tl;dv

What Is tl;dv?

Teams switching away from Otter.ai for GDPR reasons often land on tl;dv — and for good reason. Where Otter.ai is a San Francisco company processing data under US jurisdiction, tl;dv is operated by tldx Solutions GmbH, registered at Kaiser-Friedrich-Allee 51, 52074 Aachen, Germany. All recordings are stored in Frankfurt on AWS EU infrastructure. Audio is deleted after transcription. No customer data trains the AI models. That combination is difficult to find in the meeting intelligence market, where most leading tools are American-owned.

Founded in 2020 and backed by K Fund, Seedcamp, and Mustard Seed Maze, tl;dv has grown to over 2 million users without abandoning its European structure. The product attends your Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams calls as a bot, records and transcribes them, then delivers AI-generated summaries and action items — optionally pushing everything straight into Salesforce or HubSpot.

The name stands for "too long; didn't view," pointing directly at the problem it solves. Sales calls, customer discovery sessions, and internal standups pile up. Nobody rewatches a 45-minute recording. tl;dv condenses them to the parts that matter.

Key Features

Unlimited Recordings With Smart Gating

The free plan allows unlimited recordings and transcripts without a time limit on the account. That is a genuinely unusual offering: most competitors cap free users at minutes of transcription per month. tl;dv gates AI-generated summaries instead, limiting the free tier to 10 lifetime AI summaries. Transcripts remain fully available and searchable. Teams that can work with raw transcripts — legal, HR, researchers — get substantial value without paying anything.

CRM Sync That Removes Manual Admin

On the Pro plan ($18/user/month), tl;dv integrates natively with Salesforce and HubSpot. After every qualifying call, the bot pushes a summary, the full transcript link, and extracted highlights directly to the contact record in your CRM. Sales teams report this eliminates 20–30 minutes of post-call admin per rep per day. The integration also supports Notion, Slack, Asana, Trello, and Google Docs, covering most of the productivity stack a modern team uses.

AI Summaries and Action Items

The AI summary engine identifies key discussion points, decisions, and action items from each call. Output format varies by meeting type — sales calls get next steps and deal signals; team meetings get a decision log. Summaries arrive in your inbox or Slack channel within minutes of the call ending. The underlying model does not train on your recordings; tl;dv processes audio for transcription and deletes it.

Searchable Transcript Archive

Every transcript is stored and fully indexed. Searching for a customer name, a product feature, or a specific commitment pulls up every meeting where those words appear, with the timestamp and a 30-second clip of context. For account managers tracking a long sales cycle across 12 calls, this replaces hours of re-listening with a 10-second search.

AI Sales Coach (Business Tier)

The Business plan ($98/user/month) adds an AI Sales Coach that scores calls against custom frameworks — MEDDIC, SPICED, or criteria you define. It flags competitor mentions, objection patterns, and talk-time ratios. This is a significant jump in price from Pro, but for revenue teams investing in coaching infrastructure, the cost sits well below dedicated call intelligence platforms like Gong or Chorus.

Pricing

tl;dv operates a three-tier paid structure above the free plan. Pro at $18/user/month is the entry point for teams who need unlimited AI summaries and CRM integration. An annual subscription discounts that by 40%, bringing the effective monthly cost to around $10.80/user — genuinely competitive with Otter.ai Business ($20/user/month) while adding EU data residency.

The Business tier at $98/user/month is the significant jump. It adds AI Sales Coach, advanced admin analytics, priority support, and privately hosted AI processing — a feature relevant to enterprises with strict data handling requirements who cannot route even anonymised AI processing through shared infrastructure.

Enterprise pricing is custom, with dedicated success management, SLAs, and custom invoicing. For teams evaluating tl;dv at scale, the enterprise tier introduces SSO and the option for fully isolated AI hosting.

EU Compliance and Privacy

tl;dv is one of the cleaner compliance stories in the AI meeting tools market. The company is a German GmbH, not a US entity with a European subsidiary. Data residency in Frankfurt means your recordings never leave the EEA under standard processing. The privacy policy explicitly states that audio is deleted after transcription, removing the most sensitive data class from long-term storage.

No customer recordings are used to train tl;dv's AI models. That commitment matters for sectors handling sensitive conversations — healthcare providers recording patient intake calls, law firms capturing client consultations, or financial services teams discussing personal financial data. The Business tier's private AI hosting option extends this further, allowing enterprises to keep even the AI inference layer within their own controlled environment.

For organisations running formal GDPR impact assessments, tl;dv's German domicile eliminates the Schrems II transfer risk that applies when using US-incorporated alternatives.

Who It's Best For

If you run a sales team on Salesforce or HubSpot and need call intelligence that stays in the EEA, tl;dv Pro is the most direct answer available. If you are a researcher, journalist, or consultant who needs unlimited free transcripts without AI frills, the free plan is genuinely usable long-term. If your legal or compliance team has blocked US-hosted AI tools and you still need meeting intelligence, tl;dv's German domicile and Frankfurt hosting resolve that conflict without requiring enterprise procurement. If you need real-time collaborative transcription rather than post-call AI summaries, Otter.ai or Fireflies may suit your workflow better, though you accept US jurisdiction.

The Verdict

tl;dv earns its position as the go-to EU-native meeting intelligence tool. The free tier is more honest than most competitors — unlimited transcripts, clearly gated AI summaries — and the Pro plan's CRM integrations deliver measurable time savings. The gap between Pro and Business pricing is wide, and the 10-lifetime AI summary limit on free will catch users who read it too quickly. For GDPR-conscious teams, the Frankfurt hosting and German corporate structure close an argument that would otherwise require months of legal review.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is tl;dv GDPR compliant?

Yes. tl;dv is operated by tldx Solutions GmbH, a German company. All recordings are stored in Frankfurt on AWS EU infrastructure. Audio is deleted after transcription, and tl;dv does not train AI models on customer data.

How many free meetings does tl;dv allow?

The free plan allows unlimited recordings and transcripts. AI-generated summaries are limited to 10 lifetime uses on the free plan. Pro ($18/user/month) unlocks unlimited AI summaries.

Does tl;dv work with Microsoft Teams?

Yes. tl;dv's bot joins Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams calls automatically. No separate app is needed on each platform; the bot attends as a participant.

How does tl;dv compare to Otter.ai?

tl;dv is a German GmbH with data hosted in Frankfurt. Otter.ai is a US company subject to US jurisdiction. For GDPR compliance, tl;dv is the stronger choice. Otter.ai offers a more collaborative real-time transcription interface; tl;dv focuses on post-call AI summaries and CRM sync.

Where is my tl;dv data stored?

Recordings and transcripts are stored in Frankfurt, Germany on AWS EU infrastructure. Audio is deleted after transcription completes. No data is transferred outside the EEA under standard processing.