Fellow review (2026): meeting agendas, with an AI note taker on top

Fellow is what you buy when the meeting itself is badly run. Agendas, reminders, notes history, action items, and then an AI recap. The note taker is real. It is not a thin wrapper around a transcript. If you only wanted a private record of one call, you are looking at a team product with a cloud archive.

We checked fellow.ai/pricing and Fellow’s help articles on botless recording and Zoom on 30 September 2026.

Who Fellow is for

Fellow is for a team that wants the meeting written down before it starts and written up after. The free plan lets a small group try agendas and a handful of AI notes. Team, Business, and Enterprise are where the note caps come off and the admin tools show up.

It is a weak fit for someone who will not put client audio in a vendor account, and for anyone who needs the notes with Wi-Fi off.

What Fellow does well

The agenda is the point, and most notetakers skip it. Collaborative agendas, note history, due dates on action items, and meeting reminders are on the pricing page across the product, not as a bolt-on. Otter will not nag you about a meeting with no agenda. Fellow will. If your problem is too many useless meetings, that is a feature, not a gimmick.

You can record with a bot or without one. The Note Taker joins the call. Botless recording, documented in Fellow’s help centre, uses the desktop app on Mac or Windows. It captures your microphone and the audio playing on the computer. No bot is admitted. Fellow’s botless page says people inside your workspace are notified, and external guests do not see a participant. Capture on the device is still not processing on the device. The recap is produced in Fellow.

The free plan is honest about being small. Five AI notes per user, for the life of the account, and five recordings. That is enough to see the product. It is not a stealth unlimited tier. Team moves you to 10 AI notes and 10 recordings per user a month. Business is where notes and recordings become unlimited, and where Salesforce and HubSpot show up.

Sales features stay on the higher plans. Keyword tracking, sales recap templates, and bot avatar customization are Business. If you need the bot’s name changed, you are already on a paid org plan. Enterprise adds transcript redaction, SSO, and the HIPAA / BAA line.

How it works

Connect a calendar. Fellow opens a note for the meeting. You can write the agenda yourself, then record. Bot recording sends the Note Taker in. Botless recording starts from the desktop app: Record, then Botless. You need microphone access and screen-recording permission so the app can hear the other people.

After the meeting you get audio, a transcript, a summary, and action items on that note. Ask Fellow answers questions about past meetings on the plans that include it. The pricing FAQ says data is hosted on Amazon Web Services, and each person only sees what they are allowed to see.

One dated constraint, from Fellow’s own help article: Zoom is due to enforce app authorization on 14 October 2026. After that, the Fellow Note Taker cannot join a Zoom meeting unless someone on the call has authorized the Fellow Zoom app. Fellow says botless desktop recording and Zoom native capture keep working. If the bot is how your team records Zoom, read that article before October.

Pricing

As checked 30 September 2026:

Plan	What was published
Free	$0. 5 AI notes and 5 AI recordings per user, lifetime. Max 5 seats on the feature table
Team	$7 per user a month annually, or $11 monthly. 10 AI notes and 10 recordings per user a month. Max 20 seats. Project-tool integrations
Business	$15 annually, or $23 monthly. Unlimited AI notes and recordings. CRM, keyword tracking, bot avatar. Max 50 seats
Enterprise	$25 per user a month, annually. Starts at 10 users. SSO, redaction, HIPAA / BAA

A 14-day trial of paid features is mentioned in Fellow’s help centre, with no card, dropping you back to Free. Confirm the banner in the app. We are not repeating a Solo price, because the pricing page we loaded listed these four plans and not a separate Solo row.

Privacy

Botless capture happens on your computer. The transcript, the summary, and the recording library live in Fellow, on AWS. That is the same shape as Granola in one respect and not in another. Granola also keeps you off the participant list and still processes in the cloud. Fellow will also put a bot in the room if you ask it to.

The pricing page lists GDPR and SOC 2 Type II. HIPAA / BAA is grouped with Enterprise controls, not with the free plan. Private Notetaker does not claim HIPAA certification.

Fellow’s botless marketing says external guests are not notified by Fellow. Your duty to tell them does not move. Recording consent is yours, whatever the participant list shows. We wrote that up in meeting recording consent.

Who should skip Fellow

Skip it if you wanted a notepad for one person and the workspace is overhead. Skip it if 5 lifetime AI notes is what you hoped “free” meant for a year of client calls. It is not. Skip it if the audio and the transcript need to stay on the machine. Botless does not give you that.

Stay if the team needs agendas, a shared record, and a recap, and a cloud account is an acceptable place for it. Fellow is good at that. A local app is not trying to be.

When Private Notetaker is the better fit

Private Notetaker records on your Mac or Windows PC, transcribes on the device, and writes the summary and action items there. No bot. No AWS account holding the meeting. It works offline. $15 a month or a $149 lifetime license, 7-day trial, no card.

You do not get agendas, meeting policies, a shared workspace, or CRM updates. English only.

The side-by-side is Private Notetaker vs Fellow. The longer list is Fellow alternatives. Category context is the best AI meeting note takers.

Fellow prices, note caps, seat maximums, and the Enterprise HIPAA line from fellow.ai/pricing, checked 30 September 2026. Botless behaviour from Fellow’s help centre, same date. The Zoom authorization date is Fellow’s, 14 October 2026. Confirm both pages before you commit the team to the bot.