The best D&D session recap tools in 2026

Archivist has the widest reach in the category. Sessions come in through its own Discord bot, an audio upload, an in-person recording, pasted notes or transcripts, play-by-post history, and a Foundry VTT module on paid plans. What comes out is a recap with adjustable tone and length, a wiki of characters, items, locations and factions, a timeline, a quest log, and a chat over the campaign that also answers inside Discord and Foundry.

Pricing counts sessions: $10 a month for 1 campaign and 4 sessions, $20 for 3 and 10, $35 for 5 and 20, and $60 for 10 and 40, with extra sessions at $2. The trial is 30 days with no card, covering 1 campaign and 2 sessions. Its FAQ lists campaign export as an Obsidian vault, markdown files, or HTML, plus transcript downloads, and states that audio is deleted after transcription and never used for training.

If you want one tool for a Discord or Foundry table and the campaign limit suits you, this is the benchmark the rest are measured against.

Recap Raven is a Discord bot with an unusual split: a player-safe recap posted in the channel, and private feedback and analytics for the GM on paid plans. It records through its own bot, or imports a Craig recording or a transcript. Transcripts come labelled by speaker, even on the free plan.

The free plan is real and recurring: 5 sessions in your first 30 days, then 2 every 30 days, up to 3 hours each. Premium starts at $8.99 a month for 5 sessions of up to 6 hours, and Premium + Memory, from $13.99, adds a searchable campaign memory with NPC, quest and open-hook tracking. Its bot announces the recording in text and with a voice cue, which is the most careful consent behaviour we found, and its privacy page says raw audio is deleted within minutes of transcription.

Crit Scribbler lives entirely in Discord and has the most generous free tier of the bots: 4 sessions a month with recaps, funny quotes, comprehensive notes, and transcript downloads. Paid plans add character images and DM notes, at $10 a month for 16 sessions, $15 for the World Builder tier, and $42 for unlimited sessions.

It is lighter than the others by design. We found no wiki or entity tracking on its site, and no input other than the bot. Its privacy policy says transcripts are used to create summaries and to improve the service, and it carries no explicit promise about model training, so read it if that matters to your table.

Bardkeeper is a Discord bot that sells sessions in packs instead of a monthly plan. The first 2 sessions are free with no card. After that, during its open beta discount, one session is $1.99 and a pack of 4 is $5.99, listed at $3.99 and $11.99 without the discount.

You get transcripts in a dashboard, narrative summaries with shareable links, and notes on NPCs, factions, locations and quests with relationship mapping. It says session data is never used for training and audio is deleted immediately after processing. We found no export described on its site, and no documented way to upload a file you recorded elsewhere.

SessionKeeper is built around recording in its own apps on iOS, Android and the web, which makes it a natural fit for in-person tables. A Discord bot is included from the Hero plan up, and audio upload works on any plan. It has the lowest monthly price here: $3.99 for summaries on 1 active campaign.

The campaign wiki starts at the $9.99 Hero plan with 2 active campaigns, and the $24.99 Legendary plan adds a party-wide assistant and a podcast-style analysis of each session. Speaker identification uses a voiceprint with opt-in consent. We found no free tier and no export listed on its site.

Loreify is the simplest to budget for. $15 a month, or $120 a year, covers unlimited sessions, and a $7 Casual plan covers up to 2 sessions a month with every feature included. All plans start with a 7 day trial.

Audio comes in by upload, by recording in the app, or through Discord commands. Notes are sorted into NPCs, quests, loot, lore and combat, with an interactive lore map of how they relate and a chat over the result. Its pricing FAQ says you can still view and export your notes after cancelling, without naming a format.

GM Assistant does not record anything. Its own FAQ tells you to use your phone, Craig, or OBS and upload the file, up to 4 GB and 10 hours. That honesty carries through the pricing, which is by the hour of audio with no subscription required: $1.20 an hour for a brief write-up or $2.00 for a comprehensive one, with credits that never expire. Subscriptions start at $9 a month, and the first session is free.

It returns a recap, a scene outline, memorable moments, and the NPCs, locations and items that came up. Speaker labels appear when you upload multi-track audio such as a Craig recording. Export is the best on this list: notes as markdown, HTML, YAML or a Homebrewery document, and transcripts as plain text, SRT, VTT or JSON. For a table that plays irregularly, it is hard to beat.

DM Scribe takes a file upload in almost any audio or video format, records in the browser, or records in its phone apps, with sessions up to 8 hours. It has no Discord bot and says so, pointing Discord tables at Craig's merged single-track download instead.

The free plan gives 2.5 transcription hours every month plus 3 bonus hours at signup. $7.99 a month buys 10 hours and $14.99 buys 30, with extra hours at $0.99. You get a timestamped transcript, a recap, a self-building wiki, and a question box that cites its sources, with export to plain text and markdown.

Two things to know. Its FAQ states there is no speaker diarization, so the transcript does not say who spoke. And its privacy policy says audio, transcripts and wiki entries stay until you delete them. It does not train its own models on your content, and makes no promise on behalf of its model provider.

Scrybe Quill's signature is a narrated audio or video recap, with a chosen narrator voice and music, made to play at the start of the next session. You upload a recording of up to 1.5 GB and also get four written recap variants, a session outline, iconic quotes, a shareable page, and a self-updating wiki.

There is no subscription. One recap is free on signup, then $20 buys 5 and $40 buys 12. Recordings are deleted immediately after transcription and its policy rules out training on your data in capital letters. We found no download formats listed beyond the share page and the narrated recap.

Saga20 records in its mobile app or takes one MP3 or M4A file per session, up to 400 MB and seven hours. Summaries come with voice recognition and speaker labels, and feed an auto-updating wiki with shareable campaign pages, character sheets, and interactive maps. Its Discord bot posts summaries and does not record.

One session summary is free. Plans are $12.99 a month for 6 sessions, $19.99 for 12 with campaign chat, and $39.99 for 24. Uploaded audio is deleted immediately after processing and nothing is used for training. We found no export described on its site.

This is ours, so here are the limits first. RollSummary takes a file upload and nothing else: no Discord bot, no phone app that records, and no Foundry module. Archivist, Recap Raven, and SessionKeeper all beat us on ways in.

What you get for an uploaded audio or video file is a transcript with speaker labels and timestamps, a structured recap, and a wiki note for every person, place, and quest, linked to each other with backlinks and a local graph. The difference we care about is the review step: every proposed note is a draft until you approve, edit, or reject it, so the tool never quietly rewrites your canon. It detects the language your table speaks, across more than 30, and writes in it.

Plans count hours of audio, not sessions or campaigns: $10 a month for 6 hours, $25 for 20, and $49 for 40, with unlimited campaigns, notes, and players on every one. The first session is free with no card. Export is an Obsidian vault zip with frontmatter and wiki-links, on every plan and for every player.

Threadfall transcribes live, in the browser, while you play, with speaker labels, and adds GM prep tools on its higher tiers. It is free for 2 trial recaps, then $10 a month for 3 recaps.

Bardlog offers free recording and transcription with no session cap, labelled by speaker and timestamped, for Discord and Foundry tables, and charges only for optional summaries through small prepaid packs. In November 2026 it was in open beta with a waitlist.

Kazkar is a Discord bot with speaker identification, a narrative chronicle, and a lore graph. Its site shows only a free plan with 10 hours of recording and no published paid price.