Otter.ai was the tool that made real-time meeting transcription feel approachable. It still does that reasonably well. But the category has moved fast: there are now tools that record without joining as a bot, tools that are permanently free, and tools that integrate with your CRM well enough to replace two separate apps. Otter's $16.99/month Pro plan has some catching up to do.
See also: Best AI Meeting Assistants 2026 (full reviews) on our sister site.
Otter.ai's free plan caps you at 300 minutes per month, which is roughly five hours of meetings. For anyone in a meeting-heavy role, that runs out fast. The Pro plan at $16.99/month removes that cap but adds another cost to the pile. More critically, Otter's live transcription quality, while solid, no longer leads the category. Fathom's summaries are sharper, Granola avoids the bot-in-the-room problem, and Fireflies does better post-meeting search. Otter is not bad; the competition has just got better.
| Tool | Best for | Free tier | Paid from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fathom | Individual users, free unlimited | Unlimited (no cap) | Team plans from $19/mo |
| Fireflies.ai | Searchable transcripts, CRM sync | 800 min storage | $10/user/mo (annual) |
| Granola | No-bot recording, Mac users | 25 meetings | $18/mo |
| Avoma | Sales teams, call coaching | No | $19/recorder/mo |
| tl;dv | Highlight clips, async sharing | Limited | $18/user/mo (annual) |
| Otter.ai (reference) | Live transcription, real-time chat | 300 min/mo | $16.99/mo (Pro) |
Fathom is the most remarkable thing in this category: a genuinely unlimited free plan for individual users. No minute cap, no credit card, no expiry. It joins Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, records, transcribes, and produces an AI summary with action items after each call. The summary quality is consistently good. Team features and CRM integrations require a paid plan, but for anyone who needs personal meeting notes and nothing more, the free plan covers everything. The fact that it has stayed free this long suggests the company is confident in the conversion rate once teams start using it.
Price: Free (unlimited, individual), Team plans from $19/user/month.
Fireflies earns its place in team settings because of how it handles search. Every transcript is indexed and searchable across your whole meeting history, which means you can find what a client said three months ago without scrolling through video. The free plan stores 800 minutes of transcripts. Pro at $10/user/month on an annual plan is one of the cheaper paid options in the category. It integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, Notion, and Slack. If your team holds a lot of client calls and needs a searchable record, Fireflies is a practical choice.
Price: Free (800 min storage), Pro from $10/user/mo (annual).
Granola takes a different approach: it records audio from your Mac's microphone locally rather than joining as a bot. That means no "Granola has joined the meeting" announcement, no participant alert, and it works on platforms where bots are not allowed or feel intrusive. The AI notes combine your own rough notes with the audio transcript, which produces output that is more useful than a raw transcript. The free plan covers 25 meetings. After that, paid plans start at $18/month. Mac-only at the time of writing, which is a real limitation if your team is mixed platform.
Price: Free (25 meetings), paid from $18/mo. Mac only.
Avoma is built for teams where meeting intelligence feeds into a sales pipeline. Beyond transcription and summaries, it offers call scoring, deal intelligence pulled from call patterns, and coaching tools that flag moments where a rep talked over a prospect or missed a buying signal. The integration with CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot is bidirectional: it pulls context in and pushes notes out. At $19/recorder seat/month, it is priced for professional sales teams, not casual note-taking. If you need what it does, it is worth it; if you just need summaries, it is overkill.
Price: Startup from $19/recorder seat/mo.
tl;dv stands for "too long; didn't view," and that tells you what it is best at: creating shareable clips from long meetings so people who were not there can catch up in two minutes rather than sixty. The clip and highlight reel features are the most polished in the category. The free plan has limits on AI-generated notes; Pro at $18/user/month on annual billing unlocks unlimited summaries, multi-meeting reports, and 5,000-plus integrations. It is a strong choice for any team that regularly needs to share meeting highlights with colleagues who were not in the room.
Price: Free (limited AI notes), Pro from $18/user/mo (annual).
Pick Fathom if you want the best free plan with no catches, Fireflies for team-wide searchable transcripts, Granola if you want no-bot recording on a Mac, Avoma for sales coaching and pipeline intelligence, and tl;dv for creating shareable highlight clips from long calls.
Yes. Fathom's individual free plan includes unlimited recording, transcription, and AI summaries across Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams with no minute caps and no credit card required. It is one of the most generous free plans in any software category.
Otter.ai is stronger for live transcription during the call and includes a conversational AI assistant you can query mid-meeting. Fireflies is stronger for post-meeting search, CRM integration, and team-wide searchable transcript libraries. Fireflies' free plan is also more generous.
Yes. Granola captures audio locally from your Mac without sending a bot into the meeting. That means no bot joining announcement, no participant notification, and it works on any platform without permission from the meeting host.
Avoma is the most purpose-built for sales, with call coaching, pipeline tracking, deal intelligence, and CRM sync. tl;dv also has strong sales features including highlight reels and multi-meeting summaries. Both are more expensive than note-takers aimed at general use.