The Best AI Note Taker for In-Person Meetings

Otter is the easiest way to turn an in-person meeting into a searchable transcript without buying anything. According to Otter’s help center, you can record in-person conversations in two ways: through Otter in any browser on a computer (Chrome is recommended), or with the iOS or Android app on a phone or tablet. While you record, the transcript appears live on screen. After the meeting, Otter produces a summary with an outline and action items, and the free Basic plan already includes speaker identification. Pro adds taggable speakers, and Business adds shared speakers across a team.

The detail that matters most in a physical room is what happens when the connection drops. Otter says it needs a stable internet connection for real-time transcription, but if the network cuts out, it keeps recording and caches the audio in the browser or mobile app, then finishes uploading and transcribing once you’re back online. You lose the live view, not the meeting. Otter’s in-person guide also explains microphone choice: the built-in mic on your phone or laptop is the default, and it suggests an omnidirectional mic in the middle of the table when several people are talking.

The free Basic plan gives you 300 transcription minutes per month, 30 minutes per conversation and three lifetime file imports. Pro raises that to 1,200 minutes and 90 minutes per conversation, adds 10 imports a month and connects to Salesforce, HubSpot and Zapier. Business removes the monthly minute cap and allows four hours per conversation. All of this applies to video calls too: every plan, including Basic, lists Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet support.

Granola started as a desktop app that listens to your computer’s audio instead of sending a bot into the call. Its mobile apps now cover the other half of the workday. Granola’s iOS help pages say the mobile app lets you take AI-enhanced notes during in-person meetings. You can start from a calendar event or an ad-hoc note, the recording shows on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, and Granola says it can identify different speakers. Granola’s pricing page lists desktop, iOS, Android and Apple Watch apps on every plan.

The workflow is different from Otter’s. You type rough notes during the meeting, and Granola merges them with the transcript into a structured summary afterward.

Privacy is a strength for this category. Granola’s security page says notes are stored in a US-hosted AWS virtual private cloud and encrypted in transit and at rest. On the desktop it doesn’t store meeting audio at all. On mobile, audio is cached temporarily so it can be transcribed after the meeting, and then only the transcript and your notes are kept. Granola does train on anonymized data, but you can opt out in settings on any plan, and Enterprise accounts have training off by default. The company says it meets SOC 2 Type 2 standards.

If you have a reasonably recent iPhone, you may not need to buy anything. Apple’s iPhone User Guide explains that the Notes app can record audio inside a note and transcribe it live. Transcription works on iPhone 12 and later when the device language is English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Japanese, Korean or Chinese (Simplified or Traditional). Afterward, you can search the transcript, tap any line to play from that point, and copy the text into the note or another document.

Summaries need Apple Intelligence. Under iOS 27, Apple lists iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max and iPhone 16 models or later, and notes that Apple Intelligence isn’t available in every language or region. On those phones, you tap the recording and choose Summary to get the key points.

A phone on the table works, but it ties up your phone and depends on one microphone. The Plaud Note Pro is built for exactly this job. According to Plaud, its four microphones capture voices from up to 16.4 feet away. It records for 30 hours in Enhance mode or 50 hours in Endurance mode, and it stores audio on 64 GB of onboard memory, so you don’t need your phone nearby while it’s recording. It’s 0.12 inches thin, weighs 1.06 ounces and has a 0.95-inch display for recording status and battery level. It also detects whether you’re in an in-person conversation or on a phone call.

Plaud’s app turns those recordings into transcripts in more than 112 languages, organized by who is speaking. It then writes summaries from more than 10,000 templates or your own custom ones. You can highlight key moments, add notes or photos during a meeting, and export or share the result. For video calls, the free Plaud Desktop app captures online meetings without a bot joining.

BGR’s reviewer reports that the four microphones handled a 14-person council meeting with speakers about 13 feet apart much better than his earlier iPhone setup. He also found that once speakers were labeled, the device recognized those voices in later recordings. Plaud says conversation data isn’t used to train models unless you opt in. It lists ISO 27001, ISO 27701, SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, HIPAA and EN 18031 compliance and encrypts data at rest with AES-256.

The NotePin S is the wearable version of the Plaud system. According to Plaud, you long-press to record and short-press to highlight a moment, and it captures voices clearly from up to 3 meters (9.8 feet). It weighs 0.61 ounces (17.4 grams), records for up to 20 hours, has 64 GB of onboard storage and works with Apple Find My if you leave it behind.

Transcripts, summaries, templates, the Plaud Agent and the privacy terms are the same as on the Note Pro, as is the free Starter plan with 300 transcription minutes a month.