AI Note-Taking Tools in 2026: 7 Meeting Note Takers Compared

If you want a free AI note taker, start with Fathom (unlimited recordings on its free plan) or Granola (no bot joins your call). If your company already pays for Google Workspace or Zoom, try the built-in note taker first. Otter and Fireflies suit teams that want a shared, searchable archive of every meeting.

The call ends, and everyone remembers a slightly different version of it. Someone was going to send the proposal. Someone mentioned Friday. Your notes say "proposal / Fri?", which felt perfectly clear ten minutes ago. A good AI note taker fixes that, but the tools differ more than their landing pages suggest, and the differences that matter (who sees a bot, how long a free plan keeps your history, where the recording ends up) are rarely on the landing page. Here's how seven of them compare on free plans, how they record, where your meeting data goes, and which one I'd pick for which kind of week.

AI note takers compared: the quick answer

Everything in this table comes from each company's own pricing and help pages. Plans change often, so check the linked page before you pay.

Bot or no bot: how AI note takers record your meetings

This is the choice that shapes everything else, so I'd settle it before you compare a single feature.

• Bot-based tools send a notetaker into the call as an extra participant. Everyone can see it, it can record even when you're not there, and it works the same on any computer. The downside is that some people find an unexpected bot in the participant list off-putting, and some meetings block outside bots.
• Botless tools record the audio on your own device. Nothing joins the call, so the meeting looks normal to everyone else. The trade-off is that you have to be in the meeting, on a device where the app is running.
• Built-in tools like Google Meet's and Zoom's are part of the meeting software. There's nothing extra to install, but they only work where that software and your plan allow.

Here's how that plays out. Picture Greg, an account manager at a Chicago ad agency, on a 2 p.m. CT call with a new client's CMO in Los Angeles. A bot named "Greg's Notetaker" joining a first meeting with a senior client can feel presumptuous, and some corporate meeting setups won't admit outside bots at all. For that call, I'd want him on a botless tool. For his weekly status call with a client he's worked with for two years, a visible bot is fine, and probably clearer.

One thing botless doesn't mean: that nobody needs to know. Greg's notes from that LA call will end up in a shared client folder. The client should have heard from him that the call was being recorded, whichever way it was captured. More on the US rules below.

The best AI note-taking tools in 2026

Granola: best for notes without a bot in the call

Granola records from your device, so nothing joins the meeting. Its pricing page lists bot-free device-audio capture, speaker tagging, custom note templates and multi-language support on every plan, including the free Basic plan.

The catch on the free plan is history: Basic keeps 30 days of meetings, while Business ($14 per user a month) has unlimited history plus follow-up emails and pre-meeting briefs. If you'll want to look up a decision from three months ago, plan for the paid tier. Granola also says audio is deleted after transcription, and it has a setting to let people know you're using it.

Fathom: best free plan for recurring calls

Fathom's free plan is the most generous on this list for recording. According to Fathom's pricing page, it includes unlimited recordings and transcriptions, instant AI call summaries, clips and search across your calls. You can choose bot capture, or bot-free capture, which Fathom labels a beta for Mac.

It works with Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, and its help center says it supports transcripts in 38 languages. AI action items, advanced summaries and the meeting assistant are on Premium, from $16 per user a month billed annually.

This is the one I'd hand Greg for his recurring client status calls. Twelve clients means a lot of weekly calls, and a free plan with no monthly minute cap means he never has to decide which call is worth recording. I'd also have him turn on the consent email covered below, so clients hear about the recording before the call rather than from a bot in the participant list.

Otter: best for live transcripts and in-person recording

Otter's apps for iPhone and Android make it handy for in-person conversations as well as calls. It joins Zoom, Teams and Google Meet to write notes, and transcribes in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese, per Otter's pricing page.

The free Basic plan is where you need to read closely. Otter's help center lists 300 transcription minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation, three file imports in total (not per month), and only your 25 most recent conversations visible. A plan can have minutes left over and still cut off a single hour-long meeting. Say Lauren, a marketing director in Austin, records a 75-minute in-person planning workshop with her agency on the free plan: she gets the first 30 minutes and loses the part where the budget got decided. Pro raises the cap to 90 minutes per meeting, from $8.33 per user a month billed annually.

Fireflies: best for teams that want everything searchable

Fireflies leans toward teams: shared channels, a meeting feed, task extraction and integrations, all available on the free plan. Its Free plan guide says auto-joined meetings get unlimited transcription, but summaries use credits, storage is capped at 400 minutes, and downloading transcripts requires a paid plan.

It transcribes in more than 100 languages and records Zoom, Google Meet and Teams, with a free recording limit of two hours per meeting, according to Fireflies' pricing page. The bot is the default; the same page lists a Chrome extension that records without it. Pro starts at $10 per seat a month billed annually and adds unlimited summaries and downloads.

Google Meet's "Take notes for me": best if you already pay for Workspace

If your company uses Google Workspace, you may already have an AI note taker. Google's help page explains that Take notes for me saves organized notes to a Google Doc in the organizer's Drive, attaches them to the Calendar event, and emails the organizer a link after the meeting. It needs an eligible Workspace edition or Google AI plan.

Two limits to know: it works in eight languages (English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish), and only one per meeting. On the plus side, Meet tells every participant that notes are being taken and shows a pencil icon on everyone's screen, so nobody's caught off guard. If Lauren's company already pays for an eligible Workspace edition, this is where I'd tell her to start. The notes land in a Google Doc on the Calendar event, which is exactly where her team will look for them on Monday.

Zoom's My Notes: best if your team lives in Zoom

Zoom's AI note taker, My Notes, captures notes across Zoom, Teams, Google Meet and in-person conversations without a bot, according to Zoom's product page. It's included in paid Zoom Workplace plans, with a standalone plan available too. Zoom shows a visible indicator in the meeting while transcription is on, and your notes collect in Zoom Hub afterward.

Say Marcus, an operations manager, runs a daily 15-minute stand-up for a team split between New York, Denver and San Francisco at 12:30 p.m. ET, which is 10:30 a.m. MT and 9:30 a.m. PT. If the company already pays for Zoom Workplace, I wouldn't add another tool for that. The stand-up is internal, short and routine, and a note taker that's already in the app his team opens every day beats a better one they have to remember to invite.

Merlin: best if you also want help with what comes after the meeting

Merlin is our app, so take this one with that in mind. It's a Mac app that records calls from your Mac, using your microphone and, when macOS allows it, system audio. Nothing joins the call. It can notice when a call starts in an app like Zoom, or offer to record a minute before a calendar meeting with other people, and you can always start a recording yourself. Think of Megan, who runs a small design studio in Denver and takes every client call herself on her MacBook: no bot to explain, and the recording starts from a banner rather than a setup ritual.

On a paid plan, Merlin transcribes the recording with speaker labels and writes structured notes from the transcript and your own notes, using templates like General, Standup, 1:1, Sales call and Interview. The spoken language is detected automatically. After that, you can ask Merlin about one meeting or all of them, and it may send you the to-dos from a call: what you promised, and what others promised you.

The limits, honestly: it's Mac only. The free plan records and plays back, but transcription needs a paid plan. The audio stays on the Mac that recorded it, so playback needs that Mac. And there's no export or share button; Copy transcript is as close as it gets.

How to choose an AI note taker

Start with the meeting, not the feature list. A transcript and meeting notes are related, but they do different jobs: the transcript helps you find exactly what was said, and the notes help you act on it.

Then picture your busiest normal week, not the quiet week when you sign up. Say Greg has four hour-long client calls on a Tuesday. A plan that caps each conversation at 30 minutes leaves him with half of every one. A plan that keeps 30 days of history is fine for status calls and a problem the day a client asks what was agreed back in June. My rule: choose for the meeting you'd most regret losing, not the average one.

Check the AI notes before you share them

Read the parts people will act on first: decisions, names, amounts and dates. A small change in wording can turn a maybe into a promise. Say someone said this on Marcus's stand-up:

What was said: "I can probably send a draft on Friday, once finance confirms the numbers."

Too strong: "Dwayne will send the draft Friday."

Useful note: "Dwayne expects to send a draft Friday, once finance confirms the numbers."

The useful note keeps the condition. It tells the next person what has to happen first, instead of making the plan sound more settled than it is. When you send a recap, I'd keep it to this shape:

Decision: [what we agreed]

Next steps:
- [Name] will [action] by [date]
- [Name] will [action] by [date]

Still open: [question nobody answered yet]

Notes and recording: [link]

If an owner or a deadline wasn't actually agreed, leave it open and ask. Notes should record commitments, not quietly create new ones.

Before and after: a raw transcript and the recap worth sending

Say this exchange happens on Greg's Tuesday status call with a client in Milwaukee. First, roughly what a transcript gives you:

Greg: So on the holiday spots, are we still good for the eighteenth?
Tasha: I think so. Legal still has the music license, though.
Greg: OK. Do you want us to hold the media buy?
Tasha: Let's not hold it yet. If legal isn't done by, like, Thursday, we'll talk.
Greg: Got it. I'll send the revised flowchart today.
Tasha: Great. And can someone check the Spanish cut has the right end card?
Greg: Yeah, we'll look at that.

Subject: Holiday spots: status and next steps (Tue 10/20)

Decision: the November 18 launch stays on the calendar. We are not holding the media buy for now.

Next steps:
- Greg will send the revised flowchart by end of day today.
- Our team will check the end card on the Spanish cut by Thursday.
- Tasha will update us on the music license by Thursday.

Still open: if legal hasn't cleared the music by Thursday, we'll decide together whether to hold the buy.

Notice what the recap does. "I think so" stays a conditional plan, not a promise. "Someone" became "our team" because Greg said "we'll look at that", and he gave it a deadline he can keep. And the open question is written down, so Thursday's conversation starts from the same place for everyone. A note taker gets you the transcript. The recap is still your job, or at least your edit.

Tell people you're recording

Whatever tool you pick, say so at the start of the call. A simple "I'm recording this so I can take notes, is that OK?" covers it, and I'd say it even when the tool shows a banner. People skim banners. They hear you.

In the US, the legal baseline varies by state. Federal law generally allows a recording when one party to the conversation consents (18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(d)), but some states go further. California, for example, makes it a crime to record a confidential conversation without the consent of all parties (Penal Code § 632). My rule of thumb for calls across state lines, like Greg's with Los Angeles: get everyone's OK out loud at the start. This isn't legal advice, and your company may have its own policy, so check before you switch on auto-recording for every meeting.

• Google Meet tells all participants when Take notes for me is on, and admins can require everyone to consent before it starts.
• Zoom shows an indicator in the meeting while My Notes is transcribing.
• Granola has a setting to let people know you're using it, and Enterprise admins can enforce it.
• Bot-based tools are visible in the participant list, but a bot's name isn't the same as asking.
• Fathom can email external attendees a consent request about 24 hours before a scheduled meeting with its Auto Request Recording Consent setting, and turns off auto-record for that meeting if someone declines, per Fathom's help center.

Where your meeting data goes

Before Greg points any of these at a client call, I'd want him to know where the recording and transcript live, and whether they're used to improve the company's AI. Here's what each company says in its own documentation:

• Fathom says all Fathom data is stored in the United States, and that it uses de-identified customer data to improve its own AI models. You can opt out in My Settings, and Fathom says its AI sub-processors aren't permitted to train on your data.
• Otter's privacy policy lists training its own AI on de-identified audio recordings and transcriptions among the ways it uses data.
• Fireflies says in its security guide that your meeting content is never used to train AI models, and that third-party vendors don't store your data after processing.
• Merlin keeps the audio on the Mac that recorded it. On a paid plan, the audio is sent to a transcription provider, and the transcript and notes are stored on your Merlin account.

If your company has a policy on AI tools or client confidentiality, that wins over any of the above. For regulated work, ask your IT or legal team before you connect anything to your calendar.

If you mostly need text from recordings you already have, rather than live meetings, our guide to free transcription software covers apps built for that.