You finish a 45-minute client call, and the only notes you have are three words and a phone number. Now you have to remember who promised what, write the follow-up email and update your CRM.

Multiply that by 10 calls a week and you lose hours to admin that earns you nothing.

An AI meeting note taker records the conversation, writes a clean summary with action items and lets you search every past call like an inbox. Fathom says its automatic notes save an average of 38 minutes per meeting.

Most of these tools have a free plan, and the paid ones start under $10 a month. We checked every official pricing page below in October 2026.

Here are the 8 best picks, and who each one suits.

What’s the Best AI Meeting Note Taker?

Prices checked October 2026. Starting prices use annual billing unless noted.

1. Fathom

Best for: Owners and solo consultants who want unlimited call recording without paying anything

Fathom joins your Zoom, Google Meet or Teams calls, records them and sends a summary seconds after you hang up. Its free plan has unlimited recordings and transcripts, which is rare in this category.

Fathom says it is used at 500K+ companies and is now part of Superhuman. A 2-person consulting firm could run every discovery call through the free plan, then share a 30-second clip of the client’s key request with the team instead of retyping it.

Key Capabilities

• Unlimited free recording: Record and transcribe as many calls as you like without watching a minute counter.
• Instant AI summaries: Get a recap in your inbox right after the call, with advanced templates (like BANT for sales) on paid plans.
• Ask Fathom: Ask questions about a call in a chat window, such as “What budget did they mention?”, with limited use on the free plan.
• Bot or bot-free capture: Choose a visible note taker or record from your Mac without a bot (bot-free is in beta).

Works With

Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, HubSpot, Salesforce, Asana, Slack, Zapier, Make, ChatGPT and Claude.

Bottom line: Pick Fathom if you want the best free plan and simple, fast summaries. Skip it if you need bot-free recording on Windows today.

2. Otter.ai

Best for: Solo owners who want a full-featured note taker for under $10 a month

Otter.ai is one of the best-known AI transcription apps. It joins your online meetings, writes live notes and lets you record in-person conversations from the iOS and Android apps.

Otter’s free Basic plan gives you 300 transcription minutes a month, capped at 30 minutes per conversation. A real estate agent could record client walkthroughs on a phone and get a summary of every feature the buyer liked before reaching the car.

Key Capabilities

• Live transcription: Follow the transcript in real time and highlight key moments while the call is still going.
• Otter AI Chat: Ask questions across all your meetings, then have Otter draft follow-ups or reports from the answers.
• Pre-call briefs: Get a short brief before a meeting with past discussions and open action items.
• Live Assist coaching: Get prompts during calls based on your past conversations and company playbook.

Works With

Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier, Dropbox and an MCP server for AI assistants.

Bottom line: Pick Otter.ai if you want the lowest paid price and a great mobile recorder. Skip it if your meetings regularly run past 90 minutes or happen in less common languages.

3. Fireflies.ai

Best for: Growing teams that want meeting notes pushed into their CRM, project tools and Slack automatically

Fireflies.ai sends its note taker (named Fred) to your calls, then transcribes, summarizes and files the notes wherever your team works. Fireflies says it is used across 1 million+ companies and transcribes in 100+ languages.

It also pulls in phone calls from dialers like Aircall and RingCentral. A 6-person agency could have every client call land in HubSpot and Slack with action items already split by person.

Key Capabilities

• AskFred assistant: Ask any question about one meeting or all of them and get answers with timestamps.
• 200+ AI Skills: Run ready-made prompts that pull out things like follow-up emails, candidate scores or objections.
• Conversation intelligence: See talk time, sentiment and topic trackers on the Business plan.
• Unlimited integrations: Connect CRMs, task tools and Slack on Pro and above.

Works With

Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and 10+ other meeting apps, Aircall, RingCentral, HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack, Asana and an MCP server.

Bottom line: Pick Fireflies.ai if your team wants notes to flow into the apps you already use. Skip it if you want a bot-free experience by default.

4. Granola

Best for: Owners in back-to-back calls who want polished notes without a bot joining the meeting

Granola works like a notepad on your computer. You jot rough notes during the call, Granola listens to your device audio, and when the call ends it turns your notes plus the transcript into a clean summary.

Because it uses your computer’s audio, no bot shows up in the call, and it works with any meeting app. A freelance designer could type “logo too busy, wants blue” during a client call and get a full brief afterwards.

Key Capabilities

• AI-enhanced notes: Your quick notes become a structured summary with next steps.
• Pre-meeting briefs: On Business, Granola preps a brief before external meetings with who is attending and what you discussed last time.
• Follow-up emails: Business users get a drafted follow-up after each call.
• Chat across meetings: Ask questions about one meeting or your full history.

Works With

Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and any meeting app on your computer, plus Slack, Notion, HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, Zapier and MCP (Claude, ChatGPT).

Bottom line: Pick Granola if you like taking your own notes and want AI to finish them without a bot. Skip it if you need video recordings of your calls.

5. Read AI

Best for: Owners and managers who want feedback on how they run meetings, not just notes

Read AI takes notes like the others, but it also scores your meetings. Every report includes a personal coach with metrics like talking speed, filler words and engagement.

Read AI’s search also covers your email and messages, not just meetings. A small sales team lead could see who talks too much on demo calls and find a client’s last email request from the same search box.

Key Capabilities

• Meeting reports: Get a summary, topics, action items and key questions for every call.
• Personal meeting coach: See talk speed, filler words and engagement scores to run tighter meetings.
• Ask Read search: Search across meetings, email and messages and get answers with citations.
• Live notes: Watch transcription and summaries build in real time during the call.

Works With

Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Gmail, Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Notion, Jira, Confluence, Zapier, ChatGPT and Claude.

Bottom line: Pick Read AI if you want to get better at meetings, not just remember them. Skip it if you want video replay on a budget.

6. Bluedot

Best for: Small teams where one or two people record calls and meetings happen both online and in the room

Bluedot records meetings without a bot through its Chrome extension, desktop app, phone app and even an Apple Watch app. It transcribes and summarizes in 100+ languages and says it is trusted by 100,000+ companies.

Bluedot only charges for users who record, not everyone in the workspace. A 10-person clinic where only the manager records supplier meetings would pay for one seat, not ten.

Key Capabilities

• Bot-free recording: Capture Zoom, Meet, Teams and in-person meetings without an extra guest in the call.
• Team-specific templates: Get summaries shaped for sales, recruiting, customer check-ins and more.
• AI chat across meetings: Ask questions and pull insights from many meetings at once.
• Post-meeting automation: Update your CRM, Notion or ATS automatically after a call.

Works With

Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Notion, Zapier, Make, CRMs and ATS tools (Business), Claude and ChatGPT.

Bottom line: Pick Bluedot if only a few people in your business record meetings and some of them happen face to face. Skip it if you want a long free trial period.

7. Notta

Best for: Businesses that meet clients or suppliers in more than one language

Notta transcribes meetings, files and even YouTube links in 58 languages, and it can translate live during a call. Notta says it has 10M+ users.

It can join with a bot or record bot-free from its desktop app. An import business could hold a call with a supplier in Spanish and get the summary in English, using the translation add-on.

Key Capabilities

• Real-time translation: Translate speech during a meeting, with bilingual transcripts side by side (add-on).
• AI notes and follow-up emails: Get summaries, action items and an email draft after each call.
• Document builder: Turn a meeting into a PDF, Word file, spreadsheet or slides.
• Bot or bot-free capture: Use the meeting bot or record on your Mac or Windows computer.

Works With

Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Slack, Notion, Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, Google Drive and Zapier.

Bottom line: Pick Notta if your meetings switch between languages. Skip the free plan as a long-term option, since 3 minutes per recording is only enough to test it.

8. Jamie

Best for: Consultants, accountants and law firms that need private, bot-free notes with EU data storage

Jamie runs on your laptop or phone, so no bot joins the call, and it works with any meeting platform and in person. Its focus is privacy: data stays in the EU, audio is streamed and never stored, and it is ISO 27001 certified and GDPR compliant.

Jamie writes notes in 99+ languages and says it saves 5 hours per person every week. A small accounting firm could record client tax meetings without worrying about audio files sitting on someone else’s server.

Key Capabilities

• Bot-free capture: Records from your device on Zoom, Teams, Google Meet or face to face.
• Speaker recognition and memory: Learns voices so notes say who said what.
• Ask Jamie chat: Ask questions across all your meetings on every plan, including free.
• Automated workflows: Update your CRM and draft follow-ups after a meeting, with a review step if you want it.

Works With

Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and in-person meetings, plus Google Docs, Notion and OneNote (all plans), and Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Attio, Asana, webhooks and MCP on Pro.

Bottom line: Pick Jamie if client confidentiality matters more than price. Skip it if you just need cheap notes for internal calls.

What to Look For in an AI Meeting Note Taker

Every tool here writes a decent summary. The differences that cost you money or time are in the details:

• Free plan limits: Fathom records unlimited calls for free, while Read AI stops at 5 meetings a month and Notta cuts each recording at 3 minutes.
• Bot or no bot: Granola, Jamie and Bluedot record from your device, so no extra guest joins the call. Fathom, Otter, Fireflies and Read AI mainly send a bot, which some clients find awkward.
• Meeting length caps: Otter Pro stops at 90 minutes per meeting and Bluedot Basic at 1 hour. If you run long workshops, check this first.
• CRM sync: If you sell, you want notes in HubSpot or Salesforce without copy and paste. Fathom Business, Fireflies Pro and Read AI Pro all push notes into a CRM.
• Languages: Fireflies and Bluedot cover 100+ languages, Notta lists 58 and Otter’s transcription covers 6. Check yours before you pay.
• Per-seat pricing: Most tools charge every user. Bluedot only charges people who actually record, which helps a team where one person runs all the calls.
• Privacy and data storage: Jamie keeps data in the EU and never stores audio. Granola deletes audio after transcription. That matters for lawyers, accountants and consultants.

Which AI Meeting Note Taker Should You Choose?

• If you want to pay nothing, pick Fathom. Its free plan has no recording cap.
• If you want the cheapest paid plan, pick Otter.ai Pro or Notta Pro (both just over $8 a month billed annually).
• If you run a 3 to 15 person team and use a CRM, pick Fireflies.ai Pro or Fathom Team.
• If clients dislike bots joining the call, pick Granola, or Bluedot if you also record in-person meetings.
• If you want feedback on how you run meetings, pick Read AI for its speaker coaching.
• If you handle sensitive client information in Europe, pick Jamie.

FAQs

Final Thoughts

Start with Fathom’s free plan this week and let it join your next five calls. If you hit a limit, or a client asks you to drop the bot, try Granola or Otter.ai next.

Once your notes run themselves, see how a meeting tool fits with the rest of your apps in our AI tool stack for a one-person business, and stop missing calls between meetings with these AI receptionists.

The post 8 Best AI Meeting Note Takers for Small Businesses (Stop Typing Notes) appeared first on Growific.