Read AI Alternatives in 2026: For More Free Meetings, No Bot or Local Notes

The best Read AI alternative depends on what made you look. Fathom lists unlimited free recordings and transcripts, against Read AI's five transcripts a month. Granola never joins the call. Meetily transcribes on your own computer and is open source. Merlin, our Mac app, records without a bot and lets you replay the audio on any plan.

Read AI tends to come up in two moments: the free plan runs out partway through the month, or someone on a call asks why a Read assistant is sitting in the participant list. This page sets out what Read AI does well, what its plans include in 2026, the settings that solve some problems without switching, and four alternatives matched to the usual reasons for leaving.

What Read AI does well

Read AI is a meeting assistant that writes summaries, transcripts and action items, then lets you ask questions across meetings, email and messages. Read AI's homepage names Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams as supported meeting platforms, and lists apps for Windows, macOS, iOS and Android, a Chrome extension, and connections to Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot, Notion, Jira, Confluence and Zapier.

• One search across meetings, email and chat. Read AI's Ask Read feature answers from all three, and the homepage describes an AI agent that summarizes meetings you skip.
• Every major platform. Windows and Mac desktop apps, phone apps for in-person meetings, and a desktop app that, per Read AI's desktop page, can "Record and summarize meetings without needing a bot" on Windows 10+ and macOS 14+.
• Coaching and meeting metrics. The free plan includes a personalized meeting coach and topic readouts, per Read AI's pricing page.
• Enterprise controls. Enterprise+ adds HIPAA compliance, SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning and a custom data retention policy.

If your company runs on Outlook and Teams, people join from Windows laptops, and you want sales calls flowing into Salesforce, Read AI covers more of that ground than Merlin does, and more than some of the options below.

Read AI pricing and plan limits in 2026

Read AI has a free plan and three paid tiers, priced per user. These are the US-dollar prices on Read AI's pricing page in October 2026:

The free plan gives 5 meeting transcripts, live notes and reports a month. Paid plans make those unlimited and add uploads of recorded audio and video: 100 minutes a month on Pro, 200 on Enterprise and 300 on Enterprise+. Premium integrations such as Notion, Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira and Zapier start at Pro.

Where Read AI stops fitting

The search for a Read AI alternative usually starts at one of four walls, and no single tool removes all four.

1. Five meetings go quickly. With three calls a day, the free plan is gone on the second day of the month. Paid plans are priced per user, so a team pays for every seat.
2. The assistant shows up in the call. Read AI's own guide on stopping it from joining says it asks to be admitted, appears as a participant and posts a chat message naming whoever added it. Read AI presents that visibility as deliberate, so everyone can object. It also means the assistant can arrive because another attendee uses Read AI, which surprises people who never signed up.
3. Replaying the call costs extra. Audio and video playback start at Enterprise, which needs at least five licenses. On Free and Pro you get the transcript and report, not the recording.
4. Data and training questions. Read AI's privacy policy says personal information is processed and stored on servers in the US and elsewhere, and offers a Customer Experience Program you can opt in to, which lets meeting information be used to improve the service. The homepage promises "no training on your data by default." For some client or regulated work, any cloud processing is the problem, and HIPAA sits on the top tier.

Fix it inside Read AI first

Two of those problems have a setting, so check these before moving your team:

• Use the desktop app's recording instead of the assistant. The desktop app records from your computer, so nothing joins the call. Free accounts can use it too, though the usual quotas still count.
• Turn off "Add Read?" for meetings you don't want covered. In your Read Calendar, select the meeting and switch it off a few minutes before it starts. For a recurring series you can skip single meetings without turning off the whole series.
• Leave the Customer Experience Program off, or opt out in account settings if you joined it.
• If someone else's assistant joins your call, type "Opt Out" in the meeting chat and it leaves without saving anything, per Read AI's guide. "Read Stop" makes it leave and still produce a report of what it heard so far.

If you need more free meetings, playback without an Enterprise contract, or notes that never leave your computer, settings won't get you there.

Four Read AI alternatives, by what you need

Fathom: when the free plan is the problem

Fathom's free plan has no monthly meeting count. Fathom's pricing page lists "Unlimited recordings + transcriptions" with instant AI call summaries, and a choice between a bot or bot-free capture, the latter marked as a beta feature for Mac. It covers Zoom, Meet and Teams calls.

Premium is listed at $20 a user a month, or $16 with annual billing. Team ($15) and Business ($25) are per-user annual prices with a two-user minimum. Fathom's help center says it keeps everything on US servers, and that de-identified call data helps make its in-house models more accurate unless you turn that off in My Settings. See our Fathom alternatives page for where Fathom itself falls short.

Choose Fathom if Read AI did the job but five meetings a month didn't cover your calendar.

Granola: when the bot is the problem

Granola listens through your computer's audio instead of sending anything into the meeting. Granola's homepage says "Granola doesn't join your meeting," works with Zoom, Meet, Teams and Slack huddles, and runs on Mac and Windows computers plus iPhone and Android phones, with the phone apps covering in-person conversations.

On Granola's pricing page, Basic is free but shows only the last month of meetings (30 days), Business is $14 a user a month and Enterprise $35. Every plan says "Audio deleted after transcription," and each user can opt out of model training. So Granola fixes the visible bot but, like Read AI on Free and Pro, gives you no recording to replay. Our Granola alternatives page covers that gap.

Choose Granola if you want Read AI's cross-platform reach without an assistant in the participant list.

Meetily: when the cloud is the problem

Meetily is an open-source meeting assistant that transcribes on your own device. Meetily's site says its open-source code is under the MIT License, that it is bot-free and captures system audio, and that it needs no internet connection after setup. Summaries use a local model or your own API key, in which case only the transcript text goes to the provider you chose. It has desktop apps for macOS and Windows; Linux users build from source for now.

The Community edition is free. Meetily Pro is $10 a user a month, billed at $120 a year, and adds speaker diarization, custom summary templates, meeting auto-detection, PDF, DOCX and Markdown exports, and MCP, webhook and CLI integrations. Each Pro license covers one device. Chat with your meetings and calendar integration are listed as coming soon, so it doesn't yet do what Ask Read does.

Choose Meetily if your reason for leaving is that meeting audio goes to anyone's cloud at all, and you're comfortable setting up a local model.

Merlin: when you want the recording and the follow-up

Merlin is our product, so read this section knowing that. It's a Mac assistant that works across Gmail, Google Calendar and your meetings, rather than a dedicated meeting tool. Capture happens on the Mac itself, from the mic plus system sound where macOS permits it, so the participant list stays as it was. When it detects a call, say in Zoom, it shows a Record button, and about a minute before a calendar meeting with guests it offers to start recording.

Two things set it apart from Read AI's lower tiers. Recording and playback are included on the free plan: the audio stays on the Mac that recorded it, and you can scrub it at up to 2x speed. Paying subscribers also get speaker-labeled transcripts with the language detected automatically, and structured notes from templates like Sales call, 1:1 and Standup. Because it also reads your Gmail and calendar, you can ask what was agreed across several meetings, press Prep me on an upcoming event for a brief on the attendees and past threads, or ask it to send a recap once a call is transcribed. You see that recap email first, and nothing leaves until you approve it.

The limits matter. Merlin is Mac-only, with no Windows, phone or web app, and it connects Google accounts, not Outlook or Microsoft Teams calendars. The free plan stops at the audio; the cheapest plan with transcription is Pro, at $29 billed monthly or $278 billed yearly, per Merlin's pricing. Playback works only on the Mac that recorded the meeting, meetings can't be shared, and the only export is Copy transcript. There are no CRM integrations like Read AI's.

Choose Merlin if your calls and your Gmail both live on a Mac, you want to replay calls without an Enterprise seat, and care most about what happens after the meeting.

Read AI vs Fathom, Granola, Meetily and Merlin

Each cell comes from the company's own pages, checked in October 2026. Prices are per user, in US dollars, as published.

How to choose

• Your team uses Windows, Outlook or Teams: stay on Read AI or try Granola. Merlin is Mac-only and connects Google accounts, so it won't cover a mixed office.
• You only need more meetings, free: Fathom.
• Clients object to a visible notetaker: Granola, Meetily or Merlin, or Read AI's own desktop recording.
• Audio can't leave your computer for transcription: Meetily with a local model.
• You want to replay calls without buying five Enterprise licenses: Merlin, provided everyone recording uses a Mac.
• You need CRM sync and SSO: Read AI, with Salesforce and HubSpot from Pro and SAML SSO on Enterprise+.

Switching from Read AI

Run the new tool alongside Read AI for a week or two of real meetings before you cancel, so you can compare the notes on the same calls. Then turn off "Add Read?" for upcoming meetings in your Read Calendar so the assistant stops joining while you're still in the overlap. If teammates also use Read AI, tell them you've switched: their accounts can still bring the assistant into meetings you share with them.