 planned. Free during beta |
| Where notes live | tl;dv's cloud library | One Markdown file per meeting, in your folder |
| Shareable clips | Yes, a core feature | No |
| Works with no internet | No | Yes, after the model downloads once |
| Platforms | Bot-based, platform-agnostic | macOS 13+, Apple Silicon only |
tl;dv pricing and limits checked July 2026 against public pricing pages. Vendors change plans often - verify before you decide.
What TNN does instead
TNN records audio and turns it into text on your Mac. Whisper runs on the Neural Engine, so the audio never leaves the machine and there is no server involved. Each meeting becomes one plain Markdown file in a folder you choose: your live notes, the full transcript, and the AI summary together.
No bot joins, because TNN captures the audio your Mac is already playing. Nothing appears in the participant list, and it works the same on Zoom, Meet, Teams, a Slack huddle, a phone call on speaker, or a conversation in the room.
Then the part that is hard to get from a cloud video tool: because your meetings are plain files, TNN exposes them to Claude over MCP. Claude lists your meetings, reads the notes and transcripts, runs skills you have saved, and writes the result back into the meeting file, on your own Claude Pro or Max subscription. You can ask what changed in a project across two months of calls and get an answer assembled from transcripts.
tl;dv optimises for rewatching the meeting. TNN optimises for never needing to.
The privacy difference is not abstract here
A cloud tool that records video of your calls is holding a considerably more sensitive asset than one holding text. Faces, screen shares, whatever was visible in someone's browser or on someone's wall.
If your meetings include candidate interviews, compensation discussions, incidents that have not been disclosed, or clients whose NDA enumerates subprocessors, a local audio-to-text tool is a materially easier thing to defend. With TNN the answer to "where is the recording stored" is "on the laptop of the person who was in the meeting", and there is no subprocessor to add to anyone's list.
Where tl;dv is clearly the better choice
- You share clips. Timestamped video snippets sent to colleagues or customers. TNN cannot do this at all.
- You need CRM sync, coaching or playbook tracking. That is what Business tier buys and TNN has no equivalent.
- Your team is mixed-platform. A bot does not care what anyone runs. TNN needs macOS 13 or later on Apple Silicon.
- You need calls recorded without you present. A bot can attend alone. Nothing local can.
- You want a finished product. TNN is in beta.
Trying it
Download, grant the screen and microphone permissions, connect your calendar so TNN knows which meeting is starting, press record. The transcription model downloads once, about 600 MB, and after that everything works offline. Language detection is automatic.
Try it on your next meeting
Records and transcribes on your Mac. No bot in the call, no cloud, no subscription for transcription. Free while the beta runs.
Questions people ask
Does TNN record video like tl;dv?
No. TNN records audio and produces text: your notes, the transcript and an AI summary in one Markdown file. There is no video capture and no shareable video clips. If clips are central to your workflow, tl;dv is the right tool.
Is TNN cheaper than tl;dv?
tl;dv Pro is $18 per user per month billed annually and Business is $59. TNN is a single payment, $49 planned after the beta and free during it. There is no subscription for transcription because it runs on your own hardware.
Does a bot join the call with TNN?
No. TNN captures the audio playing on your Mac, so nothing joins the meeting and nothing shows up in the participant list. It works on any meeting app, and on conversations that are not in a meeting app at all.