Best AI Meeting Note Takers That Actually Work (2026)

Last updated: February 2026

You’re in a meeting. You’re trying to listen, contribute, and take notes simultaneously. You fail at all three. Sound familiar?

AI meeting note-takers solve this by joining your call, recording everything, and producing a summary with action items. But after testing 6 of them across 50+ real meetings, I can tell you: some are genuinely life-changing, and some are expensive transcription tools pretending to be smart.

Here’s which ones are worth it.

The Quick Verdict

ToolBest ForAccuracyPriceRating
Fireflies.aiAll-around best95%+$10-19/mo9/10
Otter.aiReal-time collaboration93%$10-20/mo8.5/10
GranolaMinimal, privacy-focused94%Free-$10/mo8.5/10
tl;dvSales teams94%Free-$20/mo8/10
FathomFree option92%Free-$19/mo7.5/10
Read AIMeeting analytics91%$20/mo7/10

1. Fireflies.ai — Best Overall

Fireflies does everything you’d expect and a few things you wouldn’t. It joins your Zoom/Meet/Teams call, transcribes with near-perfect accuracy, generates a structured summary, extracts action items, and makes everything searchable.

What puts it ahead: the AI-powered search across all your meetings. “What did Sarah say about the Q2 budget?” — it finds the exact moment across hundreds of recorded meetings. For anyone who sits in 3+ meetings daily, this is the killer feature.

Standout features:

  • Cross-meeting search (find any topic across your entire meeting history)
  • Automatic CRM integration (logs meeting notes to Salesforce, HubSpot)
  • Custom vocabulary training (learns your company’s jargon)
  • Speaker identification is the most accurate I’ve tested
  • Slack/Notion/Asana integration for auto-posting action items

Downsides:

  • The bot joining your call can feel awkward with external clients
  • Free tier is very limited (800 min storage, no AI summaries)
  • Mobile app needs work

Pricing: Free (limited) → $10/mo (Pro) → $19/mo (Business)

Best for: Anyone in 3+ meetings per day who needs searchable meeting history.

2. Otter.ai — Best for Real-Time Collaboration

Otter’s differentiator is real-time. The transcript appears live during the meeting, and team members can highlight, comment, and add notes alongside the AI transcript as the meeting happens.

This changes the meeting dynamic. Instead of one person frantically typing notes, everyone sees the transcript in real-time and can flag important moments. Post-meeting, the AI generates a summary that incorporates both the transcript and the human annotations.

Standout features:

  • Live transcript visible during the meeting
  • Collaborative annotation in real-time
  • OtterPilot auto-joins and takes notes without you doing anything
  • Good integration with Google Calendar and Outlook
  • Decent free tier (300 minutes/month)

Downsides:

  • Accuracy drops with heavy accents or crosstalk
  • The summary quality is slightly below Fireflies
  • Can be slow to process longer meetings

Pricing: Free (300 min/mo) → $10/mo (Pro) → $20/mo (Business)

Best for: Teams that want collaborative, real-time note-taking during meetings.

3. Granola — Best for Privacy-Conscious Users

Granola takes a fundamentally different approach. It doesn’t join your call as a bot. Instead, it runs locally on your Mac, captures the audio from your system, and processes everything on-device. No bot in the meeting. No “Granola is recording” notification. No audio sent to the cloud.

The notes are generated locally, then you can optionally sync them. For meetings with sensitive content — legal, medical, executive — this matters.

Standout features:

  • No bot joining the call (invisible to other participants)
  • Local processing (audio never leaves your machine)
  • Clean, minimal interface
  • Lets you type your own notes during the meeting, then AI enhances them with transcript context
  • Mac-native app (fast, well-designed)

Downsides:

  • Mac only (no Windows yet)
  • No cross-meeting search (each meeting is standalone)
  • No CRM integrations
  • Requires decent hardware (M1+ recommended)

Pricing: Free (25 meetings/week) → $10/mo (Pro)

Best for: People who want meeting notes without the awkwardness of a bot, or who handle sensitive meetings.

4. tl;dv — Best for Sales Teams

tl;dv is built for sales. It records your calls, generates summaries, and — here’s the key part — automatically identifies sales-relevant moments: objections, pricing discussions, competitor mentions, next steps, buying signals.

For sales managers reviewing team calls, this is gold. Instead of listening to 10 one-hour calls, you review 10 AI-generated summaries with timestamped highlights of the moments that matter.

Standout features:

  • Auto-detects sales moments (objections, pricing, competitors)
  • CRM auto-fill (pushes meeting notes to deal records)
  • Clip and share specific moments (great for coaching)
  • Supports Zoom, Meet, and Teams
  • Generous free tier (unlimited recordings, AI summaries for recent meetings)

Downsides:

  • Less useful outside of sales context
  • The AI moment detection isn’t perfect (misses subtle cues)
  • Interface can feel cluttered

Pricing: Free (generous) → $20/mo (Pro)

Best for: Sales teams, account managers, anyone who does discovery/demo calls.

5. Fathom — Best Free Option

Fathom’s free tier is the most generous in this category. Unlimited recording, AI summaries, and action items — actually free, not “free for 7 days.” The catch is that advanced features (CRM sync, team features, custom vocabulary) require the paid plan.

For individuals who just want meeting notes without paying, Fathom is the answer.

Standout features:

  • Genuinely free for individual use
  • Clean, simple interface
  • Good summary quality for a free tool
  • Quick setup (works in minutes)

Downsides:

  • Team features require paid plan
  • No cross-meeting search on free tier
  • Fewer integrations than Fireflies or Otter
  • Accuracy is slightly below the top tier

Pricing: Free (individual) → $19/mo (Team)

Best for: Individuals who want free meeting notes. Period.

Do You Actually Need One?

Before you subscribe to anything, honest question: how many meetings are you in per week?

1-3 meetings/week: You probably don’t need a dedicated tool. Take notes manually or use the built-in recording features in Zoom/Meet (both now offer basic AI summaries).

4-8 meetings/week: A meeting note-taker starts paying for itself. The time saved on note-taking and follow-up emails adds up.

9+ meetings/week: You absolutely need one. At this volume, you physically cannot take adequate notes while being present in conversations. An AI note-taker isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity.

My Setup

I use Granola for internal meetings (no bot awkwardness, privacy-friendly) and Fireflies for external meetings where I need searchable records and CRM integration.

If I could only pick one: Fireflies. The cross-meeting search alone is worth the subscription. Being able to ask “what did we decide about X three weeks ago?” and get an instant answer has saved me from countless “per my last email” moments.

Affiliate links below where available. All tools tested on real meetings over 2+ months.