Best AI Meeting Note Takers in 2026: Bots, Botless and What They Do With Your Data

AI meeting note takers can record a call, turn the audio in the call into a transcript and hand back a full fledged summary with action points to follow up on. Almost all AI note takers on the market today do a great job at that. Transcription quality is no longer the underlying barometer to judge which tool is better than the other. 

What actually differs now is how the tool gets access to the audio. Some tools join the meeting as a participant wherein everybody in the meeting can see it. Other tools read system audio off your device and never actually come up as a participant within the meeting. Then there’s the third group that runs entirely on separate hardware that no video platform ever touches. While each tool comes with a set of pros, there are also a set of different problems attached to them. For instance, bots get blocked by IT and could run the risk of making external guests feel uncomfortable. Botless tools on the other hand are quiet but the entire disclosure obligation sits on the host of the meeting. Hardware requires charging and could change the setting for how people talk once it lands on the table. 

Then there’s the question most people only bring up months after using a tool. Does the vendor train its AI on your meetings, and can you turn that off? The answer lies by vendor and sometimes by the pricing tier, so it is listed for every entry below. 

Quick Comparison

Tool	Capture	Works with	Trains on your data?	Free tier, really	Starting paid price
Fathom	Bot (botless in beta, Mac only)	Zoom, Meet, Teams	Opt-out (default on)	Unlimited recording and transcription, kept forever; advanced summaries capped	$16 ($20)
Fireflies.ai	Bot (botless via Chrome extension)	Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex	Never, by default	Unlimited transcription, but 400 min storage for the whole team and no downloads	$10 ($18)
Otter.ai	Bot + botless desktop	Zoom, Meet, Teams	Yes, no opt-out found	300 min/mo, 30-min cap per meeting, last 25 conversations only	$8.33 ($16.99)
tl;dv	Both	Zoom, Meet, Teams, in-person via mobile	Never (vendor claim, unverified)	“Unlimited recordings,” but roughly 10 AI notes and deletion after 3 months	$18 ($29)
Granola	Botless	Any app on desktop, in-person via mobile	Opt-out (default on; off by default on Enterprise)	“Limited meeting history,” undocumented	$14 (monthly billing only)
Krisp	Botless (bot optional)	Any app, plus phone calls and in-person	Opt-in (vendor pages conflict)	None. Seven-day trial only	$8 ($16)
Bluedot	Botless	Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex, Slack, in-person	Never	5 meetings lifetime, 1 hour each	$14 ($18)
Plaud	Hardware	In-person, phone calls, any meeting, offline	Opt-in	300 min/mo included with the device, no rollover	Device from $126.99 plus $99.99/year

How to Choose an AI Note Taker

The tools on this list have features that have largely converged. Almost everything here transcribes well, integrates with calendars and pushes notes to Slack or a CRM. The differences that matter sit underneath the marketing page. 

Bot vs. botless vs. hardware (the capture-model decision) 

A bot joins your call as a participant. Everyone sees it in the attendee list, it keeps recording after you drop off, and it works the same way whether the meeting is yours or someone else’s. That visibility cuts both ways. Legal and security teams at larger companies increasingly block external bots at the admin level, so the tool your sales rep loves may simply fail to join an enterprise buyer’s Zoom.

Botless capture reads system audio directly on your machine. Nothing appears in the participant list, nothing needs to be admitted, and it works on platforms where bots are banned outright. The catch is that it only runs when you’re on the call yourself. You cannot send it to a meeting you’re skipping. Nobody sees it either, which means the burden of telling people falls entirely on you.

Hardware is the answer for conversations that never touch a video platform. Site visits, coffee meetings, hallway conversations that turn into decisions. It also works when the wifi doesn’t. You’re carrying another device that needs charging, and setting a recorder on a restaurant table changes the temperature of the conversation in a way a laptop doesn’t.

Pick this layer first. Everything else is negotiable. 

Does it train AI on your meetings? (the privacy question to ask every vendor) 

Does the vendor use customer content to improve its models by default. Can you turn that off. Does the switch apply to data already collected, or only going forward. These are the three questions to ask before going for any sort of AI note taking tool. 

After which, it’s important to understand who else touches the audio. Nearly every tool sends transcripts to a third party model provider for summarization, and the question is whether that third party keeps a copy of your transcript or deletes it on the spot.   

Free tiers, honestly read (the asterisk economy) 

The word unlimited shows up on almost all of the tools mentioned on this list but it does come with a caveat that people should be aware of. Unlimited might include the fact that you might be able to record as many calls as you want but only have access to generate a limited number of AI summaries each month. It could also mean unlimited transcription but deletes everything older than 30 days unless you upgrade. 

Plenty of tools on their free tier have the ability to store hundreds of recordings of meetings. The catch comes when you try to download them. That’s when the charge pops up and hence exporting a recording is perhaps worth checking first. 

Prices and any sort of limits within these tools are often updated and change quickly. Therefore it’s always wise to check the vendor’s own page before you pay. 

Accuracy in the real world (accents, crosstalk, hallucinated action items) 

The fact is every tool in this list will perform extremely differently in a controlled test environment compared to the real world. All the tools will be able to transcribe meetings in clear American English on decent microphone almost perfectly. However, when regional accents, people talking over each other, different microphone qualities are introduced into the mix, that’s when the performance starts to deteriorate. 

Sometimes a tool can also attribute a comment to the wrong person, which then is distributed across the entire team in a document. The more common failure within these tools is actually a lot more subtle. Someone might float an idea, says the team could potentially ship by Friday and the summary converts that into an action item with a name and due date alongside it. In this instance, no one actually committed to anything but the notes say something different. 

The Best Bot-Based Note Takers 

1. Fathom – Best Overall 

Fathom is an AI note taker that records, transcribes and summarizes calls on Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams. It has become one of the most popular and widely recommended tools over the past two years. This is because Fathom offers a lot more within the free tier compared to any other tool on this list. 

Capture model: Bot by default. Fathom has added bot-free desktop capture but the pricing page on its website still mentions it as a beta feature for Mac, so treat it as a preview rather than a full fledged finished alternative. 

Training verdict: Fathom’s privacy model says it generates de-identified data from meeting content to train its in-house models and that, as a user, you can turn this off in account settings. It also highlights that they do not allow OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or any other similar models to train on your content. SOC 2 Type 2, with a signed HIPAA BAA available only on the Enterprise plan. 

Free tier: This is where Fathom really shines as recording and transcriptions are actually unlimited in the free tier. Adding to this, they can also be stored indefinitely. The AI layer on top of this is where the cap sits at the moment. Fathom’s pricing model mentions that the advanced summaries and access to Ask Fathom is limited on the free plan. Multiple reviews put it at five calls per month, after which you get the basic chronological summary instead. 

Pricing: Premium is $20 a month, $16 billed annually. Team is $19 per user, $15 annually, with a two-seat minimum. Business is $34 per user, $25 annually. All paid plans carry a 90-day money-back guarantee, which nobody else here offers.

Pros

• Unlimited recording and storage at $0, kept forever
• Clear training opt-out and an explicit bar on third-party model training
• Independent tests have scored its summaries above Fireflies and Otter

Cons

• Won’t transcribe uploaded audio or video files
• Team collaboration features are thinner than Fireflies
• Bot-free mode is beta and Mac-only

Best for: individuals and small teams who want serious capability without a subscription.

2. Fireflies.ai – best for teams

Fireflies is a great option for teams in organizations looking to integrate these tools in their workplace. It transcribes in over 100 languages, runs an AI assistant called AskFred across your meeting history and layers conversation intelligence and talk-time analytics on top for admins. 

Capture model: Bot. The “Fireflies.ai Notetaker” comes up as a participant in a meeting and all the attendees will be able to see this. The company says that this level of visibility is a compliance feature rather than any sort of limitation. Apart from this, there is also a Chrome extension that can record without the bot, which is available even on the free plan. 

Training verdict: By default, it does not train on your data. Fireflies clearly states that they do not train on customer content and that it holds zero-day retention agreements with its AI vendors, so transcriptions sent out for processing aren’t kept afterward. SOC 2 Type II and GDPR across all tiers; HIPAA with a BAA on Enterprise only. 

Free tier: Transcription and AI summaries are unlimited. However this comes with a caveat when you reach the storage limit. The free tier only includes 400 minutes total for the entire team, not per person. Exporting or downloading transcripts and recordings are also limited to the paid plans. So in this sense, a free plan only lets you accumulate meetings you can’t export. Recording length caps at two hours. 

Pricing: Pro is $18 monthly, $10 billed annually, with 8,000 minutes of storage per seat. Business is $29 monthly, $19 annually, and adds unlimited storage plus conversation intelligence. Enterprise is $39 per seat, annual billing only.  

Pros

• Deepest integration library here, with native HubSpot and Salesforce automation
• No training on customer data by default, backed by zero-retention vendor terms
• Over 100 languages, more than any other tool on this list

Cons

• The bot occasionally joins late and misses the opening minutes
• No way to hide it on a client call
• Free storage runs out fast, and export is paywalled

Best for: teams that need shared meeting infrastructure and CRM automation more than a generous free plan.

3. Otter.ai – The incumbent, candidly 

Otter is known for its live transcription capabilities and is often considered one of the best in the category. Words appear as they are spoken, speaker labels appear in real time and the AI chat can query across your whole meeting history rather than one call at a time. 

Capture model: Bot, branded OtterPilot, plus a desktop app that records without one. The bot can also automatically take screenshots during meetings and can attach them onto the transcript. 

Training Verdict: Otter’s privacy policy says that they do train its proprietary AI on de-identified audio recordings and on transcriptions, which the policy notes may contain personal information. It also discloses data to labeling vendors who build training sets for Otter’s features. There’s no self-serve training toggle described anywhere in the policy, only a general right to object to processing.

The lawsuit: Otter is the named defendant in a consolidated federal class action, In re Otter.AI Privacy Litigation, in the Northern District of California before Judge Eumi K. Lee. Four suits filed between August and September 2025 were consolidated in October; the lead case, Brewer v. Otter.ai, was brought by a California resident who had no Otter account and says his sales call was recorded because someone else on it ran OtterPilot. The complaint alleges recording without all-party consent under federal wiretap law and CIPA, and alleges those recordings trained Otter’s models. Otter moved to dismiss in January 2026, denying any interception occurred. No court has ruled. These are allegations, not findings. 

Free tier: Users on the free model get access to 300 minutes worth of transcription each month, a 30 minute cap for each conversation, and only 25 of the most recent conversations are stored. In terms of exports, only mp3 and text can be done. 

Pricing: Pro $16.99 monthly, $8.33 annually. Business $30 monthly, $19.99 annually. HIPAA is an Enterprise add-on, and SSO requires a 100-seat minimum. 

Pros

• Best live transcription and speaker identification available
• AI chat works across your entire history, not one meeting
• Mature apps on every platform

Cons

• Trains on meeting content with no clear opt-out
• Facing an unresolved wiretap class action
• The 30-minute free cap cuts most real meetings in half

Best for: people who need live captions during the call and are comfortable with the privacy posture. 

4. Tl;dv – best for sales teams on a budget

Tl;dv is a great note taking tool that’s known to be best suited for sales teams in an organisation and there’s a good reason for this. Apart from being able to transcribe and record in over 30 languages, it rates calls against sales frameworks like MEDDIC, has the ability to generate reports that spans across various meetings and even offers customizable summary templates rather than a single format. 

Capture model: Both, and the marketing now leads with the botless option. The desktop app records Google Meet, Zoom and Teams straight off your machine with no participant added. Mobile apps on iOS and Android capture in-person conversations too. 

Training Verdict: tl;dv says no. Its site states customer data is never used to train AI. GDPR compliant and SOC 2 certified, with EU hosting available, though AI processing can still route through US infrastructure depending on your settings. No HIPAA claim. Worth noting that this one rests on the vendor’s own statement rather than a policy document I could independently pull. 

Free tier: “Unlimited recordings and transcripts” is accurate as far as it goes, but AI notes are capped at roughly ten meetings, recordings auto-delete after three months, and integrations are paid-only. Reviewers disagree on whether that ten-meeting cap is monthly or lifetime, which tells you something about how clearly it’s documented. Recording complaints show up repeatedly in G2 reviews from users who expected “unlimited” to mean unlimited. 

Pricing: Pro is $29 monthly, $18 billed annually. Business is $98 monthly, $59 annually, and that’s the tier with native Salesforce and HubSpot sync; Pro routes CRM data through Zapier, which you pay for separately.

Pros

• Genuine botless desktop capture with the full feature set behind it
• Sales coaching and cross-meeting reports at a mid-tier price
• Mobile capture for in-person meetings

Cons

• Three-month auto-delete catches people out badly
• The gap between Pro and Business is steep
• Free-plan limits are poorly disclosed 

Best for: sales teams who want coaching and CRM workflows without Gong pricing.

The Best Botless Note Takers 

5. Granola – the AI notepad 

Granola is a tool that is pretty different from everything else that has been mentioned on this list. Users type in rough notes during the meeting and it basically merges those fragments with its own transcript into a very clean set of notes from the meeting. The company calls it a notepad rather than a note taker. This is very important to keep in mind because if you do not type anything during the meeting, you get much less out of the tool. The company has also raised a $43 million Series B at a $250 million valuation last year in May. 

Capture model: As a botless model, Granola reads your computer’s audio directly and adds no participant to the call. This means it works on any meeting platform including those that may block any bots. Since it does not auto join a meeting or auto records anything, it’s on the user to start the tool manually. 

Training verdict: Granola does train AI based on anonymized data, with an opt out available on every single plan including the free tier. Third parties are barred from training: Granola’s security page names OpenAI and Anthropic specifically. Enterprise accounts have training off by default rather than on. The stronger privacy point is that Granola stores no audio at all. Transcription happens in real time on the desktop, and only the transcript and your notes are kept. SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, DPA on request.

Free tier: Granola’s pricing page clearly states “see limited meeting history” within its free tier but does not specify any number. Third-party reviews split badly here: some report a 25-note lifetime cap, others a rolling 30-day window, one got told by support there’s no meeting cap at all. Granola hasn’t clarified it publicly. Assume the free plan is an evaluation tool, not a system of record.

Pricing. Business is $14 per user per month, Enterprise $35. Monthly billing only, with no annual discount, which is unusual in this category.

Pros

• No audio stored anywhere, ever
• Training opt-out available at every tier, not just paid
• Notes read like something a person wrote, because half of them are

Cons

• Does little for you if you don’t type during calls
• Free-plan limits are undocumented
• Nobody on the call knows you’re recording unless you say so

Best for: people who already take notes by hand and want them cleaned up rather than replaced.

6. Krisp – audio-layer capture 

Krisp is a tool that started off as a noise cancellation software which now has a note taker app on top of it. That history itself reveals the main advantage of using this tool. Krisp sits between your microphone and any app that you’re using, so it does not matter if the call is on Zoom, Teams, a browser tab or a phone line.

Capture model: Botless by default, working at the audio layer, though a bot mode is also available on every plan. In-person meetings and outbound phone calls are supported. The accent conversion feature is unique to Krisp: it can shift a speaker’s accent in real time. 

Training verdict: This one needs care, because Krisp’s own pages disagree. The pricing page FAQ says flatly that your meeting data is never used to train Krisp’s AI models. The privacy policy, updated March 4, 2026, lists “improving our proprietary AI models” as a processing purpose with consent as its legal basis, which describes something you opt into rather than something that doesn’t happen. Separately: noise cancellation alone is fully local and no audio leaves your device, but the moment you use the meeting assistant, transcripts and recordings are stored on Krisp’s servers until you delete them. Non-English speech gets recorded to the cloud automatically so multilingual transcription can run, then deleted once the transcript exists. SOC 2 Type II and GDPR on all plans, HIPAA on Enterprise. 

Free tier: There isn’t one anymore. Krisp’s pricing page now shows a seven-day trial where the free plan used to sit.  

Pricing. Core is $16 a month, $8 billed annually, with 10GB storage. Advanced is $30, $15 annually, adding Salesforce and admin controls. Enterprise is custom and is the only tier with on-device private transcription.

Pros

• Works with any calling platform, including phone calls
• Noise cancellation is genuinely best in class and runs locally
• Cheapest paid entry point in this roundup at $8 annually

Cons

• No permanent free plan, only a week
• Two Krisp pages give different answers on model training
• Non-English audio goes to the cloud whether you like it or not

Best for: anyone whose calls happen outside the big three platforms, or in a noisy room.

7. Bluedot – the privacy-first pick 

Bluedot is perhaps the best tool on this list when it comes to privacy. The tool runs as a Chrome extension or a desktop app which can cover Zoom, Teams, Webex and Slack huddles, and extends to in-person meetings through mobile apps and its Apple Watch application. Transcription is supported in over 100 languages, with template-based summaries. 

Capture model: Bluedot is entirely botless and nothing joins a call or meeting. Bluedot also has the ability to display something that no other competition on this list can do. Admins have the ability to show a consent message to all the participants before or during recording. This is a huge missing piece for most botless tools, which otherwise leaves disclosure entirely to the user. 

Training verdict: Bluedot explicitly states that customer data is never used to train or improve AI models and there seems to be no asterisk attached here as well. Their AI providers also do not store, log or retain any data after generating output. That second sentence is the zero-retention commitment most vendors leave vague. SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, EU data residency, and admin-configurable retention on Business. 

Free tier: Bluedot’s free plan is the most restrictive one on this list. The free plan includes only five meetings an hour each and this is for the lifetime of the account. Meaning after this, an upgrade is required to continue using the tool. 

Pricing. Four tiers, billed per recording user rather than per seat. Basic runs $14 annually or $18 monthly and is audio-only. Pro is $20 annually, $25 monthly, and adds video plus unlimited recording length. Business is $32 annually, $39 monthly, with CRM and ATS integrations, SSO and custom retention. A flat-rate company-wide option exists on request.

One thing to know before subscribing: cancel and you lose access to your recordings immediately. You get a month to restore the subscription, after which they’re deleted permanently.

Pros

• Flat no-training policy that extends to its AI vendors
• Built-in consent messaging, rare for a botless tool
• You only pay for people who actually record

Cons

• Five lifetime meetings free
• Accuracy slips when people talk over each other
• Cancelling cuts off your recordings straight away

Best for: regulated industries and anyone whose main question is where the conversation ends up.

The Hardware Option 

8. Plaud – AI note-taking off-screen and in person

Every tool mentioned thus far in this article needs a meeting set up for it to actually work. Plaude, on the other hand, is a physical device that syncs up with a phone application. This means it can cover conversations that any software tool out there cannot really do. This includes a client lunch, a site walk or even a corridor exchange after a meeting. 

Capture model: Plaud is a hardware note taker that is shaped almost like a credit card that can attach to the back of your phone via MagSafe. There is also the Note Pro which has a display and is better for picking up audio in larger rooms. The NotePin and the newer NotePin S are wearables for hands free capture. All of the hardware devices record locally and completely offline. This then syncs with the mobile application for transcription in 112 supported languages, summaries built from a large template library and there’s even a chat feature that allows you to search across everything that’s ever been recorded. Currently, Plaud says that there are over two million users. 

Training verdict: Plaud does not train user data by default and the opt in is stated explicitly. Its LLM providers like GPT, Cluade and Gemini operate under zero-retention terms written into the DPAs, so they do not keep any transcripts. Audio and transcripts are stored locally and not on the cloud. This is only done so if a user switches on Cloud Sync. Certifications now include SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, GDPR and EN 18031, published through a Drata trust portal.

Free tier: Every physical device on offer has a free starter plan that has 300 transcription minutes per month. That’s basically five hours and any unused minutes do not carry forward to the next month. In case you run out of the minutes, recording will still work but the transcription will stop until the next cycle. 

Pricing: The Note is priced at $159 while the NotePin S is at $179 and the Note Pro at $189. The subscription then stacks on top of the hardware devices. Pro is $17.99 a month or $99.99 a year, Unlimited is $29.99 monthly or $239.99 per year. 

Pros

• Captures in-person and offline conversations nothing else here can reach
• No training by default, with zero-retention terms extending to its AI vendors
• Compliance stack is now the strongest in this roundup

Cons

• Hardware plus subscription pushes real cost past $400 in year one
• Free minutes expire monthly and don’t accumulate
• Putting a recorder on the table changes how people talk

Best for: consultants, clinicians, recruiters and anyone whose important conversations happen away from a screen.

The Read.ai Backlash 

The Washington Post reported in July 2025 on a Zoom call where a content agency owner counted six humans and ten note-taking bots. That’s the shape of the problem in one image. Read.ai is the tool that turned it into an institutional one.

The University of Washington told staff to deactivate Read.ai and blocked its Zoom and Teams integrations outright, in an advisory published July 7, 2026. The stated reason: the tool recorded meetings even when its own users weren’t in attendance, without other attendees knowing or agreeing. The University of Maryland issued a similar warning, noting that these bots automatically join future meetings, sometimes for months after someone has stopped using the tool.

The mechanism is what makes IT departments nervous. On Microsoft’s Q&A forum in March 2026, admins described Read.ai bots joining Teams meetings without the organizer approving them. Microsoft’s answer was admin-level blocks plus a CAPTCHA. A thread on r/sysadmin that drew 755 upvotes described the tool spreading across an entire tenant from one employee’s OAuth grant.

Read.ai’s position is that the bot’s visibility is the point. Its CEO has framed the awkwardness as a feature, preferring a strange moment now to lost trust later.

That’s a fair argument and it cuts both ways. A visible bot does announce itself. But the complaints above aren’t about the bot being seen. They’re about it showing up somewhere nobody invited it, which is exactly why the capture model deserves a deliberate decision rather than a default.

Recording Consent

Adoption has outrun etiquette. Metrigy’s global study of 1,100 companies found roughly 40% had deployed AI meeting assistants, with another 42% planning to within a year. A July 2026 Kolmogorov Law survey of 500 US adults, fielded through Pollfish, found notetakers present in one in three workers’ meetings, only 34.7% of users always asking permission first, and 41.8% unaware that recording laws applied to work meetings at all.

They do. Federal law and most states require only one party to consent, and that party can be you. A minority requires everyone: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington appear on essentially every 2026 list, with Nevada and Oregon appearing on some depending on whether the conversation is by phone or in person. Interstate calls follow the stricter state. Continuing to talk after clear notice generally counts as agreement.

That gap is precisely what the Otter complaint alleges: a bot recording a California participant who never consented, because the person running it only needed to consent for himself. Whether that theory holds is for the court.

The practical rule is simple. Say it out loud before anything substantive starts, and get an audible yes. Botless capture doesn’t lower that duty, it raises it, because nothing on screen will say it for you.

What AI Notes Still Get Wrong

Transcription itself is not fully solved. An Associated Press investigation in October 2024 found OpenAI’s Whisper model inventing text outright. A University of Michigan researcher studying public meetings reported hallucinations in eight of every ten transcriptions he inspected. Cornell and University of Virginia researchers examining thousands of clean audio snippets found nearly 40% of the hallucinations they identified were potentially harmful.

Whisper isn’t every tool here, and models have improved since. The failure patterns haven’t. Comments get attributed to the wrong speaker. Hedged language hardens: someone says the team could probably ship by Friday, and the summary lists a deadline with an owner. Consensus gets manufactured out of a discussion that ended unresolved.

Read the summary before you forward it. Every time.

Final Verdict: Pick Your Capture Model First

Feature comparisons in this category are mostly noise. Two decisions carry real weight.

Choose how the tool gets into the room. Bots are visible and work without you, at the cost of friction and enterprise blocks. Botless is quiet and puts disclosure entirely on you. Hardware reaches conversations software cannot.

Then read the training policy. Fathom and Granola train with an opt-out. Fireflies, Bluedot and Plaud don’t by default. Otter does, and says least about how to stop it.