6 AI Meeting Notetakers Compared: Which One Belongs in Your Call
Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, Granola, tl;dv and Read.ai cover every meeting workflow between them — free tiers, prices and real differences, so you can pick in two minutes instead of trialing for two weeks.
Surveys cited by meeting-tool vendors put it bluntly: users of AI notetakers report saving around four hours a week, and action-item completion jumps from a 50–60% baseline to 85–95%. The hard question is no longer whether to use one — it is which one.
The Six Contenders
Otter.ai is the collaboration veteran: a live transcript the whole team can highlight and annotate during the call, roughly 95% accuracy, and an AI Chat that searches your entire meeting history — an archive it can even expose to external agents over MCP. Fireflies.ai is the multilingual workflow tool: 100+ languages, and deep CRM routing, so a finished call lands in Salesforce or HubSpot with action items already attached. Fathom is the free-tier champion: unlimited recordings and transcriptions at no cost, with summaries ready about 30 seconds after a call ends — though only five AI summaries per month on the free plan. Granola flips the model: no bot joins the call. It records locally and enhances the notes you typed, rendering your words in black and AI additions in grey. tl;dv is the integration play, with 6,000+ app connections and 30+ languages, and Read.ai layers engagement analytics — talk time, sentiment — on top of transcription.
Free Tiers and Prices, Straight
Otter: free 300 minutes per month; Pro at $8.33 per user per month on annual billing. Fireflies: free 800 minutes of storage; Pro at $10 per seat per month. Fathom: free unlimited recordings, five AI summaries per month; Premium at roughly $16–19 per month. Granola: free 25 lifetime meetings; Business at $14 per user per month. tl;dv: free plan available; Pro at $18 per seat per month. Read.ai: five free meetings per month; paid from $15 per user per month. Check the current pricing page before committing — this category reprices fast.
How to Choose in Two Minutes
Three questions decide it. Would a visible bot bother the other side — client calls, board meetings? Choose Granola. Is the output feeding a sales CRM? Choose Fireflies — or Fathom if the budget is zero. Do you need one shared, searchable record for the whole team? Otter. Everything else — tl;dv for integration-heavy stacks, Read.ai for managers who want engagement data — is refinement on top of those three answers.