Updated September 2026

The best AI meeting note takers in 2026

An AI note taker records a meeting and writes the notes. The useful split is not the logo. It is where the audio goes, and whether a bot joins the call. Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, and Read send a bot and keep the meeting in their cloud. Granola, Jamie, and Krisp skip the bot and still process the notes off your machine. Private Notetaker and a short list of local apps transcribe on the computer.

Disclosure: we make Private Notetaker, so this page argues for the local option when confidentiality is the requirement, and it says when a cloud tool is the better buy. Cloud facts are from each vendor's published pages. The original set was checked 16 September 2026, Read on 21 September, the local peers on 23 September, and Krisp, Avoma, Fellow, and Jamie on 30 September 2026.

What to judge a note taker on

Where the audio is processed. Cloud tools send the meeting to the vendor. Local tools run speech-to-text on your Mac or PC. Bot-free is a third label people mix up with local. Granola, Jamie, and Krisp can record without joining the call, and the transcript is still produced on their side.

Whether anyone else can see the recorder. A bot in the participant list is obvious. A desktop capture is not. Obvious is better when you need consent to be visible. Invisible is better when a bot changes how the room talks, and you have already told people you are recording. The legal duty does not depend on the participant list.

Transcript, or meeting minutes. A transcript is the words. Meeting minutes are the decisions, the owners, and the dates. Most AI note takers try to write both. A transcription app such as MacWhisper stops at the words unless you add a summary step. If you need minutes, check that the product actually writes them, on the plan you will pay for.

Who else needs the notes. Avoma and Fellow are built so a team can read the meeting later, push it to a CRM, or walk in with an agenda. A local app is built so nobody else has a copy. If you need a team archive and a private machine copy, those are two tools, plus a rule for which meetings are allowed in the cloud one.

Shortlist

Private Notetaker is first because it is the on-device notes pipeline, and because we sell it. The next rows are the cloud products people mean when they search for a note taker. Local peers are under the table, with the Mac roundup linked, so this page does not pretend to re-review them.

App	Where the meeting is processed	Bot	Price
Private Notetaker	On your Mac or Windows PC, including offline	Never	$15/mo or $149 once
Otter	Processes and stores your meetings on Otter's servers	OtterPilot bot joins your calls	$16.99/mo (or $8.33/mo billed annually)
Granola AI	Captures audio on your Mac, processes it with cloud AI	No bot, but your audio still leaves the machine	Free Basic; Business $14/user/mo; Enterprise $35/user/mo (checked 2026-09-16)
Fireflies	Processes and stores your meetings on Fireflies' servers	Fred the notetaker bot joins your calls	$18/mo (or $10/mo billed annually)
Fathom	Processes and stores your meetings on Fathom's servers	Fathom bot joins your calls	Free for individuals, teams from $19/user/mo
Read AI	Processes meetings in Read's cloud and stores them in your Read account	Read Assistant joins your calls	Free for 5 transcripts/mo; Pro $19.75/user/mo (or $15 billed annually)
Krisp	English transcription can run on device; recordings and notes are stored in Krisp	Bot-free by default; a bot is optional if you cannot attend	Core $16/user/mo (or $8 billed annually); 7-day trial
Avoma	Processes and stores meetings in Avoma, including bot-less recordings	Avoma Bot, or bot-less native recording	Startup $19/recorder/mo billed annually ($29 monthly); 14-day trial
Fellow	Transcripts and notes stored in Fellow, on AWS	Note Taker bot, or botless capture from the desktop app	Free for 5 AI notes lifetime; Team $7/user/mo billed annually
Jamie AI	Captured on your device; transcribed in the EU. Audio deleted after	No bot	Plus €21, Pro €39, Team €33/seat on the pricing page (docs list higher euros)

Prices are each vendor's published figure on the date in their comparison. Jamie's pricing page and Jamie's docs disagreed on 30 September 2026. The table uses the pricing page.

Private Notetaker: notes on the computer, nothing uploaded

Private Notetaker records the meeting from your machine, transcribes it with a local speech model, and writes the summary, decisions, and action items with a local language model. There is no cloud mode. Airplane mode is a fair test. No bot joins Zoom, Meet, Teams, a phone on speaker, or a conversation in the room.

It is the right row when the meeting is confidential and a shared workspace is not required. It is the wrong row when you need CRM updates, coaching scorecards, a dozen languages, or a noise filter. English only. Mac (Apple Silicon) and Windows. $15 a month or $149 once, with a 7-day trial and no card.

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Other local options

The Mac roundup, the best local AI note takers for Mac, is the sourced table for Talat, MacWhisper, Mumble, and Meetily. Two later peers are not in that table: Pandecho (on-device notes for Mac and Windows, with an optional ChatGPT summary) and Mac Note Taker (Apple Silicon, summaries via Ollama or your own key).

Talat: real-time transcription that stays on your Mac. $9/mo or $189 once.
MacWhisper: bulk local transcription for files and meetings. Free version; Pro is a one-time purchase (EUR 64).
Mumble: a voice workspace with a planned fully local mode. Meeting-notes pricing not published; dictation is free, Pro $50 lifetime.
Meetily: open source and self-hosted. Free Community Edition; Pro $10/user/mo billed annually.

Use MacWhisper when you have a pile of audio files and want a local transcript on a Mac. Use Private Notetaker when the output you want is the meeting notes, on Mac or Windows, without an API key. File transcription as a topic of its own is on the transcription page.

Cloud note takers that join the meeting

These are capable products. The trade is the same on each of them: the meeting is processed on the vendor's servers, and a bot is how most people meet the product.

Otter is the default name in this category. Live transcripts, team search, OtterPilot in the call, meetings stored until you delete them. Free tier is 300 minutes a month. Otter alternatives, review.
Fireflies is the team and CRM system. Fred joins the call. Buy it when other people have to search the archive. Fireflies alternatives, review.
Fathom is the generous free plan for an individual, with unlimited recordings on Fathom's servers and a bot in the room. Fathom alternatives, review.
Read AI joins and stores the meeting report in your Read account. The free plan is 5 transcripts a month. Read AI alternatives, review.
Avoma is revenue software that takes notes: CRM fields, a scheduler, and coaching as a paid add-on. Bot or bot-less, the recording is in Avoma. Startup is $19 per recorder a month billed annually. There is no free recorder plan. Avoma alternatives, review.

Bot-free, and still not local

No extra name in the participant list. The audio, or the transcript, still leaves the machine. That can be the right trade. It is not the local one.

Granola captures on your Mac and sends the audio to cloud AI. It says it does not store the raw audio, and it does store transcripts and notes. Granola alternatives, review.
Jamie records on the device, transcribes in the EU, deletes the audio, and keeps the text. Many languages. The pricing page and the docs listed different euro prices on 30 September 2026. Jamie alternatives, review.
Krisp is noise cancellation first. Core adds a bot-free note taker and 10 GB of storage in Krisp. English transcription can run on device. Other languages go to Krisp's servers. A note taker will not replace the noise filter. Krisp alternatives, review.
Fellow can join with a bot or record from the desktop app. The product around that is agendas and a shared workspace, on AWS. The free plan is 5 AI notes per user, lifetime. Fellow alternatives, review.

Free transcription software, and what free costs

Fathom is the free cloud plan people mean: unlimited recordings for an individual, bot included, files on Fathom's servers. Otter's free plan is a monthly minute cap. Fellow and Jamie cap the number of meetings, and Krisp does not have a permanent free plan. MacWhisper's free version transcribes locally if you are on a Mac and you can live without a polished summary.

Private Notetaker's free period is 7 days, then a purchase. We would rather say that than imply a forever-free archive. Meeting minutes from a long recording are a paid feature almost everywhere, or they are paid for with the recording.

Common questions

What is an AI meeting note taker? +

Software that turns a meeting into a transcript and a written summary, usually with decisions and action items. Some tools send a bot into Zoom, Meet, or Teams. Some record on your computer and still upload the audio. A few transcribe on the computer and never upload it.

What is the best meeting transcription software? +

It depends on what you do with the transcript. Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, and Read are capable cloud transcription products, and they store the meeting. MacWhisper is the stronger pick for local file transcription on a Mac. Private Notetaker is the pick when you want the transcript and the meeting notes produced on a Mac or Windows PC, with no bot. A transcript by itself is not meeting minutes.

Do the popular AI note takers join the call? +

Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, and Read join by default. Avoma and Fellow can join, and both also offer a bot-less mode that still stores the meeting in their cloud. Granola, Jamie, and Krisp capture on the device and do not need a bot. Krisp can send one if you are not in the meeting. Private Notetaker never joins.

Which AI note takers keep audio on my computer? +

Private Notetaker runs transcription and the summary model on the machine, and the files stay on disk. MacWhisper, Talat, Pandecho, and Meetily are the other local names, with different limits, which we list on the Mac page. Granola, Jamie, and Krisp can look local because there is no bot. Their notes are still produced off the device, except for the on-device English transcription Krisp documents, which is not the same as a local archive.

Is there a free AI note taker? +

Fathom's plan for individuals includes unlimited recordings and stores them on Fathom's servers. Otter's free plan is capped at 300 minutes a month. Fellow's free plan is 5 AI notes per user, lifetime. Jamie's docs list 10 meetings a month at 30 minutes each. Krisp is a 7-day trial, not a free plan. Private Notetaker is a 7-day trial, then $15 a month or $149 once. Free, here, usually means the vendor keeps the meeting.

Is a local AI note taker HIPAA compliant? +

Private Notetaker does not claim HIPAA certification. Several cloud vendors publish HIPAA on an enterprise plan only. That is their claim to read on their page, not a reason to treat a lower tier as covered, and not a badge we are borrowing. On-device processing means we do not hold the audio. Check the requirements for your profession.

Their privacy is a policy.
Ours is architecture.

Privacy by policy

Every cloud note taker

Hosted in a chosen region, so you trust where the servers are
Encrypted in transit and at rest, so you trust the keys are handled well
Deleted on request, so you trust the deletion actually happens
“We don’t train on your data”, so you trust the pledge outlives the roadmap

Privacy by architecture

Private Notetaker

✓Audio is captured, transcribed, and summarized on your hardware
✓There is no server holding your meetings to breach or subpoena
✓Nothing to delete, because nothing was ever collected
✓No pledge required. The data simply is not there

Don't take our word for it. Turn WiFi off and watch it keep working.

Your meetings are nobody else's business.

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