Best AI Meeting Note Takers (2026): Otter vs Fireflies vs Fathom and More

For most people, Fathom is the best AI meeting note taker in 2026. Its free plan records and transcribes an unlimited number of Zoom, Google Meet and Teams calls, it gives you polished AI summaries for your first five calls each month, and it syncs to HubSpot and Salesforce without a paid plan. Premium is $16 a month billed annually if you outgrow that.

If you run a sales team or hold meetings in more than a handful of languages, Fireflies.ai is the stronger buy. If the idea of a bot joining your calls makes you (or your clients) uncomfortable, get Granola, which listens through your computer's audio and deletes the recording once it's transcribed. And if you already pay for Zoom, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, check the built-in note taker you may already have before buying anything.

One thing applies to every tool here: recording people without the right consent can be illegal. Otter.ai is currently fighting a class action over exactly that, and a federal judge let the core claims go forward in August 2026. We cover what that means for you further down.

Quick picks

• Best overall: Fathom, for the most useful free plan and strong privacy credentials.
• Best for sales teams: Fireflies.ai, with CRM automation, deal intelligence and 100+ languages.
• Best for solo users: Fathom Free. It's hard to beat unlimited recordings for $0.
• Best privacy-first pick: Granola, which records without a bot and doesn't keep audio.
• Best for EU teams: tl;dv, which processes and stores data in the EU.
• Best for live English transcription: Otter.ai, with the caveats in the legal section.
• Best for meeting analytics: Read.ai, if you want engagement and talk-time metrics.

Our pick

F

Fathom

4.6

Best for: Solo professionals and most small teams · Free; Premium $16/mo billed annually ($20 monthly)

Fathom wins overall. The free plan covers what most people actually need (unlimited recording, transcripts in 38 languages, CRM sync), it offers a bot-free beta on Mac, it's SOC 2 Type II certified, and it doesn't let its AI sub-processors train on your calls. Upgrade to Premium only if you need unlimited advanced summaries and Ask Fathom.

Choose Fireflies.ai instead if you're equipping a sales team or you need broad language coverage. Choose Granola if you want notes without a bot in the room.

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How the six compare

All prices are per user per month as of September 2026. Annual billing is dramatically cheaper for every tool, so treat the monthly prices as the "just trying it" rate.

AI meeting note takers at a glance (September 2026)

Feature	WinnerFFathom	FFireflies.ai	OOtter.ai	GGranola	ttl;dv	RRead.ai
Our rating	4.6	4.4	4.0	4.4	4.1	3.9
Pricing	Free; Premium $16/mo billed annually ($20 monthly)	Free; Pro $10/seat/mo billed annually ($18 monthly)	Free; Pro $8.33/mo billed annually ($16.99 monthly)	Free; Business $14/user/mo; Enterprise $35/user/mo	Free; Pro €18/mo billed annually (€29 monthly)	Free (5 meetings/mo); Pro $15/mo billed annually ($19.75 monthly)
Best for	Solo professionals and most small teams	Sales teams and multilingual meetings	Live transcription and lectures in English	Bot-free notes for people who hate meeting bots	EU teams that want data kept in Europe	Meeting analytics and cross-app search
Free plan limit	Unlimited recordings, 5 advanced summaries/mo	400 min storage per team	300 min/mo, 30 min per meeting	30 days of note history	Unlimited recordings, 10 AI notes	5 meetings/mo, 1 hr max
How it joins	Bot, or bot-free on Mac (beta)	Bot	Bot	No bot (device audio)	Bot	Bot
Transcription languages	38	100+	6	Multi-language (count not published)	30+	16+
HIPAA	Enterprise (BAA)	Enterprise	Enterprise add-on	Enterprise	Not advertised	Enterprise+
Trains own models on your data	De-identified, opt-out	No	De-identified	Anonymized, opt-out	No	Off by default
Cheapest paid plan (annual)	$16	$10	$8.33	$14	€18	$15

A few notes on the table. Otter's free plan caps each conversation at 30 minutes, which is the limit most people hit first, per its pricing page. Fireflies counts storage rather than meetings. Its own pricing guide puts the free plan at 400 minutes per team, although some third-party guides quote a higher number, so check when you sign up. Granola doesn't store recordings at all, which is why its free limit is about how far back your notes go rather than minutes.

Fathom

F

Fathom Our pick

4.6

Visit Fathom(opens in a new tab)

Pricing

Free; Premium $16/mo billed annually ($20 monthly)

Best for

Solo professionals and most small teams

Why it wins: a free plan that doesn't feel like a trial, CRM sync without a credit card, and a clear privacy story. Best for freelancers, consultants, founders and small teams.

Fathom's free tier is the reason it tops this list. You get unlimited recordings and transcripts in 38 languages, plus advanced AI summaries for your first five calls each month. After that, calls still get a summary, just from Fathom's standard templates. The free plan even includes CRM sync with HubSpot, Salesforce and Close for up to three users per email domain, which is unusually generous.

Premium costs $16 a month billed annually or $20 monthly, and removes the summary cap while adding action items, follow-up email drafts, custom summaries and Ask Fathom (a chat that searches across your calls). Team plans start at $15 per user annually with a two-seat minimum. Business ($25 annually) adds CRM field mapping, and HIPAA with a signed BAA sits on Enterprise.

Fathom also offers a bot-free beta on Mac that captures system audio instead of sending a participant into the call. It's Mac-only for now, and Windows users still get the bot.

On data, Fathom says it's SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and GDPR compliant and that its AI sub-processors (Anthropic, OpenAI and Google) aren't allowed to train on your data. It does use de-identified customer data to improve its own models, with an opt-out. That's a common pattern in this category, but it's worth knowing before you record a client call.

Drawbacks: native summaries and full features work best in seven major European languages, and the free plan's five-summary cap means heavy users will notice the difference quickly.

Fireflies.ai

F

Fireflies.ai

4.4

Visit Fireflies.ai(opens in a new tab)

Pricing

Free; Pro $10/seat/mo billed annually ($18 monthly)

Best for

Sales teams and multilingual meetings

Why pick it: the broadest language support here, cheap paid seats, and sales-focused features on the Business plan. Best for sales, recruiting and customer-facing teams.

Fireflies' pricing is simple: Pro is $10 per seat per month billed annually ($18 monthly), Business is $19 ($29 monthly) and Enterprise is $39, annual only. Every plan, including Free, gets unlimited transcription and AI summaries. The catch on Free is storage: 400 minutes per team, so you'll be deleting old meetings fast.

Pro adds video recording, downloads and 8,000 minutes of storage per seat. Business is where sales teams should land: unlimited storage, conversation intelligence, Deal Intelligence and a 3-hour recording limit. CRM updates for Salesforce and HubSpot run through its AI Skills automations, and there are 100+ integrations across paid plans.

Language is Fireflies' clearest advantage. It advertises transcription in 100+ languages with automatic detection, although its pricing page notes that English is the primary language and many others are in beta. Multi-language mode, for meetings that switch languages, is a Business feature.

On security, Fireflies says it's SOC 2 Type II and GDPR compliant, offers HIPAA on Enterprise, and states that "your data is never used for AI training." That's a cleaner answer than most competitors give.

Drawbacks: it's a bot, and a bot that some attendees find intrusive. Free-plan storage is tight.

Otter.ai

O

Otter.ai

4.0

Visit Otter.ai(opens in a new tab)

Pricing

Free; Pro $8.33/mo billed annually ($16.99 monthly)

Best for

Live transcription and lectures in English

Why pick it: excellent live transcription, a cheap Pro plan and a long track record. Best for students, journalists and anyone who wants a live English transcript.

Otter is the name most people know, and on price it's still competitive. Pro is $8.33 a month billed annually ($16.99 monthly) with 1,200 minutes a month and 90 minutes per conversation. Business is $19.99 annually ($30 monthly) with unlimited minutes, 4-hour conversations and Salesforce and HubSpot integrations. The free plan gives you 300 minutes a month but only 30 minutes per conversation, which cuts off most real meetings.

Otter has been moving beyond note taking. In 2026 it launched what it calls a Conversational Knowledge Engine, voice-activated meeting agents, and an MCP server that lets tools such as ChatGPT or Claude pull context from your meeting history.

It's SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA compliant. But its privacy page also says it de-identifies user data and uses it to train its own models, and we couldn't find an opt-out described there. That training practice is central to the lawsuit below. Language support is limited too: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese.

Drawbacks: a stingy free tier, only six languages, and ongoing litigation that some legal and compliance teams will flag.

Granola

G

Granola

4.4

Visit Granola(opens in a new tab)

Pricing

Free; Business $14/user/mo; Enterprise $35/user/mo

Best for

Bot-free notes for people who hate meeting bots

Why pick it: no bot joins your call, audio isn't kept, and the notes build on what you type yourself. Best for privacy-conscious professionals, founders and people in back-to-back calls.

Granola works differently from everything else here. Instead of sending a bot into the meeting, it captures audio from your own device, transcribes it, then combines the transcript with your rough notes to write a cleaner version. According to Granola's security FAQ, audio is cached only during transcription and then deleted from its systems and from any third-party services.

Pricing is Free (AI notes with 30 days of meeting history), Business at $14 per user per month (unlimited history, better models, HubSpot, Notion, Zapier, Affinity and Attio integrations, API and MCP access) and Enterprise at $35 (SSO, SCIM and HIPAA-compliant workspaces). It runs on desktop plus iOS, Android and Apple Watch, so it also handles in-person meetings. Granola is SOC 2 Type II certified on all plans.

One detail privacy-minded buyers should know: on Free and Business, anonymized data may be used to improve Granola's own models by default. You can switch that off in Settings under Data and sharing. Enterprise workspaces are opted out by default.

Drawbacks: no video recording and no playback, and the free plan's 30-day history means it's really a trial for anyone who needs an archive.

tl;dv

t

tl;dv

4.1

Visit tl;dv(opens in a new tab)

Pricing

Free; Pro €18/mo billed annually (€29 monthly)

Best for

EU teams that want data kept in Europe

Why pick it: a solid free plan with unlimited recordings, EU data storage, and sales coaching on its higher tier. Best for European teams and startups.

tl;dv's free plan offers unlimited recording and transcription, but only ten meetings with AI notes, and data is kept for about three months. Its pricing page lists Pro at €18 a month billed annually (€29 monthly) and Business at €29 annually (€39 monthly). The company frequently runs annual-plan discounts, so the price you see may differ.

Its standout is data residency. tl;dv says on its security page that EU data stays in the EU, it holds a SOC 2 Type II report, and no customer data is used to train AI. It transcribes in 30+ languages. We couldn't find a HIPAA offering advertised.

Drawbacks: the ten AI-notes cap on Free is limiting, and CRM features are split across tiers.

Read.ai

R

Read.ai

3.9

Visit Read.ai(opens in a new tab)

Pricing

Free (5 meetings/mo); Pro $15/mo billed annually ($19.75 monthly)

Best for

Meeting analytics and cross-app search

Why pick it: meeting analytics (engagement, talk time, sentiment) and search across meetings, email and messages. Best for managers who care about how meetings go, not just what was said.

Read.ai's free plan is the tightest here: five meeting transcripts a month, one hour maximum, no playback. Pro is $15 a month annually ($19.75 monthly), Enterprise is $22.50 annually and adds video and audio playback, and Enterprise+ ($29.75 annually, five-license minimum) adds HIPAA, SSO and SCIM. It supports 16+ languages and connects to Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Notion, Jira and more on paid plans.

Read.ai is SOC 2 Type 2 certified and says it doesn't train on customer data by default. HIPAA BAAs are only for annual Enterprise+ customers.

Drawbacks: the free plan is too limited to judge the product properly, and meaningful features sit behind the pricier tiers.

The built-in option: Zoom, Teams and Google Meet

Before paying for any of the above, check what your video platform already includes. If most of your meetings happen on one platform, the built-in tool may be enough.

• Zoom AI Companion comes at no extra cost on paid Zoom Workplace plans and produces meeting summaries with next steps. It isn't available on Zoom's free Basic plan.
• Google Meet's "Take notes for me" writes Gemini-generated notes to Google Docs on eligible Workspace editions or Google AI plans. It supports eight languages (one per meeting) and shows a pencil icon to all participants when it's on.
• Microsoft Teams with Copilot gives you meeting recaps and lets you ask questions about a meeting, but it requires a paid Copilot license on top of Microsoft 365. Copilot Business costs $21 per user per month for organizations with fewer than 300 users.

The trade-off: built-ins only work inside their own platform. If you're on Zoom with one client and Teams with another, a third-party tool that follows you everywhere is more useful. For a wider look at which AI subscriptions are worth stacking, see our guide to the best AI productivity tools for work.

Consent, recording laws and the Otter lawsuit

This is the section most comparisons skip, and it's the one that can actually get you into trouble.

One-party vs all-party consent in the US

Federal law and most US states follow a one-party consent rule: if you're part of the conversation, you can record it. But a group of states, including California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington, require consent from everyone, according to Justia's 50-state survey. In California, recording a confidential conversation without all parties' consent violates Penal Code 632. On a call with people in several states, the safe assumption is that the strictest rule applies.

GDPR

If anyone on the call is in the EU or UK, GDPR applies. Recording and transcribing someone's voice is processing personal data, so you need a lawful basis such as consent or legitimate interest, you must tell people what you're doing and why, and your organization needs a data processing agreement with the vendor. Every tool in this list offers GDPR terms or a DPA in some form, but signing one is your job.

The Otter.ai class action

In August 2025, Justin Brewer filed a proposed class action against Otter.ai in federal court in California, as NPR reported. The complaint alleges that Otter's notetaker recorded meetings without getting consent from participants who weren't Otter users, and used those conversations to train its speech recognition models. Several similar suits were consolidated as In re Otter.AI Privacy Litigation.

On August 13, 2026, the court granted Otter's motion to dismiss in part and denied it in part. Claims under the federal Wiretap Act (ECPA), California's Invasion of Privacy Act and Illinois' biometric privacy law were allowed to proceed, while others were dismissed with leave to amend. The judge reasoned that a software provider can be treated as a third-party interceptor when it collects and uses conversations for its own commercial purposes. These are still allegations. Otter denies wrongdoing, and nothing has been decided on the merits.

The lesson isn't just "avoid Otter." It's that any vendor that trains on your recordings takes on more legal risk, and so, potentially, do you.

Which one should you choose?

• You're solo or a small team: Start with Fathom Free. If you need more than five advanced summaries a month, Premium is worth it.
• You run a sales team: Fireflies Business, for CRM automation and deal intelligence at $19 a seat annually. Fathom Business is a close alternative if your team is English-first.
• You care most about privacy: Granola, and turn off the model-improvement setting on day one. For regulated work, Enterprise plans from Granola, Fathom or Fireflies with a BAA.
• You work across languages: Fireflies, with the caveat that non-English support is partly in beta.
• You're in the EU: tl;dv, for EU data storage.
• Your meetings live in one platform: Try Zoom AI Companion, Gemini in Meet or Copilot first.

Once you have transcripts, you'll probably want to do more with them. Our guide to summarizing long PDFs with AI works just as well on exported transcripts, and if you only need to transcribe recordings rather than live calls, see how to transcribe audio to text with AI for free. For turning action items into a plan, try our guide to planning your week with ChatGPT.

Frequently asked questions

Is it legal to use an AI note taker in meetings?

Usually, yes, if you get the right consent. In one-party consent states, being a participant is enough, but states like California require every party's consent, and GDPR requires you to inform participants and have a lawful basis. The safest habit is to announce the note taker at the start of every call.

What's the best free AI meeting note taker?

Fathom, for most people. It offers unlimited recordings and transcripts on its free plan, with advanced AI summaries for five calls a month. tl;dv is a good second choice with unlimited recordings and ten AI notes a month.

Is there an AI note taker that doesn't join as a bot?

Yes. Granola captures audio from your device and never joins the call, and Fathom has a bot-free beta on Mac. Remember that bot-free doesn't remove your obligation to tell people they're being recorded.

Does Otter.ai use my recordings to train AI?

Otter says it de-identifies user data before using it to train its own models, and that its third-party AI providers don't train on customer data. That training practice is part of the allegations in the ongoing class action. If this matters to you, Fireflies and tl;dv say they don't train on customer data at all.

Do I need a separate note taker if I pay for Zoom or Microsoft 365?

Not necessarily. Paid Zoom Workplace plans include AI Companion summaries at no extra cost, and Google Meet's "Take notes for me" is included on eligible Workspace plans. Microsoft Teams needs a paid Copilot license. A third-party tool makes more sense if you meet across several platforms or want CRM sync.