Updated September 2026. Written by Travis Hollowell, who builds Threadfall. We didn't go easy on our own entry.
The best D&D session recording tool in 2026 is Threadfall for live in-person tables, Archivist AI for the widest post-session feature set, SessionKeeper for the lowest price, Kazkar for a free Discord bot, and Craig if all you want is the raw audio. Thirteen tools are compared below in one table with the same columns for each, then the four most tables should look at first, then the rest of the field.
Looking for a service that records your D&D or RPG session, not just one that summarizes a file you upload afterward? This roundup says which is which. Threadfall is the one that records live at a physical table; if your table plays over Discord, the setup is in our Discord recording guide.
We dated every claim, linked every tool so you can check us, and let each competitor keep the thing it actually does better than we do.
| Tool | Price | How it captures | In person | Who spoke | Codex | Book | Systems | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Threadfall (ours) | From $10/month; first 2 sessions free, no card | Live, at the table or through a Discord bot | Yes, transcribed live | Yes | Yes | Yes, the campaign publishes as a book | D&D 5e, Daggerheart | Live in-person tables |
| Archivist AI | $10 to $60/month; 30-day trial | Discord bot live, or upload | Upload a phone recording | Yes | Yes | No; per-session handout PDFs | Any | Widest post-session feature set |
| SessionKeeper | $3.99 to $39.99/month | Phone app, Discord bot, or upload | Yes, recorded, processed after | Yes | Yes, on Hero plans and up | No | Any | Lowest entry price |
| Kazkar | Free, 10 recording hours | Discord bot live | No | Yes | Yes | No | Any | Free Discord bot |
| Bardlog | Free recording; AI recaps pay as you go | Discord bot live, or upload | No | Yes | Yes | No | D&D | Free transcription and clips (waitlist) |
| DM Scribe | Free 2.5 hours/month; $7.99 to $14.99/month | Browser recorder, or upload | Yes, recorded, processed after | Not stated | Yes | No; per-session printable document | Any | Web app, no Discord needed |
| DiscMeet | Free 2 recordings; $9.99 to $49.99/month | Discord bot live | No | Yes | Yes | No | Not stated | Fastest Discord recap |
| Saga20 | Free 1 summary; $12.99 to $39.99/month | Upload | Upload a phone recording | Yes | Yes | No | Any | Upload from anything |
| Tabletop Arc | Free 30 minutes/month; $9 to $19/month | Upload | Upload a file | Not stated | Yes | No | Any | Every claim traced to the transcript |
| Craig | Free 6 hours/session; extras via Patreon | Discord bot live | No | One audio track per speaker | No | No | Any | Raw multitrack audio |
| DnD Scrybe | $2.49 per 100 minutes, no subscription | Upload | Upload a file | Not stated | Yes | No | D&D | Pay by the minute |
| The DM's ARK | $6 to $15/month; 30-day trial | Discord bot live, or upload | Upload a phone recording | Yes live; tagged by hand on uploads | Yes | No | D&D | Ask-your-campaign chat |
| CharGen | Free tier; from £9.99/month | Discord bot live, or upload | Not stated | Yes | Yes | No; per-session exports | Any | Recorder inside a free toolbox |
Every cell checked on the vendor's own site on September 12, 2026. Prices are monthly unless noted. "Not stated" means the site does not say.
the live pick: recaps written at the table, campaigns published as books
Threadfall is our product, so take this entry with that in mind. It is the only tool here that transcribes an in-person table live, while you play. Open the Live screen at an in-person table, or let the Discord bot sit in your voice channel with per-speaker attribution, then fire the recap when you stand up. A couple of minutes later the table has a written chapter, built from what got said and nothing else. No more Tuesday text asking what happened last week. String sessions together and you get chapters, then a book, and you can click any name in it to pull up everything tied to that character or place. It also catches the night's best lines and turns them into quote cards your players can post anywhere, which is how most tables end up showing the tool to their friends. The narrow part: it is built for D&D 5e and Daggerheart only. If your table plays Pathfinder or Call of Cthulhu, Archivist covers you and we don't, and we have no MCP connector or ChatGPT app. First two full sessions are free, no card. After that the GM pays, from $10/month. Players never pay.
the post-session platform: biggest feature surface, Discord-first
The biggest feature set in this category, no argument: recaps from Discord captures, audio uploads, or pasted notes, a searchable compendium, a campaign chatbot, character trading cards, MCP and ChatGPT integrations. It also covers far more game systems than we do. If breadth is what you're after, that's Archivist's lane, not ours. What you're accepting is that everything happens after the session. An in-person table has to record, upload, and wait for the recap instead of having it at the table. Plans run $10 to $60 a month as of September 2026, with a 30-day trial covering 2 sessions. Longer, dated comparison: Threadfall vs Archivist.
the budget pick: mobile app plus Discord
A mobile-first recorder and summarizer with a Discord option and the lowest advertised entry price in the category (from $3.99/month as of September 2026). A reasonable fit if you want a phone on the table and a summary afterward without a full campaign platform around it; you give up the structured campaign record (codex, timelines, publishing) the platform tools maintain.
the free entry point: Discord bot with a free tier
A Discord transcription and recap bot with a free tier of 10 recording hours (as of September 2026), which makes it the cheapest way to find out whether AI recaps fit your table at all, if your group already plays on Discord. Like the other post-session tools, in-person tables are not really its lane, and the output is a summary rather than a maintained campaign record.
the DIY route
If you're already recording sessions, you can transcribe them yourself and paste chunks into a general LLM with a decent prompt. Costs almost nothing, works in a pinch. What it costs instead is your time, every single week: transcribing, chunking it up, re-prompting until the output is usable. And it forgets your campaign between sessions. No codex, no memory, and you're proofreading for things it made up. More on the trade-offs: Threadfall vs ChatGPT & Claude.
the manual standard
Free, entirely under your control, and how most tables have always done it. Works fine as long as one person keeps doing the homework every week. That's the catch: the record is only as good as your note-taker's worst month. Comparison and templates: Threadfall vs your notes app.
Nine more tools that record or recap a session, in the order they appear in the table. Each gets the same treatment: what it is, what it does best, the catch, and the price on the day we checked.
A Discord recording bot that transcribes with speaker labels, keeps a cross-linked wiki, and cuts short video clips from any stretch of the transcript. Recording and transcription are free with no session cap; the AI recaps run on a pay-as-you-go balance. The catch, as of September 12, 2026: the open beta's 50 party slots are full and new tables join a waitlist. Discord only, no in-person capture, built around D&D.
A web app that records in the browser or takes an uploaded file, then writes a recap, a wiki, and a per-session document you can print. Works for any system, with a free plan of 2.5 hours a month; paid plans are $7.99 and $14.99 a month (dmscribe.com, September 12, 2026). No Discord bot, and the site does not say whether the transcript labels who spoke.
A Discord bot that records a voice channel and posts a speaker-labeled recap to a thread within about a minute of the session ending. It tracks characters, NPCs, and locations across a campaign. Free for two one-hour recordings; paid plans run $9.99 to $49.99 a month (discmeet.com, September 12, 2026). Discord only, nothing to upload.
Upload a recording from a phone, Zoom, or a Discord bot and Saga20 writes the summary and keeps a wiki that updates itself, with voice recognition that remembers your players between sessions. Any system. Free for one summary; paid plans are $12.99 to $39.99 a month by session count (saga20.com, September 12, 2026). No live capture.
Upload only, and the recap traces every claim back to the moment in the transcript that supports it, split into GM-private notes and a player-safe version. Any system. Free for 30 minutes of audio a month; Pro is $9 and Legend $19 a month (tabletoparc.com, September 12, 2026). No live capture, and the site does not say whether it labels speakers.
Not a recap tool. Craig records a Discord voice channel as one audio track per speaker and hands you the files, which is why podcasters and editors use it. Free for up to six hours a session, kept for seven days; transcription is a Patreon supporter perk (craig.chat, September 12, 2026). No summaries, no wiki, no uploads.
Upload a recording and get a summary plus a searchable list of NPCs, places, and fights. It charges by the minute instead of a subscription: 100 minutes for $2.49, 800 for $8.99, and the credits never expire (dndscrybe.com, September 12, 2026). No live capture, D&D only, and the site does not say whether it labels speakers.
A Discord bot that transcribes live with each line tagged to the Discord user who said it, plus uploads for a phone recording from a physical table (tagged by hand). It builds a compendium and answers questions about past sessions in chat. D&D only. $6 to $15 a month with a 30-day free trial (thedmsark.com, September 12, 2026).
A free character and art generator with a session recorder attached: a Discord bot records with speaker ID, and the summarizer takes audio, transcripts, or typed notes. It exports each session to Obsidian, Foundry, and Homebrewery. Any system. Free tier with a daily credit allowance; subscriptions from £9.99 a month (char-gen.com, September 12, 2026). Recording is a side feature of a bigger toolbox.
Two questions worth asking. Where does your table actually play? In person, you want a live recorder like Threadfall. On Discord, everything on this list is an option. And what do you want at the end of the campaign? If you want your players to go back and read the thing, look at the platforms, us or Archivist, over the plain summarizers. Start with whatever free tier fits and watch whether anyone at your table opens the recap. If nobody reads it, it's not worth a dollar.
More background: what makes a good campaign session recap · how to record a D&D session on Discord · all Threadfall comparisons · read a real published chronicle
For live, in-person play, Threadfall is the only tool in this roundup that transcribes the session while it happens; the recap is one click and a couple of minutes away when you finish. SessionKeeper's phone app and DM Scribe's browser recorder can record at a physical table too, and Archivist, Saga20, and The DM's ARK take a phone recording afterward. All of those write the recap after you stop or upload.
Kazkar's free tier gives you 10 hours of Discord recording at no cost, DM Scribe's free plan covers 2.5 hours a month, and doing it yourself with ChatGPT or Claude is nearly free if you already have recordings. Among the subscriptions, SessionKeeper has the lowest entry price at $3.99 a month, DnD Scrybe charges by the minute with no subscription at all, and Threadfall's first two full sessions are free with no card.
Yes. Threadfall records the session itself, live, in person or over Discord, and writes the recap from what was said. Several Discord bots also record a voice channel live: Kazkar, DiscMeet, Bardlog, The DM's ARK, CharGen, and Archivist's bot. Saga20, Tabletop Arc, and DnD Scrybe only work from a recording you upload afterward.
Yes. Threadfall records live at a physical table from a laptop or phone. SessionKeeper's phone app and DM Scribe's browser recorder work at a table too, and Archivist, Saga20, Tabletop Arc, DnD Scrybe, and The DM's ARK take an audio file you recorded on anything. The Discord-only tools in this list are Kazkar, DiscMeet, Bardlog, and Craig.
Most of them. Archivist, SessionKeeper, Kazkar, Saga20, Tabletop Arc, DM Scribe, and CharGen all take any tabletop system, and Craig records anything said in a voice channel. Threadfall covers D&D 5e and Daggerheart only. Bardlog, DnD Scrybe, and The DM's ARK are built around D&D.
Don't take it on faith. Archivist gets credit here for its feature breadth and system support, SessionKeeper for its price, Kazkar for its free tier, Craig for the cleanest raw audio. Every claim carries a date, and every entry links out, so check us.