The best AI meeting assistants and note takers in 2026

An AI meeting assistant listens to your calls, writes the transcript and turns it into notes, decisions and next steps, so you can pay attention to the people instead of your keyboard. The best AI meeting assistants in 2026 differ less in how well they summarize than in three practical things: how they capture the call (a bot that joins, or your own computer's audio), what they cost per person, and where your recordings end up.

This guide compares nine of them, with prices from each company's own page as of September 2026, and says plainly who each one suits.

The quick answer

• Granola: the best choice for polished notes without a bot in the call, on Mac, Windows and phones.
• Otter.ai: the best for live transcripts you can read while people talk.
• Fireflies.ai: the best for teams that want every call's notes in their CRM and other tools.
• Fathom: the best free plan, with no cap on the calls you record.
• Read AI: the best for summaries plus feedback on how your meetings run.
• Barside: the best for private transcripts made on your own computer, including on Linux, with follow-up written by the AI account you connect.
• Zoom Workplace AI (formerly AI Companion), Gemini in Google Meet and Microsoft Teams with Copilot: the simplest option when your whole team already meets on that platform.

How we chose

We compared the tools on what matters in the week after a meeting, not on a demo:

• Capture. Does it join as a bot, record your computer's audio, or live inside one meeting platform? This decides whether guests see it and whether it can attend without you.
• Output. Speaker labels, languages, summaries, action items and search across past meetings.
• Price. The free plan's real limits and the first paid plan, per person, from the official pricing pages as of September 2026.
• Privacy. Where the audio and transcript are processed and stored, and who controls them.
• Platforms. The computers and phones it runs on, and the meeting apps it works with.

We did not invent accuracy scores or ratings. Every product fact comes from the company's own pages, listed under Sources at the end.

The best AI meeting assistants at a glance

The 9 best AI meeting assistants, reviewed

1. Granola

Granola is an AI notepad for meetings. You type rough notes while you talk, Granola listens to your computer's audio, and afterwards it turns your notes and the transcript into complete meeting notes. No bot joins the call. It runs on Mac (macOS 14 or later), Windows, iPhone and Android, connected to a Google or Microsoft account.

Best for: people in back-to-back meetings who want good notes without announcing a bot to every guest.

Strengths:

• Works with any meeting app, because it captures device audio instead of joining the call.
• Your own notes steer the result, so the summary reads like your notes rather than a generic recap.
• AI chat within one meeting or across all of them, shared folders and your own note templates.
• The free plan includes several languages and lets you opt out of model training.

Limits: the free Basic plan keeps 30 days of meeting history. Integrations (Notion, HubSpot, Zapier, Affinity and Attio), the API and MCP access need Business. There is no Linux app.

Price (as of September 2026): Basic is free. Business is US$14 per user a month. Enterprise, with SSO, SCIM and HIPAA compliance, is US$35 per user a month.

Leaving Granola? Barside imports the CSV that Granola emails you (Settings → Profile → Generate CSV in Granola). Granola says the file holds each note's title, summary and transcript, including notes older than the 30 days the free plan shows. Each meeting becomes a note with its attendees, summary and transcript. The Granola alternative guide walks through it.

2. Otter.ai

Otter.ai writes live transcripts with speaker identification, answers questions about your conversations with AI chat, and transcribes meetings on Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet. You can send its note taker to a meeting, or record bot-free from its desktop app for Mac and Windows. It also runs on the web, on iPhone and Android and as a Chrome extension, and it transcribes English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese (Simplified).

Best for: anyone who wants to read the transcript during the meeting, and teams that meet on Zoom, Teams or Meet.

Strengths:

• Live transcription with speaker labels, so a latecomer can scroll back and catch up.
• A usable free plan: 300 transcription minutes a month.
• Business allows meetings up to 4 hours, audio and video imports without a monthly cap, and joining 3 meetings at the same time.

Limits: on the free Basic plan each conversation stops at 30 minutes, and you get 3 file imports in total. Pro allows up to 90 minutes per meeting. Six languages is fewer than Fireflies.ai or Read AI offer.

Price (as of September 2026): Basic is free. Pro is US$16.99 per user a month, or US$8.33 a month billed yearly. Business is US$30 a month, or US$19.99 a month billed yearly. If you are weighing a move, read the Otter.ai alternative guide.

3. Fireflies.ai

Fireflies.ai invites its note taker, Fred, into your calls, or records your computer's system audio without a bot through its desktop app for Mac and Windows, then writes a transcript, AI summaries with action items and searchable notes. Bot-free recordings keep the transcript and summary but no audio or video file. It transcribes more than 100 languages with automatic language detection, has iPhone and Android apps and a Chrome extension for Google Meet, and connects to more than 50 apps.

Best for: sales, customer success and recruiting teams that want each call's notes to land in the tools they already use.

Strengths:

• Summaries with an overview, detailed notes and action items, even on the free plan.
• Soundbites, playlists and search across meetings.
• Integrations with video tools, dialers such as Aircall and RingCentral, CRMs and project tools.

Limits: the free plan stores 400 minutes of meetings per seat in total, not per month, so you delete old meetings to make room. Each summary on the free plan uses a transcription credit, and a new account starts with 3 to 10 of them, depending on where you sign up. The free plan also includes 20 AI credits a month for features such as AskFred, and downloading transcripts needs a paid plan. Some guests dislike a bot in the call.

Price (as of September 2026): Free. Pro is US$10 per seat a month billed yearly, or US$18 monthly. Business is US$19 billed yearly, or US$29 monthly. Enterprise is US$39 a month billed yearly.

4. Fathom

Fathom records, transcribes and summarizes Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls, and Slack huddles. It joins as a bot, and on a Mac its desktop app can now capture calls without one; Fathom says bot-free capture is Mac-only for now.

Best for: individuals and small teams who want a free plan that does not run out.

Strengths:

• The free plan does not cap how many calls you record and transcribe, and it includes instant AI summaries, clips, playlists and search across calls.
• Premium adds advanced summaries, AI action items and a conversational assistant for questions about your calls.
• Business adds CRM field sync, a deal view and coaching scorecards for sales teams.

Limits: AI action items and the advanced summaries need Premium. Global search across calls, highlight playlists and team comments and folders need Team, and CRM sync needs Business.

Price (as of September 2026): Free. Premium is US$20 per user a month, or US$16 billed yearly. Team (two users or more) is US$19, or US$15 billed yearly. Business is US$34, or US$25 billed yearly.

5. Read AI

Read AI writes transcripts and summaries for Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, and adds a meeting coach that gives feedback on how your meetings run. It has iPhone, Android, Windows and Mac apps and a Chrome extension, and Read AI lists 20+ languages.

Best for: managers who want the notes and an honest look at how their meetings go.

Strengths:

• The meeting coach, next to transcripts, summaries and search, on every plan.
• File uploads on paid plans, from 100 a month on Pro.
• Premium integrations with Notion, Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, Confluence and Zapier, plus webhooks.

Limits: the free plan covers 5 meetings a month. The premium integrations need Pro, and audio and video playback need Enterprise. HIPAA compliance is on Enterprise+, with 5 licenses at least.

Price (as of September 2026): Free for 5 meetings a month. Pro is US$19.75 per user a month, or US$15 billed yearly. Enterprise is US$29.75, or US$22.50 billed yearly. Enterprise+ is US$39.75, or US$29.75 billed yearly.

6. Barside

Barside is a free desktop app for notes, tasks, reading and meetings that keeps your library on your computer. It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac; on a Mac, recording a call's computer audio needs macOS 14.2 or later. For meetings it does two jobs: it transcribes any call you hear on your computer, and then the AI you connect turns the transcript into follow-up work.

How it works:

1. In Assistant settings, choose Install speech once. It downloads the Whisper speech engine (about 150 MB) and needs no AI key.
2. Choose Transcribe a call in the Assistant or on the desktop bar, then Start recording. Barside records your microphone and your computer's audio, so it works with whatever app plays the call.
3. The audio is written down on your computer in 30-second pieces and added to the note as you talk, with times and You or Others labels, like [03:12] You: ….
4. Choose Stop & save, then open Meeting follow-through with the button next to the note's title.

Meeting follow-through sends the transcript to the AI you connected in Settings → AI (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or OpenRouter). It returns a summary, quoted decisions, proposed tasks with the owners and deadlines people said out loud, and a recap draft you can edit. You check the owners, pick reminder times, and saving makes a recap note plus one note per task. Barside never sends the recap for you. The full walkthrough is in meeting follow-up and action items.

Strengths:

• Speech turns into text on your computer. The audio pieces stay in the note as files you can replay and trim, and nothing is uploaded to transcribe them.
• English is built in. Assistant settings → Speech language adds automatic detection and 34 more languages with a one-time 141 MB download.
• The optional meeting agent (After each call transcript, prepare a follow-up, off by default) proposes tasks, reminders and a recap email that wait in one approval inbox. See AI agents that ask before they act.
• Barside has its own free video meetings for up to 6 people, with live captions written on each person's computer and a meeting note with the transcript and chat when it ends.
• Transcripts are part of your library: the search bar finds them, and AI search answers questions from them with sources. Open commitments show up in your daily briefing.

Limits: speakers are labelled only You and Others, based on which audio channel is louder, so Barside does not name each person. There is no bot, so it cannot attend a meeting you are not in. Summaries need your own AI account, which bills you for what it uses. There is no phone app, no shared team library of calls and no CRM sync.

Price: free. Your AI company bills the follow-through it runs. Barside Plus (US$20 a month or US$200 a year, plus sales tax) adds cloud backup, sync and cloud agents, and meetings do not need it.

7. Zoom Workplace AI (formerly AI Companion)

Zoom retired the AI Companion name in June 2026, but the meeting features it covered are still built into Zoom Workplace. Zoom writes meeting summaries and answers your questions during a meeting. Its AI note taker, My Notes, records your device's microphone and system audio without a bot, so it also works in Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and other meeting apps, and in person.

Best for: teams that already hold their meetings on Zoom.

Strengths: nothing extra to install or pay for on paid Zoom plans, which include meeting summaries, in-meeting questions and AI note-taking with no monthly cap. My Notes covers calls in other meeting apps too, with no bot in the participant list.

Limits: meeting summaries cover the Zoom meetings you host. The free Basic plan gets summaries and in-meeting questions for 3 hosted meetings a month, 3 uses of AI note-taking and 20 AI queries, and Basic meetings end after 40 minutes. For other meeting apps, My Notes runs in the Zoom Workplace app on Windows and macOS or in the web app. Zoom's AI agents and larger workflows are sold separately as ZoomMate.

Price (as of September 2026): included with Zoom Pro, US$16.99 a month or US$14.16 a month billed yearly. Business is US$21.99, or US$18.33 billed yearly. ZoomMate, the paid add-on with 2,200 AI credits a month, is US$20 per user a month, or US$16.67 billed yearly. Comparing meeting apps instead? See the Zoom alternative guide.

8. Gemini in Google Meet

In Google Meet, Take notes for me writes the meeting's notes into a Google Doc and shares them with the team. Summary so far helps people who join late, and the organizer gets an email with a link to the recap.

Best for: teams on Google Workspace.

Limits: Meet only. You can start it from a computer or the Meet app on a phone, but Summary so far is not available in the Android and iPhone apps. Each meeting uses one spoken language, from English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. It needs an eligible Workspace edition or Google AI plan: on the Workspace pricing page, Gemini in Meet is part of Business Standard, Business Plus and Enterprise, not Business Starter.

Price (as of September 2026): included in eligible plans, with no separate price.

9. Microsoft Teams with Copilot

Intelligent recap in Teams shows AI meeting notes, recommended tasks, markers for when your name came up, a speaker timeline and chapters, in the meeting's Recap tab.

Best for: organizations that run on Microsoft 365.

Limits: it needs a Teams Premium or Microsoft Copilot license on top of a Microsoft 365 plan with Teams, and an admin must allow transcription (and recording, for the full recap). It covers Teams meetings and calls only.

Price (as of September 2026): Microsoft 365 Copilot Business is listed at US$18 per user a month paid yearly, a discount from US$21 that Microsoft offers from July 1 to December 31, 2026, or US$25.20 paid monthly. It needs a separate license for a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan.

Bot or no bot: how AI meeting assistants capture a call

The biggest practical difference between these tools is not the summary. It is how they hear the meeting.

1. A bot joins the call (Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, Fathom, Read AI). It appears in the participant list and records everyone. It can attend when you cannot, which is its main advantage. Some hosts do not admit bots, and every guest can see it in the participant list.
2. Your own device records (Granola, the Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai desktop apps, Fathom's bot-free capture on Mac, Zoom's My Notes, Barside). Nothing joins the call. The app records your microphone and what your computer plays, so you have to be in the call on that computer, but it works with any meeting app, a phone call on your computer or a webinar.
3. The meeting platform does it (Zoom's meeting summaries, Gemini in Google Meet, Teams intelligent recap). There is nothing to install, but it only works inside that platform, and your admin decides who gets it.

If your meetings are mostly with outside guests, a device-audio tool avoids the awkward "who is this bot?" moment. If you often send someone else to a meeting, a bot is the only kind that can go without you.

How to choose an AI meeting assistant

Start from the job, not the feature list:

• You want polished notes and no bot: Granola on Mac, Windows or your phone, or My Notes if you already pay for Zoom. On Linux, Barside.
• You need to read the transcript live: Otter.ai.
• Your calls feed a CRM: Fireflies.ai, or Fathom Business.
• You want to pay nothing: Fathom's free plan. Barside if you only need transcripts, which need no AI key, or already pay for an AI account.
• You want the audio to stay on your computer: Barside.
• Your company runs on Zoom, Google or Microsoft: the assistant built into that platform, before you buy another seat.
• You meet in several languages: Fireflies.ai (more than 100), Read AI (20+) or Barside (English plus 34 more with the multilingual model).

Check two costs before you commit. Per-person pricing multiplies across a team, so compare the yearly total. And read the free plan's real limit: 30 days of history, 400 minutes of storage and 5 meetings a month are very different things.

Recording, consent and privacy

Tell people before you record, and stop if anyone objects. In some places the law requires consent from everyone in the call. Barside's call screen shows the reminder "Let call participants know before recording" next to Start recording.

Know what your computer is capturing. Barside's computer audio includes everything that plays on the computer, not only the meeting app, so silence other tabs and notifications first.

Know where the audio goes. Cloud assistants upload your audio or video to their servers to transcribe it. Barside writes the transcript on your computer and keeps the audio and text in your library, so nothing is uploaded to transcribe it. The transcript goes to the AI company you connected only when you use an AI feature on it, such as follow-through or an AI search answer, under that company's data policy. If you turn on cloud sync or cloud backup with Barside Plus, your notes and their audio files are stored on Barside's servers too. The privacy page explains recordings and transcripts, and the section on the AI you connect explains what goes to it.

Moving between meeting assistants

Switching is easier than it looks, because meeting notes are mostly text:

1. Export what you want to keep. Granola emails a CSV of your meetings. Most tools let you copy a transcript, and some, such as Fireflies.ai, need a paid plan to download one.
2. In Barside, open Settings → Import notes and pick the file. You see a preview before anything is added, and nothing is uploaded. See import notes from Notion, Evernote and Obsidian for every format Barside reads.
3. Run Meeting follow-through on any imported transcript to turn it into tasks and a recap.

If your main need is turning recordings and files into text rather than running meetings, read the best transcription apps. To see Barside's approach from the first word to the last task, start with how it can transcribe calls on your computer.