The Best AI Meeting Note-Takers in 2026 (Free Plans Compared Honestly)
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Every AI note-taker promises the same thing: join your meetings, transcribe them, summarize the action items. The differences that actually matter are buried in the fine print — how many minutes the free plan really gives you, what a “conversation limit” means, and what the price becomes when you stop paying annually.
We compared the five most popular options on exactly those points.
TL;DR — our picks
| Tool | Best for | Starting price |
|---|---|---|
| Fireflies.ai Free: unlimited transcription, 400 min storage per team | Best free transcription, best overall | $0 / $10 per seat/mo (annual) |
| Fathom Free: advanced summaries for 5 calls/mo | Individuals with light AI-summary needs | $0 / $16 per mo (annual) |
| Otter.ai | Simple English-only workflows | $0 / $8.33 per user/mo (annual) |
| Notta 58 languages | Non-English and multilingual teams | $0 / $8.17 per mo (annual) |
| tl;dv Free AI notes: 10 meetings, lifetime | Sales teams living in a CRM | $0 / $18 per seat/mo (annual) |
How we chose
We weighted three things: what the free plan actually allows (not what the homepage implies), honest paid pricing (annual rates, since that’s what vendors quote), and the constraint most likely to surprise you after two weeks of use. Prices below are as listed by each vendor in September 2026 — always confirm on their pricing page, these change often.
1. Fireflies.ai — best overall
Fireflies is the only tool here with genuinely unlimited transcription on the free plan. The catch — and there is one — is storage: free accounts keep 400 minutes of it, and that is 400 minutes for the whole workspace, not per seat. Old meetings age out; the transcription itself keeps working. Two separate limits sit alongside it, and they’re easy to conflate: the free tier’s AI summaries are capped (Fireflies lists them only as “limited”; Pro makes them unlimited), and the 20 AI credits that power AskFred, Soundbites, and AI Skills are a shared workspace pool that doesn’t grow with headcount.
Beyond the free plan, it supports 100+ transcription languages and unlimited integrations on the Pro plan ($10/seat/month billed annually, $18 month-to-month, with 8,000 storage minutes per seat and video recording). For most teams that’s the best capability-per-dollar in this list.
Try Fireflies.ai free
Unlimited free transcription with 400 minutes of shared storage — enough to know within a week whether it fits your workflow.
2. Fathom — best free recording, with an AI-summary ceiling
Fathom’s free plan has the most generous recording allowance in the category, and we say that with no affiliate relationship — there’s no commission link here, it’s just the right recommendation for a lot of solo users. Unlimited recordings and transcriptions, plus instant AI call summaries, for one person, free.
The ceiling is on the better AI. Per Fathom’s own help center, free accounts get advanced summaries for their first 5 calls each month; after that you drop back to the general summary template until the month rolls over. AI action items and the “Ask Fathom” assistant are Premium-only regardless of how few calls you’ve had. Premium is $16/month billed annually ($20 month-to-month) and lifts both; the Team plan starts at $15/seat/month annually with a two-seat minimum.
If you’re one person taking your own meeting notes, start with Fathom — every call still gets a summary, it’s only the advanced template that’s rationed. Worth knowing before you shop around: no free tier here gives unlimited advanced summaries. Fireflies caps free AI summaries too; its free-tier strength is unlimited transcription, not unlimited analysis.
3. Otter.ai — simplest, but English-first
Otter is the name most people know, and for straightforward English meetings it’s still pleasant and reliable. The free plan gives 300 minutes/month, capped at 30 minutes per conversation, and — the one that surprises people — 3 file imports total, lifetime, not per month.
Otter Pro is $8.33/user/month billed annually, or $16.99 month-to-month (1,200 min/month, 90 min per meeting). The bigger limitation: Otter currently lists only six transcription languages — English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese. If your meetings are all in English it’s fine; if not, look at Notta.
4. Notta — best for non-English meetings
Notta covers 58 languages and its Pro tier is the cheapest of the paid plans here at $8.17/month billed annually — charged as a single $97.99 up front, or $13.99 month-to-month — with a roomy 1,800 minutes/month. Zapier integration exists but sits in the Business tier.
The free plan is effectively a demo: 120 minutes/month sounds usable until you hit the 3-minute-per-conversation cap — enough to test the transcription quality on your accent and vocabulary, not enough to take real notes. Treat free-Notta as a trial, and judge it on the Pro tier. One warning if you take Notta’s actual trial instead: it asks for a card, runs three days rather than the 30 many write-ups still claim, and auto-converts to the full $97.99 annual charge — our Notta review covers the billing complaints that follow from it.
Test Notta on your language
If your meetings aren’t in English, this is the one to trial first — 58 languages and the cheapest Pro plan of the group.
5. tl;dv — best for sales teams
tl;dv gives unlimited free recordings and leans hard into sales workflows: CRM sync, webhooks, coaching features on higher tiers. That focus is also why Pro costs $18/seat/month annually, or $29 month-to-month — roughly double the others.
The free plan needs a footnote its marketing doesn’t give it. tl;dv’s help center lists the limits plainly: your first 10 meetings get full automatic AI notes, after which only the first 10 minutes of each meeting is summarized — and those limits are for the lifetime of the account, not a monthly allowance that resets. (tl;dv’s own blog describes the same thing as “10x AI meeting notes per month”; the help center is the version that matches what accounts actually do.) Free recordings also move to archive after 3 days and are deleted after 3 months. Our tl;dv review has the full breakdown.
If you’re not running deals through a CRM, you’re paying for features you won’t open. If you are, the CRM sync alone can justify the difference.
Which one should you pick?
- Solo user, budget $0: Fathom — every call gets a summary, with the advanced template capped at 5/month. Pay $16/mo only when that cap starts biting.
- Team that transcribes a lot: Fireflies — unlimited transcription free, sane Pro pricing.
- Meetings in Spanish, Japanese, Hebrew, anything non-English: Notta.
- Sales team with a CRM: tl;dv — pay the premium for the sync.
- You just want the familiar option in English: Otter — but check the language list first.