There is no pay-as-you-go plan for tl;dv that we could find. Its self-serve pricing is a per-seat subscription, with a free tier that gives you AI notes on only your first 10 meetings, ever. If you hold a few calls a month, a tldv pricing pay as you go comparison comes down to one question: is a fixed monthly seat fee worth it for the meetings you actually have?
This post covers what tl;dv charges, how the free tier runs out, what each meeting really costs at low volume, and what to use if you want to pay only when you record.
Does tl;dv offer pay as you go? The short answer
No self-serve pay-as-you-go or credit option appears on tl;dv's published plans. You choose Free, Pro or Business, and the paid ones are billed per seat, per month or per year.
The one place usage-based pricing shows up is Enterprise. flowtools lists tl;dv Enterprise as custom-priced, with options such as privately hosted AI, SSO, SCIM and usage-based pricing tailored for organizations. That is a sales conversation, not a checkout page, and it is aimed at companies rather than a freelancer with three clients.
We also found no published pause or refund policy in the pricing sources we reviewed. If you plan to subscribe for one project and stop afterward, ask tl;dv support or read their terms before you pay for a full year.
tl;dv pricing: Free, Pro and Business
tl;dv has three self-serve tiers. Pro is $18 per seat per month billed annually or $29 billed monthly. Business is $29 annually or $39 monthly, according to Scribbl's pricing breakdown.
| Plan | Annual billing (per seat/month) | Monthly billing (per seat/month) |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 |
| Pro | $18 | $29 |
| Business | $29 | $39 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom |
Prices are also listed in euros (€18/€29 for Pro, €29/€39 for Business). tl;dv's own pricing page lists annual commitments of 216 EUR for Pro and 348 EUR for Business per seat, which matches the annual rates above multiplied by twelve.
Two things stand out:
- The annual discount is large. On Pro, annual billing is about 38% cheaper per month than monthly billing. But it means paying $216 up front for a year, which is a hard sell if your meetings come in bursts.
- Billing is per seat. If you are a consultant who also wants an assistant or a junior colleague to access notes, each person adds to the bill.
MeetingCompare's analysis asks whether the Business plan is worth roughly three times the cost of the entry-level options. That is a fair question for teams. For an occasional user, the more basic question is whether any paid seat makes sense.
The 10-meeting catch on the free plan
The free plan's 10 AI meetings do not renew each month. They are a lifetime allowance for the account.
Many people assume otherwise, then find their notes cut short. According to Scribbl, the Free tier limits automatic AI notes to your first 10 meetings for the life of the account. After that, notes only cover the first 10 minutes of each meeting.
Other free-tier limits from the same source:
- 10 lifetime Ask AI queries and 5 uploads.
- A maximum recording length of 3 hours per call.
- Recordings kept for up to 3 months.
- Recordings move to archived storage after 3 days, and unarchiving can take up to 1.5 hours before you can play the video.
That last point matters in practice. If a client asks you on Thursday about something said on Monday's call, you may be waiting on an archive restore before you can replay it.
The free plan is a decent trial. It is not a plan you can live on for a year of occasional calls. If you want the broader picture of what stays free across tools, our post on AI meeting notes without a subscription covers it.
What each meeting really costs at low volume
A flat seat fee is cheap per meeting only if you have many meetings. At two to four calls a month, the cost per meeting is high.
The numbers below are simple division of the published Pro prices by the number of meetings you record in a month.
| Meetings per month | Pro monthly ($29) | Pro annual ($18/month) |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | $14.50 | $9.00 |
| 4 | $7.25 | $4.50 |
| 8 | $3.63 | $2.25 |
| 16 | $1.81 | $1.13 |
Read this table against your own calendar, not an average user's. A few examples:
- A freelancer with four client calls a month pays $7.25 per call on monthly billing. The annual price brings it to $4.50, but you are locked in for $216.
- A consultant with two or three calls a week (about 8 to 12 a month) lands between roughly $2.50 and $3.60 per call on monthly billing. That can be worth it if the notes save you real writing time.
- A project-based team that records heavily for six weeks and then goes quiet pays for the idle months too, unless it cancels and resubscribes.
Per-meeting cost is not the only measure. If one summary saves you 30 minutes of writing, $4 is cheap. The problem is idle months, when you pay the same fee for zero meetings.
Seat subscriptions vs usage-based pricing
A seat subscription charges for access. A usage-based model charges for what you record. Which is cheaper depends on how regular your calls are.
| Seat subscription | Usage-based (prepaid minutes) | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Access for one person, every month | Minutes of audio you actually transcribe |
| Quiet month | Full price | Nothing extra |
| Busy month | Same price, often unlimited | Minutes run down faster |
| Commitment | Monthly or annual | Usually none |
| Best for | Daily or near-daily meeting hosts | Irregular, project-based or seasonal calls |
A subscription wins when you have so many meetings that the per-meeting cost drops below a dollar or two, and when you want everything unmetered. Usage-based pricing wins when your calendar is lumpy.
There is also a currency issue. A $29 monthly fee in US dollars is a bigger bite for a team paid in kyat or naira than for a team in Western Europe. Paying $2 to $5 when you need it is easier to budget than a recurring charge, especially if card payments are awkward to reconcile each month. This is our view, not something the pricing sources address, but it is a common reason our readers avoid per-seat tools.
For tools priced per hour of audio rather than per seat, see our list of pay as you go audio transcription tools.
Alternatives for occasional or multilingual meetings
If you want to avoid a monthly seat fee, there are two practical routes: a cheaper subscription, or a prepaid-minute tool.
Other subscription tools
Competitors are also subscription-based, with different price points. MeetingCompare notes that Fireflies Business starts at $19 per month and Fathom Business at $25 per month for automated CRM workflows. Those can be cheaper than tl;dv Business, but they share the same basic structure: you pay monthly whether or not you meet. Our comparisons of Fathom alternatives and Fireflies alternatives without a bot go through the options.
Prepaid minutes
This is the closest thing to the pay-as-you-go model tl;dv does not offer. You buy a block of minutes, use them as meetings happen, and nothing recurs.
Language coverage
Price is only half of it. If your meetings switch between Burmese and English, or you work in Thai, Vietnamese, Yoruba or Hausa, check language support before you pay for anything. Our guide to multilingual meeting transcription explains what to test, and our tl;dv alternatives roundup covers bot-free and private options.
How to decide in four steps
- Count your meetings for the last three months. Use your calendar, not your memory. Include only calls you would actually want notes from.
- Note the gaps. If you have weeks or months with no calls, a fixed seat fee will waste money in those periods.
- Divide. Take the Pro price (monthly or annual) and divide by your average monthly meetings. Compare that number with what a prepaid-minute tool would charge for the same audio.
- Test your languages. Record a real meeting, with your usual accents and any language switching, and check the transcript before committing to anything.
If the answer from step 3 is under about $2 per meeting and you use the notes every time, a subscription is fine. If it is $5 or more, look at usage-based options.
Where Loka Note fits
Loka Note has no plan tiers, and every account gets the full feature set. You can pay as you go with one-time minute top-ups, or pay $19.99 a month for Unlimited.
Top-ups are:
| Minutes | Price |
|---|---|
| 60 | $1.99 |
| 360 | $4.99 |
| 780 | $9.99 |
| 1,500 | $19.99 |
| 3,000 | $39.99 |
Top-up minutes are valid for 6 months from purchase, with no recurring commitment. As an example, if you hold four 45-minute calls a month, the 360-minute pack ($4.99) covers eight such calls, which works out to about $0.62 per call. If your calls run longer or you upload recordings, the numbers change, so check your own minutes. If you record more than about 25 hours a month, the Unlimited plan costs less than buying the 1,500-minute pack each month.
Loka Note records in the browser with no bot joining the call, or you can upload audio and video files. It produces a transcript, summary, decisions and action items, and "Ask Loka" lets you ask questions across all your past meetings. It is built Burmese-first, including mixed Burmese-English speech, and also supports English, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Yoruba and Hausa. Recordings are kept for 6 months and you can delete them at any time. Security details are on our security page.
It is not a drop-in replacement for every tl;dv feature, so test it on a real meeting first.
Try it with a real call: create a Loka Note account
Frequently asked questions
Does tl;dv have a pay-as-you-go plan?
Not that we could find for regular users. The public pricing lists a Free tier, Pro and Business as per-seat subscriptions, billed monthly or annually. The only usage-based mention we found is under custom-priced Enterprise.
Can you buy credits for tl;dv instead of a monthly subscription?
We found no published credit or top-up option on the self-serve plans. If you want prepaid minutes that you spend only when you have a meeting, you will need a different tool or an Enterprise conversation with tl;dv.
What happens when you exceed the 10 free AI meetings on tl;dv?
The 10 free AI meetings are a lifetime allowance for the account, not a monthly one. After that, automatic AI notes only cover the first 10 minutes of each meeting unless you upgrade to a paid plan.
Is tl;dv Pro worth it if I only have 2 or 3 meetings a week?
At 8 meetings a month, Pro costs about $3.63 per meeting on the $29 monthly price, or about $2.25 on the $18 annual price. That can be reasonable if you use the notes every time. With fewer than 4 calls a month, the per-meeting cost climbs quickly.
Does tl;dv offer refund or pause options between projects?
We found no published pause option in the pricing sources we reviewed. Monthly billing is the closest thing to flexibility, but it costs more per seat than the annual price. Check tl;dv's terms or ask their support before committing to an annual plan.