tl;dv vs Spellar AI (2026)

tl;dv

by tl;dv

Spellar AI

by Spellar LTD

Pros

• ✓EU-based with all data centers in Europe (Google Cloud, AWS, Hetzner), EU AI Act compliance, GDPR compliance, and optional privately hosted AI on Enterprise: the strongest European data-residency story in the meeting intelligence category.
• ✓Business tier at $26 per seat per month billed annually includes AI sales-coaching playbooks, MEDDIC and BANT scoring, AI objection handling, and multi-meeting insights, competing directly with Gong at a fraction of the cost.
• ✓Free tier includes unlimited video recordings, iOS and Android mobile apps, Slack and calendar integrations, and 5,000-plus tool integrations on Pro: generous feature access at entry pricing.

Limitations

• ⚠No HIPAA compliance or BAA at any tier, so healthcare teams with strict compliance requirements must look elsewhere, for example Fireflies Enterprise.
• ⚠Free tier recordings are automatically deleted after three months with no grandfathering, so teams that discover a recording's value after the 90-day window have no recovery path without upgrading.
• ⚠Bot-free recording has no native seamless option, and achieving it requires configuring Zapier workflows to pull recordings from the conferencing platform, adding setup complexity versus bot-free-native competitors like Granola.

Pros

• ✓No bot joins calls: Spellar records natively on Mac, iPhone, and iPad audio without sending a participant into the meeting, eliminating the privacy concern and awkward presence that bot-based tools like Fireflies.ai, tl;dv, and Fathom introduce
• ✓Cross-meeting memory lets users query what was said across all past recordings with cited, sourced answers linked to the exact moment in the original transcript, rather than searching through individual session notes manually
• ✓Every premium AI model is included in the base subscription: GPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity are all available without additional cost and are switchable per meeting, per template, or per individual question

Limitations

• ⚠No free tier: Spellar Pro starts at $18.99 per month (or $11.99 per month annual) with no permanent free plan, unlike Fathom and Fireflies.ai which both offer free tiers with meaningful usage limits
• ⚠No SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 certification: Spellar covers UK GDPR and CCPA compliance but has not completed third-party security audits, which limits enterprise procurement in regulated industries where Fathom and Fireflies.ai have confirmed certifications
• ⚠Mac, iPhone, iPad, and web only: no Windows client means organizations on Windows-first environments cannot standardize on Spellar, and Windows users in mixed-device teams must use the web app which lacks native OS-level audio capture