7 Best AI Note Takers in 2026

Key takeaways

• Granola is the best AI note taker for most people in 2026. It records from your computer's audio, so no bot joins the call, and its notes start from what you typed and fill in the rest. A Business seat is $14 a month.

• Fathom has the best free plan here: unlimited recordings, transcripts and summaries. It's the one to try first if you don't want to pay.

• If your company runs on Google Workspace, Gemini's Take notes for me is already in Meet on eligible plans. You don't need a separate tool for basic notes.

• Recording law has caught up with the category. Granola, Otter and Fireflies all face lawsuits over recording or voice data, and in states like California every person on the call has to consent to being recorded.

• For meetings in a room instead of on a call, a hardware recorder like Plaud does a better job than any app that has to hear the conversation through a laptop.

What changed in AI note takers this year

Two things moved in 2026. The first is the bot. For years the standard note taker was a bot that joined your Zoom call as an extra participant, and plenty of people found that awkward or were blocked by their IT team. Now Granola records from your own device, Fireflies can record Google Meet calls through a Chrome extension, and Fathom is testing a bot-free mode on Mac. The bot is becoming optional.

The second is the courts. A class action against Otter.ai over recording people who never agreed to it got past a motion to dismiss on its core claims in August 2026. Granola was sued in July on similar grounds, and Fireflies faces suits in Illinois over voiceprints. The tools are legal to use, and the person running one is responsible for telling everyone else on the call.

How we ranked: We weighed each tool on the quality and usefulness of its notes, how it captures the meeting (bot, device audio or hardware), what the free plan really includes, the price for one person, and what the company does with your recordings. We drew on vendor documentation, pricing pages, court filings and published reviews, all checked on October 2, 2026. We did not run a hands-on bake-off for this edition. Prices are US list prices.

The seven tools compared

1. Granola - Best overall

Granola takes the top spot because it stays out of the way. Nothing joins the call. You get a notepad that turns what you jotted down into full notes when the meeting ends.

What works: Granola listens to your computer's microphone and speaker audio, so it works with any meeting app and with in-person conversations, on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. You type rough notes as you go, and Granola expands them using the transcript, keeping your structure. Afterward you can chat with a single meeting or across all of them, apply templates for sales calls or interviews, and share folders with your team. Every plan can connect to Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor through Granola's MCP connector, though the free plan only reaches your last 30 days of notes.

What doesn't: Because there's no bot, nobody else on the call knows Granola is running unless you tell them or turn on its optional notice. That's the heart of Chamberlain v. Granola, a class action filed in federal court in San Francisco on July 30, 2026, which alleges Granola recorded people without their consent and used meeting data to train its models by default. The case is at an early stage. The free plan keeps only 30 days of history.

Best for: Individuals and small teams who want good notes without announcing a bot to every client.

How it joins: No bot. It records device audio on your own computer or phone.

Price: Free (30 days of history). Business is $14 per user per month, billed monthly, and Enterprise starts at $35 per user per month. Prices as of October 2026.

2. Fathom - Best free plan

Fathom gives away more than anyone else on this list. The free plan records, transcribes and summarizes as many meetings as you like.

What works: It works with Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams in more than 30 languages, and its bot-free beta on Mac can also capture Slack huddles. You can clip moments from a call into playlists, which is handy for sharing a customer quote with a product team. Paid plans add advanced summaries and unlimited use of Ask Fathom, the AI assistant that answers questions about your calls (the free plan gets a limited version). The Business plan syncs notes into Salesforce and HubSpot fields and adds deal views for sales teams.

What doesn't: By default Fathom joins as a bot. A bot-free mode exists, but it's a beta that runs only on Mac. Free summaries are basic, and the features sales teams want sit on the Business plan, $25 a seat billed annually ($34 monthly).

Best for: Anyone who wants a capable note taker for free, and small sales teams.

How it joins: A bot joins the call, or bot-free capture in beta on Mac.

Price: Free. Premium is $20/mo, or $16/mo billed annually. Team is $19 per user per month ($15 annually), and Business is $34 per user per month ($25 annually). Prices as of October 2026.

3. Otter.ai - Best for students and live transcription

Otter.ai is one of the oldest tools here, and its live transcript is still the main reason to pick it: you can read along during a lecture or call and highlight lines as they appear.

What works: OtterPilot joins Zoom, Google Meet and Teams calls, and the iOS and Android apps transcribe in-person conversations live. Pro raises the monthly allowance to 1,200 minutes and the per-conversation limit to 90 minutes, and its annual price works out to $8.33 a month, one of the cheaper paid plans here.

What doesn't: The free plan stops recording each conversation at 30 minutes, which rules it out for most real meetings. Otter's privacy policy says it trains its own AI on de-identified recordings and transcripts, and it lists no setting to opt out. It's also the defendant in In re Otter.ai Privacy Litigation, a class action over recording meeting participants without their consent. In August 2026 a federal judge in Northern California dismissed some claims but let the core wiretap, California privacy and Illinois biometric claims go forward.

Best for: Students and anyone who wants to read a live transcript during a lecture or call.

How it joins: A bot joins online meetings, and the mobile apps record in person.

Price: Free (300 minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation). Pro is $16.99/mo, or $8.33/mo billed annually. Business is $30 per user per month, or $19.99 billed annually. Prices as of October 2026.

4. Fireflies.ai - Best for multilingual teams

Fireflies.ai transcribes more than 100 languages and plugs into a long list of other software, which makes it the pick for teams spread across countries.

What works: Fireflies transcribes in more than 100 languages, and on the Business plan and above a multi-language mode, still in beta, handles calls that switch between languages. Its assistant, AskFred, answers questions across your meeting history, and integrations push notes into CRMs, project trackers and chat tools. If a bot isn't welcome on a Google Meet call, the Chrome extension can record without one.

What doesn't: Every plan meters AI credits, and Pro also caps storage at 8,000 minutes per seat, so heavy users can run short of one before the other. Fireflies also faces federal lawsuits in Illinois alleging it collected voiceprints without the consent that state's biometric privacy law requires. Those cases are pending.

Best for: Teams that meet in several languages, or that want notes flowing into a CRM.

How it joins: A bot joins the call, or the Chrome extension records Google Meet without one.

Price: Free (400 minutes of storage per team). Pro is $18/mo, or $10/mo billed annually. Business is $29/mo, or $19 billed annually. Prices as of October 2026.

5. Read AI - Best for searching meetings, email and chat

Read AI goes beyond meetings: it also summarizes your email and messages, so you can search one place for what was decided, wherever it was decided.

What works: Ask Read answers questions across meetings, email and chat and cites where each answer came from. It runs as a bot on calls and through desktop and mobile apps for in-person meetings, works in more than 15 languages, and on paid plans connects to Salesforce, HubSpot and Jira. Connectors for Claude and ChatGPT let you query your meetings from those assistants.

What doesn't: The free plan covers five meetings a month, which is enough to judge it but not to live on. The cross-app search is only as good as the access you grant it, and plenty of IT teams will want a review before it reads company email.

Best for: People whose decisions are spread across calls, inboxes and Slack.

How it joins: A bot joins the call, or the desktop and mobile apps record.

Price: Free (five meetings a month). Pro is $19.75/mo, or $15/mo billed annually. Enterprise is $29.75 per user per month, or $22.50 billed annually, with an Enterprise+ tier above it. Prices as of October 2026.

6. Gemini in Google Meet - Best for Google Workspace

If your team already lives in Google Meet, Gemini's Take notes for me is the note taker you don't have to buy, approve or install.

What works: Turn it on during a Meet call and Gemini writes notes into a Google Doc saved to the organizer's Drive and attached to the calendar event, then emails a link to the guests the organizer chooses. It's included with eligible Google Workspace plans, and since June 2026 with Google AI Pro and Ultra for personal accounts.

What doesn't: It only works in Google Meet. It supports eight languages, one per meeting. The output is a notes document, and it doesn't offer the cross-meeting search or CRM sync the dedicated tools do.

Best for: Teams on Google Workspace who want notes without adding a vendor.

How it joins: Built into Google Meet. Nothing joins the call.

Price: Included with eligible Google Workspace plans and with Google AI Pro ($19.99/mo) and Ultra. Prices as of October 2026.

7. Plaud - Best for in-person meetings

Plaud is a small recorder you clip on or stick to your phone, and for conversations in a room it hears better than a laptop on the far end of the table.

What works: The device records and the app transcribes and summarizes in 112 languages. Each device comes with a free Starter plan of 300 minutes a month, and paid plans raise that to 1,200 minutes or unlimited. Plaud lists SOC 2, ISO 27001 and HIPAA compliance, which matters for doctors, lawyers and consultants who record client meetings.

What doesn't: You have to buy the hardware first, and carry and charge it. For video calls the software tools above are simpler. And a device on the table is easy for others to forget about, so the same consent rules apply as with any recorder.

Best for: People who do most of their meetings face to face, such as clinicians, lawyers, field sales reps and journalists.

How it joins: A hardware recorder you carry, with a phone app for transcripts.

Price: Devices start at $159. Starter is free with a device. Pro is $17.99/mo, or $8.33/mo billed annually, and Unlimited is $29.99/mo, or $19.99/mo billed annually. Prices as of October 2026.

Didn't make the cut

Limitless: Meta bought the company in December 2025 and stopped selling its pendant.

Supernormal: now sells AI agents for agencies, including presentations and spreadsheets, with note taking as one feature among many.

Microsoft Teams with Copilot: the meeting notes are good, but they need a Teams Premium or Microsoft 365 Copilot license, both sold to businesses.

Zoom AI: meeting summaries are included with paid Zoom Workplace plans and worth turning on if you're already paying, but they cover Zoom calls only. Zoom dropped the AI Companion name in June 2026.

Notion AI Meeting Notes: records without a bot, but full use needs Notion's Business plan at $20 per member a month billed annually ($24 monthly). We cover Notion in our best AI note-taking apps roundup.

How to choose an AI note taker

Decide first whether a bot in the call is acceptable to the people you meet with. That one answer narrows the list more than any feature.

• You don't want a bot in the call: Granola, or Fathom's bot-free beta if you're on a Mac.

• You don't want to pay: Fathom.

• You need a live transcript while you listen: Otter.ai.

• You meet in several languages: Fireflies.ai.

• You're on Google Workspace: try Gemini in Meet before buying anything.

• Your meetings happen in person: Plaud.

Frequently asked questions

What's the best AI note taker in 2026?

Granola is our pick for most people, because it takes good notes without sending a bot into the call. Fathom is the best choice if you want a free plan with unlimited recordings.

Is there a free AI note taker?

Yes. Fathom's free plan records and summarizes unlimited meetings. Granola, Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai and Read AI also have free plans, with limits on history, minutes or meeting count.

Is it legal to use an AI note taker?

Yes, but recording laws apply. Some states, including California, require everyone on a call to consent to being recorded, and Illinois regulates voiceprints as biometric data. Tell people at the start of the meeting that you're recording, whichever tool you use.

Which AI note takers work without a bot?

Granola records your device's audio with no bot. Fireflies.ai can record Google Meet calls through its Chrome extension, Fathom has a bot-free beta on Mac, and Gemini in Google Meet is built into the call.

Do AI note takers train on my meetings?

Some do. Otter.ai's privacy policy says it trains its own models on de-identified customer recordings, and the lawsuit against Granola alleges training was on by default. Check whether a tool lets you turn training off before you record anything sensitive.

Can AI note takers record in-person meetings?

Yes. Granola, Otter.ai and Read AI have mobile apps that record in a room, and Plaud sells dedicated recorders that pick up a conversation better than a phone on the table.