The best AI meeting note takers, compared on what actually matters

The best AI meeting note taker depends on one thing, where you accept your meetings to be stored. For a freelancer or a small team, Fathom is the obvious entry point, because it is the only one that stays unlimited on its free plan. For a team already equipped, Fireflies remains the most complete on integrations. For an organisation answerable to a data protection officer, tl;dv, Leexi, Noota, Seedext and Modjo host in Europe, and the other five do not.

Tandem uses two of these tools daily, Fireflies and Granola. This article compares ten market products on what they give the reader, not on how Tandem works. Prices were taken from vendor pages in August 2026.

How this comparison was built

The criteria come before the first name, otherwise a ranking is only a preference in disguise. Five questions settled it, in this order.

• Where the data lives. Hosting inside the European Union changes the conversation with a legal team, and it is the first filter in France.
• What a team really costs. All these tools bill per person. The entry price says nothing about the bill for ten.
• The capture method. A bot joining the call is visible, an extension listening to your computer is not. The consequences differ.
• What happens after the meeting. Notes that stay inside the tool are almost worthless. CRM sync or automation is what makes the difference.
• What the tool cannot do. Language count, maximum meeting length and free plan limits rule out more tools than headline features ever will.

1. Fireflies, the most complete on integrations

Fireflies is the most widely installed meeting assistant on the market, and its strength is not transcription. It is what it does with the transcript afterwards. The vendor claims 20 million users across more than 500,000 organisations, and a valuation above one billion dollars reached in June 2025, with no primary fundraising since 2021.

Key features

• A bot joins Zoom, Google Meet, Teams or Webex, or an extension captures the meeting with no visible participant.
• The search engine covers every past meeting and filters by topic, date or figure mentioned.
• The AskFred assistant answers a question about one meeting or across the whole archive.
• Sync fills CRM fields, posts to Slack and triggers draft emails.
• Conversation analytics measure talk time and recurring topics, from the Business tier upwards.

Underlying model and limits

Fireflies does not publish the models it uses, and you should know that before signing an internal policy. It transcribes in more than a hundred languages, states GDPR compliance and holds a SOC 2 Type II certification. Data stays hosted in the United States, and private storage with custom retention only arrives at the Enterprise tier. Multi-language mode appears only at the Business tier.

Pricing

The free plan gives 400 storage minutes for the whole team. Pro costs around 10 € per person per month on an annual commitment, Business around 18 €, Enterprise around 36 € with a mandatory annual term. Each tier includes a bundle of AI credits, and credit add-ons renew on their own until you pause them.

What users say

Fireflies scores 4.7 out of 5 across roughly 750 reviews on the G2 marketplace, recorded in August 2026. Praise goes to the summaries and the easy onboarding. Recurring complaints target AI inaccuracy on some passages, uneven quality on long summaries and the cost as seat count grows.

My take on Fireflies

Fireflies has been running at Tandem for months, and what keeps it there is not the meeting note. It is the integrations, because they turn a summary into an action. I told the story of its manually faked product in a November 2025 edition, the founders joined calls by hand in 2017 under the name of their own bot. I still file it as a comfortable tool rather than a decisive one, and I stand by that nuance further down.

2. Granola, the quietest one in the room

Granola picked the opposite angle to everyone else. The app captures your computer audio and completes the notes you type yourself, instead of sending a robot participant into the call. It raised more than a hundred million dollars in March 2026, at a valuation above one billion, which says a lot about the market's appetite for that approach.

Key features

• Capture happens locally on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android, with no extra guest in the call.
• Your handwritten notes act as the outline, and AI fills them in with what was said.
• Note templates adapt to each meeting type, and shared folders serve team work.
• Integrations cover Attio, Notion, Slack, HubSpot, Affinity and Zapier at the Business tier.
• A preparation brief summarises the relationship history before each meeting.

Underlying model and limits

Granola does not publish its models either, referring to advanced reasoning models on paid tiers. Opting out of model training exists from the free plan, and can be set org-wide at the Enterprise tier, with automatic deletion periods. Data stays in the United States. The most cited limit remains language support, narrower than rivals, and the capped history on the free plan.

Pricing

Basic is free with limited history. Business costs 14 $ per person per month, around 13 €, and unlocks unlimited history, integrations, API access and the MCP connection. Enterprise rises to 35 $, around 32 €, for single sign-on and admin controls.

What users say

Granola shows 4.7 out of 5 on G2 in August 2026, but across only about thirty reviews. The volume is too small to draw a firm conclusion. Feedback praises simplicity and frictionless daily use. Complaints point at missing integrations and language coverage.

My take on Granola

Granola is the tool I keep open when the meeting is sensitive and a visible bot would change the conversation. It is also the only one here willing to play a supporting role, completing my notes instead of pretending to replace them. In exchange it does less than Fireflies after the meeting, and that gap shows when a CRM needs feeding.

3. Fathom, the best free plan on the market

Fathom is the anomaly of this comparison. Its free plan offers unlimited recordings and transcriptions, where everyone else counts minutes. The fathom.video domain now redirects to fathom.ai, a sign of a repositioning wider than meetings alone.

Key features

• Recordings and transcriptions are unlimited even without paying, with automatic summaries.
• Capture works with a bot or bot-free, the second mode still in beta.
• Clips and playlists let you share thirty seconds rather than a full hour.
• CRM field sync with HubSpot and Salesforce arrives at the Business tier.
• Scorecards and coaching metrics serve sales managers.

Underlying model and limits

Fathom integrates explicitly with Claude and ChatGPT, offers a public API and an MCP connection. Internal models are not detailed. Hosting is American, and the health data processing agreement only exists at the Enterprise tier. The least visible limit sits in the team tiers, billed from two people upwards, which raises the bill faster than the headline price suggests.

Pricing

The free plan already covers the essentials. Premium costs 20 $ per month, around 18 €, and 16 $ annually. Team tiers start at 19 $ per person, around 17 €, and Business rises to 34 $, around 31 €, with 25 $ annually.

What users say

Fathom scores 4.8 out of 5 across 275 reviews on Trustpilot, recorded in August 2026, and ranks among the highest rated products of its category on G2. Praise goes to transcription accuracy and support responsiveness. Complaints target exports, summary customisation and a few missing features.

My take on Fathom

I have not deployed it on a client project, so I stick to what documentation and reviews allow me to verify. On that ground, it is the only tool I recommend testing without thinking twice, because it asks for neither a card nor a minute counter. If the category does not convince you after a month with Fathom, it will not convince you elsewhere.

4. tl;dv, the European one that prices in euros

tl;dv is published by tldx Solutions GmbH, a German company, and it is the only tool here whose pricing page displays natively in euros. Its security page states that all its data centres sit in Europe, on infrastructure combining private Google Cloud, Hetzner and Wasabi.

Key features

• Recording works with or without a bot in the meeting, at the user's choice.
• Key moments are tagged during the call and shared as timestamped clips.
• Cross-meeting reports surface recurring objections and requests across an account portfolio.
• The user chooses whether AI processing happens in Europe or the United States.
• Connectors feed the usual CRM and automation tools.

Underlying model and limits

tl;dv holds a SOC 2 Type II certification and relies on ISO 27001 certified hosting providers. Models are not detailed, but the European processing option is a real differentiator against American tools. The trade-off is a product heavily geared to sales teams, which can feel oversized for individual use, and a free plan far more constrained than Fathom's.

Pricing

A free plan exists. Pro costs 29 € per person per month, or 18 € on an annual commitment. Business costs 39 € per month, or 29 € annually. Those are euros displayed by the vendor, with no conversion on our side.

What users say

tl;dv scores 4.7 out of 5 across roughly 530 reviews on G2, recorded in August 2026. Praise goes to simplicity and summary quality. Recurring complaints target recording failures, some inaccuracies and expected features that are still missing.

My take on tl;dv

I have not deployed it on a client project, so I stick to verifiable elements. They are enough to make it the first reflex when a French legal team asks where recordings go. Paying a European company in euros also avoids the discussion about currency fees and transfers outside the European Union, two topics that slow down more than one rollout.

5. Otter, the pioneer caught up by consent

Otter invented the category and remains the reference on live transcription, notably for accessibility. The product has moved towards a knowledge engine that queries every past meeting. It is also the only tool here whose consent mechanics are currently before a court.

Key features

• Transcription appears live during the meeting, serving note taking as much as accessibility.
• Search extends to connected enterprise tools, beyond meetings alone.
• Sales agents and custom AI workflows exist at the Enterprise tier.
• Audio and video file import handles recordings made elsewhere.
• Single sign-on is available, from a hundred users upwards.

Underlying model and limits

Otter's most underestimated limit is its language count. The vendor lists six transcription languages, English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese, where Fireflies claims more than a hundred. Maximum meeting length caps at 90 minutes on Free and Pro, and four hours above. Health data compliance is a paid add-on, and hosting is American.

Pricing

Basic is free with 300 transcription minutes per month and three lifetime file imports. Pro costs 16.99 $ per month, around 15 €, dropping to 8.33 $ annually, around 8 €. Business costs 30 $ per month, around 28 €, and 19.99 $ annually.

What users say

Otter scores 4.4 out of 5 across roughly 500 reviews on G2, the lowest of the ten, recorded in August 2026. Praise goes to ease of use and live transcription. Recurring complaints target recording failures and transcription errors, which explains the gap with the others.

My take on Otter

I have not deployed it on a client project, so I stick to public facts. They invite caution. In August 2025, a complaint was filed with the federal court for the Northern District of California, alleging that the tool recorded participants without accounts to train its speech recognition. The issue is not product quality, it is how responsibility is split between the vendor and you.

6. Notta, the strongest on multilingual meetings

Notta is a Japanese vendor founded in 2020, based in Tokyo, claiming more than ten million users. Its speciality is language coverage and translation, an area where American tools stay weak. It targets interviews and conferences as much as team meetings.

Key features

• Transcription covers 58 languages, with a bilingual transcription mode as a paid option.
• Transcript translation is a monthly add-on, for one or two languages.
• Custom vocabulary improves recognition of proper nouns and industry jargon.
• Visual summaries turn a meeting into a diagram rather than a wall of text.
• File import accepts up to five hours per recording on paid tiers.

Underlying model and limits

Notta claims SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications, GDPR compliance and hosting on Amazon Web Services. Models are not published. The real limit is the free plan, brutal with its three minutes maximum per recording, a figure that rules out any real meeting. Translation, often presented as the main argument, is billed as an extra.

Pricing

The free plan gives 120 minutes per month and three minutes per recording. Pro costs 97.99 $ per year, around 8 € per month, for 1,800 monthly minutes. Business costs 199.99 $ per year, around 15 € per month, and lifts the minute cap. Translation options add 6 to 9 $ per month.

What users say

Notta has no usable volume of French-language reviews, and its G2 listing was not reachable at the time of writing. Better to write that than to invent a score. The verifiable elements remain the user count announced by the vendor and its strong presence in Japan.

My take on Notta

I have not deployed it on a client project, so I stick to documentation. It positions the tool well enough. Notta makes sense when your meetings happen in several languages and you need the text in another one, which remains a special case. For a French team meeting in French, 58 languages are useless and the free plan is the weakest of the comparison.

7. Noota, the French one aimed at recruiting

Noota is a French vendor that built a two-storey range. A classic note taker on one side, and a full recruiting agent on the other, with candidate sourcing and automated interviews. Be careful not to confuse it with Notta, whose name differs by a single letter and which has nothing to do with it.

Key features

• Capture covers Meet, Teams, Zoom and business phone calls.
• Summaries are customisable by template, and email automation follows the meeting.
• Integrations cover applicant tracking systems and CRMs, plus Zapier and the API.
• The recruiting agent handles 500 candidates and 500 interviews per month on its dedicated tier.
• Mobile apps exist on iOS and Android, with a browser extension.

Underlying model and limits

Noota announces a data centre in the European Union and points to a trust centre for the detail of its commitments. Models are not published. The interface covers six languages, which stays modest. The main limit is the free plan, which keeps data for only one month, and a heavily recruiting-oriented positioning whose price has nothing to do with a simple note taker.

Pricing

The free plan gives 300 minutes per month and one month of retention. Pro costs 19 € per person per month, or 228 € per year, for 1,000 minutes and a workspace of ten people. Business costs 39 € per month, or 468 € per year, with unlimited recording. The recruiting agent is billed at 199 € per month.

What users say

Noota scores 4.5 out of 5 across a little over a hundred reviews on Trustpilot, recorded in August 2026. That is the best review volume in the French block, and it remains ten times smaller than the American players. Feedback praises the automation of follow-up work after the meeting.

My take on Noota

I have not deployed it on a client project, so I stick to public elements. They describe a tool that made a rare and rewarding choice, it does not try to beat Fireflies on its own ground. A recruitment firm or an HR team will find a product built for its job, with data in Europe. A sales team, on the other hand, will struggle to justify the price gap against tl;dv.

8. Leexi, the European one certified ISO 27001

Leexi is a Belgian vendor putting compliance at the centre of its promise, with ISO 27001 displayed on every tier. The product covers video calls and in-person meetings alike, and goes fairly far on connecting to market assistants.

Key features

• Transcription covers more than a hundred languages from the first paid tier.
• Meeting notes are generated from templates matched to the meeting type.
• MCP connections open access from Claude, Dust or ChatGPT.
• CRM sync with automatic field filling arrives at the Business tier.
• Integrations cover Meet, Teams, Zoom, Notion, Google Docs, Zapier and Make.

Underlying model and limits

Leexi displays GDPR compliance and ISO 27001 certification on all tiers, but does not publicly detail where its servers sit, which you should ask before signing. Annoying detail, its French pricing page displays dollars rather than euros. The entry tier caps at five licences and twenty meeting hours per month, and there is no free version at all.

Pricing

Starter costs 12 $ per month, around 11 €, for five licences maximum and twenty hours. AI-Meeting costs 23 $, around 21 €, with unlimited meetings. Business costs 39 $, around 36 €, and adds CRM sync. An annual commitment removes 20 %.

What users say

Leexi has only a handful of Trustpilot reviews, a volume too small to be meaningful, and its G2 listing was not reachable at the time of writing. No publishable score can therefore be given, and saying so beats padding the page with an average built on three reviews.

My take on Leexi

I have not deployed it on a client project, so I stick to what is verifiable. ISO 27001 is a serious argument in a tender, and it is worth more than a plain mention of GDPR compliance. I would still ask for two things before signing, the exact server location and a contractual price in euros.

9. Seedext, the choice of large French accounts

Seedext is the most institutional of the group. The French vendor announces European hosting by default and 100 % French hosting on request, and lists Air France, AXA, Groupe SEB, SNCF, Bouygues Telecom, TF1 and EDF among its users. Those are exactly the organisations that ask the sovereignty question before the price question.

Key features

• Hosting sits in Europe by default, and entirely in France on request.
• The Foxy assistant queries the content of past meetings.
• Language detection happens automatically during note taking.
• Integrations cover Teams, Zoom, Outlook, Meet, Google Calendar, Webex and Salesforce.
• Encryption relies on AES-256 and TLS 1.3.

Underlying model and limits

Seedext claims GDPR compliance, ISO 27001 and alignment with the principles of the European regulation on artificial intelligence. Underlying models are not published. The limit is clear and assumed, there is neither a free tier nor a public price. Two billing models coexist, one by volume of hours with unlimited users, the other by licence with unlimited hours. Testing the product therefore means going through a salesperson.

Pricing

No price is displayed on the site in August 2026. Pricing is described as business-grade and tailored, which mechanically puts Seedext outside the playing field of a small team wanting to try something in fifteen minutes.

What users say

Seedext has no usable volume of public reviews, neither on Trustpilot nor on English-language marketplaces. That is common for a vendor selling directly to large accounts, and it mostly means verification runs through client references requested during the sales process.

My take on Seedext

I have not deployed it on a client project, so I stick to public information. It is enough to place the product. Seedext answers a regulatory constraint, not an individual productivity need. We met that kind of constraint on our support automation project at Santiane, where the subject was not comfort but data perimeter.

10. Modjo, the platform for sales leadership

Modjo is no longer really a note taker, and that is why it closes this ranking. It is a French revenue intelligence platform, hosted on Amazon Web Services in the Paris region, turning conversations into management data. The vendor announces more than 600 customer companies, including Qonto, Pennylane, Spendesk, Doctolib and Malt.

Key features

• Transcription covers more than a hundred languages, with automatic summaries.
• CRM autofill populates standard and custom fields in Salesforce and HubSpot.
• Expansion signals and churn risks are detected across the whole portfolio.
• Customisable AI agents answer questions about a deal from the CRM or the inbox.
• Listening licences for managers are unlimited and included.

Underlying model and limits

Modjo displays a SOC 2 Type II certification, GDPR compliance, encryption in transit and at rest, and French hosting. Models are not detailed. The limit is structural rather than technical. Modjo sells to sales leadership, with a rollout project and support, not to a consultant who wants a clean summary after Tuesday's meeting.

Pricing

No public pricing in August 2026. Billing runs on the number of recording licences, while listening licences for managers and leadership are free. That model favours organisations where many people read and few people record.

What users say

Modjo has no active Trustpilot listing, and its G2 listing was not reachable at the time of writing. The most solid verifiable element remains the list of French customers it publishes, all identifiable and all running structured sales teams.

My take on Modjo

I have not deployed it on a client project, so I stick to public information. It makes the comparison slightly unfair in both directions. Modjo does far more than a note taker and costs far more, so comparing it to Granola makes no sense. The right question is whether your subject is the meeting note or sales management, and on that second ground we cover it in our article on AI for sales teams.

Which AI note taker fits your situation

A ranking is useless without a decision rule. Two axes are enough, where your data lives and how deep you need the tool to go. The rest is comfort.

• You work alone or in a pair. Take Fathom, because it is unlimited without paying. Granola if your meetings are sensitive and a visible bot bothers you.
• You run a sales team of five to twenty. Fireflies for integration depth, tl;dv if data location is part of your criteria.
• Your legal team asks where recordings go. tl;dv, Leexi or Noota depending on the job. Seedext if the expected answer is hosting in France.
• You recruit at volume. Noota, the only tool here handling the interview and candidate follow-up in one product.
• You run a sales organisation. Modjo, provided you accept a rollout project rather than a simple subscription.
• Your meetings happen in several languages. Notta for translation, Fireflies or Leexi if language coverage matters more than translation itself.

Who agreed to be recorded?

This is the question comparisons avoid, and it is the one that sinks rollouts in France. A note taker records everyone in the meeting, including people who have no account with the vendor and who agreed to nothing.

The subject moved from debate to courtroom. In August 2025, a complaint was filed with the federal court for the Northern District of California against Otter.ai, on the grounds that the tool recorded participants without accounts to train its speech recognition. The vendor's anticipated defence is that account holders should inform their guests, which is precisely what the plaintiffs dispute.

In France, the framework has been written for a long time, and it is stricter than a checkbox in a piece of software. The CNIL states in its guidance on recording calls at work that employees must be informed of the system, its purpose and the retention period. Staff representatives must be informed and consulted before any decision to install it. The system enters the record of processing activities. Recordings are kept for six months at most, and analysis documents for one year.

The second blind spot is cost. All these products bill per person, while value does not grow the same way. An 18 € subscription becomes 180 € for ten people, when half the team would be fine on the free plan. Always count the people who record, not the people who read.

What a note taker will never fix

In my tier list of 25 AI tools published on LinkedIn in July 2025, I filed Fireflies in the third tier, the comfortable tools rather than the decisive ones. I stand by that ranking a year later, and it does not contradict using it every week. An automatic summary removes a chore, it creates no advantage.

The advantage arrives one step later, when the summary triggers something. A CRM record updated, a follow-up sent, a task created, a file filed in the right place. That is exactly what we install on our AI copilot engagements, and it is also what justifies an automation.

Technically, the missing brick is almost always the same. An automation tool picks up the summary and sends it where it belongs, which we describe in our guide to n8n. Without that brick, your team piles up transcripts nobody reads, and the only thing you will have bought is a search engine over forgotten meetings.

Which AI note taker to pick in 2026

If you want a one-line answer, take Fathom to start and Fireflies to go further. The first costs nothing and removes the chore from the very first meeting. The second pays off as soon as you have a CRM to feed and follow-ups to send.

If your constraint is regulatory, the list narrows to four names. tl;dv for a sales team, Leexi for a mid-sized company sensitive to standards, Noota for recruiting, Seedext for a large account demanding France. Modjo stands apart, because it answers a management question rather than a note taking one.

And keep perspective. None of these ten tools will transform your organisation, they all remove the same chore. Transformation starts when the summary triggers an action, and that is what we scope in an AI audit. The prices in this article were taken from vendor pages in August 2026, and this category moves every quarter.