Craig Bot vs Kazkar: What's the Difference?

If you've ever searched for a way to record your D&D sessions on Discord, you've probably found Craig Bot. It's one of the oldest, most trusted recording bots in the Discord ecosystem — installed on over 347,000 servers and beloved by podcasters, actual-play creators, and TTRPG groups alike. Craig does one thing and does it well: it records your voice channel and hands you clean, per-speaker audio files.

But what if you don't just want audio files? What if you want to know what actually happened in the session — who the party talked to, what the mysterious NPC's name was, where they agreed to go next? That's where Kazkar comes in. It records your session too, but then goes further: transcribing, summarizing, and building a living lore wiki for your entire campaign.

This is an honest comparison between two tools that serve the same community but solve different problems. Craig is excellent at what it does, and we'll be upfront about that. We'll also be upfront about where Kazkar is still growing. By the end, you'll know exactly which one belongs at your table — or whether you should use both.

If you're exploring the broader landscape, check out our full list of session recording tools.

What Is Craig Bot?

Craig is a multi-track voice channel recording bot for Discord — one of the first of its kind, and still one of the best at raw audio capture. When Craig joins your voice channel, it records each speaker to a separate audio track. That means when you download your recording, you get individual files for every person in the call — invaluable for podcasters, editors, and anyone who needs clean audio.

Craig was created by Yahweasel and has grown into one of the most widely used Discord bots in the recording category. It's open-source, has an active Patreon community of over 5,000 supporters, and has been a staple of the Discord TTRPG scene for years.

Craig's Key Features

• Multi-track recording — separate audio file per speaker
• Multiple export formats — FLAC, MPEG-4 AAC, HE-AAC, Opus, Ogg Vorbis, and Audacity project export
• Up to 6 hours of continuous recording per session
• Free to use — core features available without paying
• Patreon perks — auto-recording, cloud storage integration, extended retention, 24-bit FLAC
• 7-day download window — recordings available for a week after your session (14 days for patrons)
• No speaker limit — record any number of participants
• Open-source — self-hostable if you want full control

What Craig Doesn't Do

Craig is a recording bot, not a transcription or summarization tool. It gives you audio files. It does not:

• Transcribe your session
• Generate session summaries or recaps
• Extract NPC names, locations, or plot points
• Build any kind of wiki or campaign reference
• Identify speakers by character name

If you want transcription from Craig recordings, the community has built third-party tools like TASMAS (an open-source transcriber and summarizer for per-speaker recordings) and craig-whisper (a script that uses OpenAI's Whisper model to transcribe Craig's multi-track output). These work, but they require technical setup and manual effort.

What Is Kazkar?

Kazkar is a Discord bot that records your TTRPG session, transcribes it with speaker identification, and automatically generates a campaign wiki — chronicles, NPCs, locations, factions, and all. Think of it as a dedicated scribe that sits at your table, takes perfect notes, and then organizes everything into a searchable lore book after each session.

How Kazkar Works

1. Set up — add Kazkar to your Discord server, create a campaign on the dashboard, and invite your players
2. Summon — type /summon in Discord, and Kazkar joins your voice channel
3. Play — run your session normally while Kazkar records in the background
4. Banish — type /banish to stop recording; processing starts automatically
5. Read — within minutes, get a narrative chronicle and updated wiki entries on your campaign dashboard

Kazkar's Key Features

• Discord-native recording — works where your group already plays
• Speaker identification — knows who said what throughout the session
• Session chronicles — narrative recaps of each session, not just bullet points
• Auto-generated lore wiki — NPCs, locations, factions, and items extracted and cross-referenced
• Multi-campaign support — separate campaigns per server with their own histories
• Campaign dashboard — web interface at kazkar.ai for browsing lore, managing campaigns, inviting players
• 30+ language support — play in whatever language your party speaks
• Privacy-first — audio deleted after processing; campaign members control access

What Kazkar Doesn't Do (Yet)

We'll be honest about where Kazkar is still growing:

• No mobile app — Kazkar is Discord-only, so in-person sessions aren't supported yet
• Younger product — Craig has years of community trust and battle-testing; Kazkar is newer and still adding features
• Smaller community — Craig's Patreon has over 5,000 supporters and a large Discord server; Kazkar is building its community

Feature Comparison Table

This is the heart of the comparison — every feature that matters, side by side. If you only read one section of this article, make it this one.

Where Craig Wins

Let's be clear: Craig is a fantastic tool, and there are real scenarios where it's the better choice. We're not here to pretend otherwise.

Free and Proven

Craig has been around for years and has earned the trust of hundreds of thousands of Discord servers. Its core features are completely free. You can record a 6-hour session, download per-speaker FLAC files, and never pay a cent. The Patreon tiers ($1, $4, and $8/month) add convenience features like auto-recording, cloud backups, and higher-quality formats — but the free tier is genuinely useful on its own.

Per-Speaker Audio Files

If you're producing a podcast, editing an actual-play show, or just want granular control over your audio, Craig's multi-track output is hard to beat. Getting a separate audio file for each speaker means you can independently adjust levels, remove background noise from one person's mic without affecting others, or cut sections per-speaker. That's a workflow feature that Kazkar simply doesn't offer — Kazkar uses per-speaker audio internally for transcription, but it doesn't give you the raw files.

Format Flexibility

Craig supports a range of professional audio formats including FLAC, MPEG-4 AAC, HE-AAC, Opus, Ogg Vorbis, and even direct Audacity project export. If your workflow involves audio editing software, Craig slots right in. The $8/month Patreon tier even unlocks 24-bit FLAC for near-studio quality.

Open Source and Self-Hostable

For groups with privacy concerns or technical know-how, Craig's open-source nature is a real advantage. You can self-host your own instance, control where recordings are stored, and customize the bot to your needs. The Craig GitHub repository has the full source code and self-hosting documentation.

Mature Community

Craig's Discord server and Patreon community have been active for years. If you run into an issue, there are thousands of people who've probably encountered it before. That kind of community support is genuinely valuable, especially when you're trying to fix a recording setup 10 minutes before session time.

Where Kazkar Wins

Kazkar picks up where Craig leaves off — not by recording better audio, but by turning that audio into something you can actually use between sessions.

Session Chronicles

When your session ends, Kazkar processes the recording and delivers a narrative chronicle — readable recaps that tell you what happened like a story, not a raw transcript. No need to download files, install third-party tools, or run scripts. Chronicles highlight key moments, important decisions, and plot developments. They're the kind of thing you'd read at the start of next session to remind everyone where you left off.

For context, getting anything similar from Craig recordings typically requires downloading per-speaker files, installing TASMAS or craig-whisper, running transcription locally, and cleaning up the output. That workflow works — credit to the community for building those tools — but it's a significant time investment compared to Kazkar's zero-effort approach.

The Lore Wiki

This is Kazkar's headline feature: an automatically generated, cross-referenced lore wiki that grows with every session. After each recording, Kazkar extracts NPCs, locations, factions, items, and plot threads, creating wiki-style entries that link to each other and to the sessions where they appeared.

Forgot the name of that merchant in Waterdeep? It's in the wiki. Can't remember which faction sent the assassin? Search the wiki. Need to remember what your party promised the dragon three sessions ago? It's all there.

No other Discord recording bot builds anything like this automatically. If you're using Craig, you'd need to manually maintain a wiki (in Notion, World Anvil, or a shared doc) — which most groups start doing enthusiastically and abandon by session four.

Persistent Campaign Memory

Kazkar remembers your entire campaign. Each session adds to the existing lore, so entries from session one are still there — and updated — by session twenty. The wiki isn't reset between sessions; it accumulates context. That's something no amount of audio files can provide on their own.

Pricing Comparison

Both tools offer meaningful free tiers, but they charge for very different things.

The key difference in pricing philosophy: Craig charges for convenience and quality upgrades to its audio recording. Kazkar gives you transcription, chronicles, and a wiki for free within the 10-hour recording limit.

It's also worth noting that Craig's 6-hour limit is per session (you can record unlimited sessions), while Kazkar's 10-hour limit is a total pool across all sessions on the free tier. For groups that play weekly 3-hour sessions, that's about three sessions before you'd need a paid plan on Kazkar (pricing TBD) versus unlimited free recording with Craig.

Can You Use Craig and Kazkar Together?

Yes — and honestly, this might be the best setup for groups that want everything. There's nothing stopping you from having both bots in your Discord server and running them simultaneously.

Here's why that works well:

• Craig handles your audio backup. You get per-speaker FLAC files that you can archive, edit for a podcast, or keep for posterity. If you're producing an actual-play show, Craig's multi-track output is essential.
• Kazkar handles your campaign knowledge. You get the transcript, the chronicle, and the wiki without any extra work. No need to touch the audio files just to remember what happened.

Which Should You Choose?

The right tool depends on what you actually need after the session ends. Here's a straightforward breakdown:

Choose Craig Bot if...

• You need per-speaker audio files for podcast production or audio editing
• You want a completely free, no-limits recording solution
• You prefer to self-host or want open-source transparency
• You already have a note-taking and wiki system that works for your group
• You're comfortable with a manual transcription workflow (or don't need transcription at all)

Best for: Podcast producers, actual-play editors, groups with a dedicated note-taker, anyone who wants raw audio files and nothing more.

Choose Kazkar if...

• You want transcription and session recaps without any extra work
• Your group struggles to remember what happened last session
• You want a lore wiki that builds itself over time
• You don't need raw audio files — you need campaign knowledge
• You play in a language other than English and want native transcription

Best for: DMs who are tired of writing recaps, groups that always forget NPC names, campaigns with rich lore that's hard to track, anyone who wants a "set it and forget it" session scribe.

Choose Both if...

• You produce an actual-play podcast AND want automatic session notes
• You want audio backup files alongside your campaign wiki
• You're running a long campaign and want both raw archives and searchable lore

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Craig Bot free?

Yes, Craig Bot's core features are completely free. You can record up to 6 hours per session with multi-track, per-speaker audio and download your files in formats like FLAC and AAC. Recordings are available for 7 days. Patreon supporters ($1–$8/month) get perks like 14-day retention, auto-recording, cloud storage integration (Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox), and 24-bit FLAC quality.

Can Craig Bot transcribe my D&D sessions?

No, Craig Bot is a recording-only tool — it doesn't transcribe or summarize. If you want transcription from Craig recordings, the community has built open-source tools like TASMAS and craig-whisper that can process Craig's per-speaker audio files into text. However, these require technical setup (installing software, running scripts locally). Kazkar handles transcription automatically as part of its recording pipeline.

Can I use Craig and Kazkar together?

Absolutely. Both bots can join the same Discord voice channel and record simultaneously. Craig will give you per-speaker audio files for editing or archival, while Kazkar will give you a transcript, session chronicle, and updated lore wiki. Many groups find this combo ideal — Craig for raw audio, Kazkar for campaign knowledge. Just use /join for Craig and /summon for Kazkar before your session.

Does Kazkar replace Craig Bot?

Not entirely — they solve different problems. Craig is the better tool if you need raw, editable audio files (for podcasts, actual-play editing, or archival). Kazkar is the better tool if you want to know what happened in your session without listening to hours of audio. If you only need one and your priority is campaign knowledge over audio files, Kazkar covers more ground. But Craig's per-speaker audio export is something Kazkar doesn't offer.

What's the maximum recording time for each bot?

Craig records up to 6 hours per session, with no limit on the number of sessions. You can record every day if you want — each session just needs to be under 6 hours. Kazkar's free tier includes 10 hours of total recording time across all sessions. For a typical 3-hour weekly session, that's about three sessions on the free tier. Paid plans with additional hours are in development.

The Bottom Line

Craig Bot and Kazkar represent two different philosophies about what "recording your session" means. Craig says: here's the audio, do what you want with it. Kazkar says: here's what happened, organized and searchable.

Both approaches are valid. Both tools are good at what they do. Craig has earned its place as the go-to Discord recording bot through years of reliability and a generous free tier. Kazkar is newer but offers something Craig was never designed to do — turning hours of chaotic table talk into a campaign lore book.

If you're looking for a Craig bot alternative that goes beyond audio files, give Kazkar a try — the free tier gives you 10 hours of recording with full transcription and wiki generation. And if you decide Craig is all you need, that's a great choice too. The important thing is that your campaign's story doesn't vanish when someone clicks "Disconnect."