The best AI meeting tools in September 2026: Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, Granola, Read.ai, Krisp and more, with checked prices, free plans and bot-free options.
AI meeting tools have split into several kinds that do different jobs, and most rankings mix them up. Bot notetakers join your Zoom, Meet or Teams call as a participant, record it and send a summary. Bot-free notetakers capture audio on your own computer, so nothing appears in the call. Built-in assistants come with the meeting platform you already pay for. Sales intelligence tools analyze calls for deals and coaching, recording studios capture podcasts and interviews in high quality, and noise tools clean up your microphone. The right choice depends on which of those problems takes up most of your week.
How we built this guide: pricing pages for Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, Granola, Read.ai and Krisp were checked on September 29, 2026, and other prices come from our individual reviews, each dated. Tools were assessed from their plans and documentation rather than a side-by-side test.
| Tool | Free option | Paid plans start at | How it records | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otter.ai | 300 minutes a month, 30 minutes per meeting | Pro $8.33 a month yearly, $16.99 monthly | Bot or app | Live transcripts for team meetings |
| Fireflies | Unlimited transcription, limited summaries, 400 minutes storage | Pro $10 a seat yearly, $18 monthly | Bot or app | Searchable team meeting archive |
| Fathom | Unlimited recordings, transcripts and summaries | Premium $16 a month, Team $15 a user (2-user minimum), billed yearly | Bot, or bot-free beta on Mac | The best free plan; sales teams |
| Granola | Limited meeting history | Business $14 a user a month | Bot-free, on your device | Personal notes without a bot |
| Read.ai | 5 meetings a month | Pro $15 a user a month yearly | Bot or app | Meeting coaching and cross-app search |
| Krisp | 7-day free trial | Core $8 a user a month | On your device | Noise cancellation plus notes |
| Zoom AI Companion | Included with paid Zoom plans | No extra cost | Inside Zoom | Teams that meet only in Zoom |
| Riverside | 14-day free trial | Pro $24 a month yearly, $29 monthly | Local recording per guest | Podcasts and video interviews |
For a shared record of internal meetings, three tools compete. Fireflies has the most generous free plan of the group for transcription: unlimited transcripts in 100+ languages, with limited AI summaries and 400 minutes of storage per team. Pro, at $10 a seat a month on annual billing or $18 monthly, adds unlimited summaries, video recording, downloads, 8,000 minutes of storage per seat and integrations. Business at $19 adds unlimited storage, conversation intelligence and team analytics. Fireflies also launched Fireflies Talk, free dictation that works wherever you type.
Otter.ai focuses on live transcription you can follow during the call. Its free plan allows 300 minutes a month but caps each meeting at 30 minutes, which rules out most real meetings; Pro at $8.33 a month billed yearly raises the cap to 90 minutes, and Business at $19.99 to 240. Read.ai adds a personal meeting coach and search across meetings, email and messages, is available as a Claude connector, a ChatGPT app and an MCP server, and costs $15 a user a month on annual billing after a free plan of 5 meetings a month.
Bots in the participant list put some people off, and a growing set of tools avoid them. Granola captures audio from your own device, so it works with any meeting app and nobody sees a bot join. You type rough notes during the call and Granola enhances them with the transcript afterwards. The free Basic plan shows limited history; Business at $14 a user a month adds unlimited notes and history, advanced models, integrations with Notion, HubSpot, Attio, Affinity and Zapier, an MCP connection and API access. Granola runs on desktop, iOS, Android and Apple Watch, and lets users opt out of model training.
Fathom now offers a choice of bot-free capture, in beta on Mac, or its usual bot, and Krisp works on your computer as a virtual microphone that removes background noise and takes notes. A bot-free tool is less visible, not less of a recording: the people on the call should still know their words are being captured.
Before buying anything, check what your meeting platform includes. Zoom AI Companion comes with paid Zoom Workplace plans at no extra cost and handles meeting summaries, action items and catching up on missed parts of a call. Microsoft sells AI for Teams meetings through Microsoft Copilot, an add-on to Microsoft 365 business plans, and Google includes Gemini note-taking in Meet on Workspace plans with Gemini.
These built-in assistants are good enough for teams that meet on one platform. Their limit is scope: each sees only its own meetings. A company that uses Zoom with customers, Teams internally and Meet with partners gets more from a separate notetaker that follows every call into one searchable archive.
Sales teams need more than notes: CRM updates, deal context and coaching. Fathom Business, at $25 per user a month billed yearly ($34 monthly) with a two-user minimum, syncs fields to your CRM after each call, summarizes deals and adds coaching metrics, AI scorecards and custom summaries, and every Fathom plan carries a 90-day guarantee. Fireflies Business adds conversation intelligence and team analytics for managers at $19 a seat a month yearly.
Larger sales organizations often use dedicated revenue intelligence platforms such as Gong, which record every call as data for pipeline forecasting and coaching and are sold by quote. Fathom, bought by Superhuman in September 2026, even offers its Business plan free for the remainder of a Gong contract to teams that switch.
Researchers and journalists need accurate transcripts, not summaries. Happyscribe transcribes in more than 150 languages with optional human review for accuracy AI cannot reach, starting at $17 a month for AI minutes and around $2 a minute for human transcription, according to our review. Descript suits interviews that will be edited into audio or video, since you edit the recording by editing its transcript.
For live capture of interviews, the team notetakers above work, but check the per-meeting caps on free plans before relying on them: Otter's 30-minute free cap cuts off most interviews.
Recording content is a different job from taking notes. Riverside records each participant locally in high quality and uploads the files, so a shaky connection does not ruin the final recording; Pro costs $24 a month billed yearly or $29 monthly after a 14-day free trial. Async, formerly Podcastle, is the lower-cost alternative, priced in euros from €11.99 a month on yearly billing, and Adobe Podcast cleans up speech recorded elsewhere. A standard video-call recording sounds compressed next to any of them.
Krisp started as noise cancellation and has grown into a meeting assistant. It runs as a virtual microphone that removes background noise, records and transcribes calls and takes AI notes. Its pricing page now shows a 7-day free trial rather than a free plan, with Core at $8 a user a month, including an hour a day of accent conversion, and Advanced at $15 with unlimited accent conversion and Salesforce and ConnectWise integrations. For people calling from cafes, trains or busy homes, it improves every meeting regardless of which notetaker you use.
Recording laws differ by country and state: some require consent from everyone on a call, others from one participant. Beyond the law, participants from other companies may object to their words being stored by a third-party service. Tell people when a notetaker is recording, choose tools that announce themselves, and follow your company's policy.
Data handling differs between tools too. Look for settings that control retention and training: Granola lets users opt out of model training at any time and offers org-wide auto-deletion on Enterprise, Fireflies Enterprise offers custom data retention and a transcript-only mode, and Krisp Enterprise offers private on-device transcription. Admin features such as SSO, SCIM and HIPAA compliance usually start on business or enterprise plans.
A solo worker can get far without paying: Fathom Free for recordings and summaries of every call, plus Fireflies Free as a searchable transcript archive, covers most needs. People who dislike bots can pair Granola's free plan with occasional exports. Teams on one platform should try the AI built into Zoom, Teams or Meet before adding a subscription.
Paid plans earn their cost when meetings are long, frequent or tied to revenue. Pick the tool for the meeting type that fills most of your week, accept a looser fit for the rest, and avoid paying for several overlapping notetakers.
It depends on the meetings. For team meetings with a shared record, Fireflies or Otter. For personal notes without a bot joining the call, Granola. For a free plan with unlimited recordings, Fathom. For sales calls with CRM updates and coaching, Fathom Business or Fireflies Business. If your company already pays for Zoom, its AI Companion may be enough.
Fathom. Its free plan includes unlimited recordings and transcription with instant AI summaries. Fireflies also offers unlimited transcription for free, with limited AI summaries and 400 minutes of storage. Otter's free plan gives 300 minutes a month with a 30-minute cap per meeting, Read.ai covers 5 meetings a month, and Granola's free plan shows only limited meeting history.
Yes. Granola captures audio from your own device, so no bot appears in the participant list, and it works in any meeting app. Fathom offers bot-free capture in beta on Mac alongside its usual bot, and Krisp runs on your computer as a virtual microphone and note-taker. Bot-free tools still record other people, so the consent rules still apply.
Often not. Zoom's AI Companion comes with paid Zoom Workplace plans and handles summaries, action items and catch-up inside Zoom. Microsoft sells Copilot for Teams meetings as an add-on, and Google Workspace plans with Gemini can take notes in Meet. A separate tool earns its cost when your meetings span several platforms or you need search, analytics or CRM sync across them.
It depends on where you and the other participants are. Some places require consent from everyone on the call, others from only one person, and workplace rules add their own requirements. Tell participants when a notetaker is recording, use tools that announce themselves, and check your company's policy. This is general information, not legal advice.
For small and mid-sized sales teams, Fathom Business at $25 per user a month on annual billing adds CRM field sync, deal summaries, coaching metrics and AI scorecards, and Fireflies Business at $19 per seat a month on annual billing adds conversation intelligence and team analytics. Larger sales organizations often use dedicated revenue intelligence platforms such as Gong, which are priced by quote.
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