Updated September 2026. Written by the Threadfall team.
Five of the six tools below, World Anvil, Kanka, LegendKeeper, Notion, and Obsidian, are for writing it yourself: a wiki or notes app you build up by hand between sessions. Threadfall is the sixth, made by us, and it records automatically from what gets said. See what each does and doesn't do below. Every fact below is checked on the vendor's own site, on the date next to it, with a link out so you can check us back.
One question sorts this whole page: write the record yourself, or have it written for you while you play.
World Anvil is the biggest worldbuilding platform in the hobby: article templates, interactive maps you link from continent down to dungeon, timelines, family trees, and a GM screen for notes, statblocks, and dice at the table. Every word of it, including session reports, is typed in by a person; there is no recording or transcription anywhere in the product.
What it does better than Threadfall: it supports 100+ RPG systems instead of two, plugs straight into Foundry VTT, gives you a homebrew statblock and character-sheet designer, a genuinely deep hand-authored setting wiki that an automatically-built record was never meant to replace, and a 3,500,000-plus member community with publishing, monetization, and Patreon tools if you want an audience. Your world data exports too, so none of it is locked in. Skip it if you don't want to spend real hours authoring the wiki yourself; nothing here writes itself, and the free tier's 2-world, 100 MB ceiling arrives fast once you're building more than a light setting.
Free Freeman tier: 2 worlds, capped articles, 100 MB storage. Paid plans start at $4.50/month billed annually, with one-time lifetime memberships available. Checked at worldanvil.com/pricing, July 23, 2026.
Kanka is a free-first worldbuilding and campaign wiki: cross-linked entries for characters, locations, organizations, and quests, plus a built-in timeline, calendar, and relationship map. Like World Anvil, everything in it is hand-authored; there is no capture step at all.
What it does better than Threadfall: its free Kobold tier gives you unlimited entries and unlimited campaigns, forever, plus the timeline, calendar, and relationship map built into every world at no cost, so a GM can build out an entire hand-tracked setting and campaign log with real structure and zero session cap. Skip it if you want a hand-authored wiki to look polished without design effort; Kanka's presentation is plainer than World Anvil's or LegendKeeper's, and the 10-member, 3 MiB upload caps show up the moment you want to share high-res maps or invite a bigger table.
Free Kobold tier: unlimited entries and campaigns, capped at 10 campaign members, 3 MiB file uploads, and 150 MiB of gallery storage. Paid tiers start around $4.16/month billed yearly. Confirmed at kanka.io/pricing, September 8, 2026.
LegendKeeper is a worldbuilding wiki built around a fast map-and-note editor, aimed at a GM who wants their setting to look good while they write it.
What it does better than Threadfall: any number of players can read and collaborate on someone else's LegendKeeper project for free, forever, no account tier required on their end.
The catch for a GM shopping the free tier: it is view-and-collaborate only. You cannot start or edit your own project without Pro. Skip it if you're not ready to pay on day one: unlike Kanka or World Anvil, there's no way to create your own project here for free at all. Free tier: view and collaborate on projects you don't own. Pro is $9/month, or $7.50/month billed annually, and is required to create or edit a project of your own. Checked at legendkeeper.com/pricing, September 8, 2026.
Neither Notion nor Obsidian was built for D&D. GMs use them because they are free, flexible, and usually already installed, then build their own campaign database or linked vault by hand, one page and one backlink at a time.
What it does better than Threadfall: Obsidian's core app is free forever and stores plain local Markdown files you own outright, with the best backlink and graph model of any notes app on this list; Notion's databases are hard to beat for a quest board or NPC table once a GM has done the setup. Skip either one if you want campaign structure to exist before you build it: neither ships a wiki, a quest board, or a codex, you're designing the database or the vault from a blank page.
Both are free to start. Obsidian stays free for personal use; its Sync add-on is $4/month billed annually. Notion Plus is $10/month; Business, which adds AI meeting transcription and summaries (not built for a table, but the closest either app comes), is $20/month. Checked at notion.com/pricing and obsidian.md/pricing, July 23, 2026.
Threadfall is ours, so its entry sits in the box directly below, held to the same checks as the other five: dated facts, what it doesn't do, and what each of the others does better.
It captures a session live, in person or through a Discord bot, and builds the codex, quest log, and session record from what actually got said. There's no wiki page to author, no interactive map to build, and no VTT integration or combat and initiative tracker: it only covers two systems, D&D 5e and Daggerheart.
Hand-tracking your own codex, quests, and log entries is free forever, even with the AI off, and every player at the table is always free. GM plans that turn the AI on start at $10 a month, and your first two full sessions are covered by it before you have to decide.
Three different search terms, one category of tool. Check every hit against the same list above.
Searching for a "campaign tracker," a "DM notes app," or a "campaign manager" turns up the same category of tool under three different names. None of the phrasings changes what you're actually shopping for: something to hold your codex, your NPCs, your quests, and your session-to-session record. Use whichever term turns up more results for your system, and weigh every hit against the same six tools above.
Wrong page, on purpose: none of the six below run initiative or manage a combat encounter.
Everything above is a campaign and session record: NPCs, locations, quests, notes. None of them, this page's own entry included, runs initiative or manages a combat encounter. If that's what you're after, that's a separate tool category entirely (Roll20, Foundry VTT, and D&D Beyond's encounter builder are the usual names), and this roundup doesn't cover it.
Run one real session on whichever tool looks best before you commit to a year of it.
| Tool | Who writes it | What you get | Free tier ceiling |
|---|---|---|---|
| World Anvil | You, by hand | Reference wiki plus linked maps | 2 worlds, 100 MB storage |
| Kanka | You, by hand | Cross-linked wiki plus timeline and relationship map | Unlimited entries; 10 members, 3 MiB uploads |
| LegendKeeper | You, by hand | Map-first wiki | View and collaborate only; Pro required to create |
| Notion | You, by hand | A database you design | Free to start; Plus is $10/month |
| Obsidian | You, by hand | Local Markdown vault | Free forever, core app |
| Threadfall (ours) | Written for you, from what's said | Live capture, codex, quests, session record | Hand-tracking free forever; AI plans from $10/month |
Yes, several. Threadfall's hand-tracking (codex, quests, log entries, typed in yourself) is free forever, details in its entry above. Kanka's free Kobold tier gives unlimited entries and unlimited campaigns, forever. Obsidian's core app is free outright for personal use. World Anvil has a free tier too, capped at 2 worlds and 100 MB of storage.
We don't have real usage numbers for this and won't guess at one. What comes up again and again in GM forum threads, regardless of which tool a table picked, is the same complaint: the app was never the problem, remembering to update it every week was.
Yes, in different ways. Players are always free on Threadfall, same as everywhere else on this list. World Anvil and Kanka let a GM share entries with players through their own sharing settings. Notion and Obsidian both support sharing a page or a vault with the table. LegendKeeper's free tier is specifically built for a player to view and collaborate on the GM's project at no cost.
Different job. The recap roundup compares tools that record a session and write the recap for you afterward. This page compares tools for keeping the ongoing campaign record: the hand-built wikis and notes apps you fill in between sessions, and Threadfall, which builds the record from what's said while you play. A table can use one, or both.
More: the campaign tracker template · the honest recap tools roundup · how we compare to World Anvil · how we compare to manual notes · the full comparison page · all Threadfall guides