The Best AI Note Taker

Otter is the only tool we researched that handles all the situations people mean when they search for an AI note taker without needing extra hardware. According to Otter’s pricing page, every plan, including the free Basic plan, works with Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, and Otter offers iOS and Android apps, Mac and Windows desktop apps and a Chrome extension. For meetings in a room, Otter’s help center describes two ways to record: in any browser on a computer (Chrome is recommended) or with the mobile app on a phone or tablet. The transcript appears live on screen while you record.

That flexibility matters most when you aren’t on a call. Otter’s in-person guide says it needs a stable connection for live transcription, but if the network drops, it keeps recording and caches the audio in the browser or app, then finishes uploading and transcribing once you’re back online. The same guide gives practical advice for lectures and interviews: point a directional microphone at a lecturer, put a bi-directional mic between you and an interviewee, or set an omnidirectional mic in the middle of the table for a group.

The free Basic plan includes 300 transcription minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation and three lifetime file imports, so you can also upload a recording you made elsewhere. Pro raises that to 1,200 minutes a month, 90 minutes per conversation and 10 imports a month, and adds Zapier, Salesforce and HubSpot integrations. Business removes the monthly cap on meeting minutes and allows four-hour conversations. Students and teachers with a .edu email get 20% off Pro, which works out to $6.67 a month billed at $79.99 a year, according to Otter’s pricing page. If you mostly record in person, see our guide to the best AI note taker for in-person meetings, where Otter is also our top pick.

Granola works differently from Otter. Instead of a bot joining the call, it captures your device’s audio, so it works with whatever call app you use and nobody sees an extra participant. Granola’s pricing page lists this bot-free capture, speaker tagging and Slack integration on every plan, including the free one. You type rough notes during the meeting, and Granola combines them with the transcript into a structured summary afterward.

The phone apps cover meetings in the room. Granola’s iOS help pages say the mobile app lets you take AI-enhanced notes during in-person meetings and, on iOS, phone calls placed through its built-in dialer, and that it can identify different speakers. Business ($14 per user per month) adds unlimited history, pre-meeting briefs, follow-up emails, API access and integrations with Notion, Zapier and HubSpot. Enterprise ($35) adds SSO, Salesforce and HIPAA-compliant workspaces.

Granola’s security page is specific about data handling. Notes are stored in a US-hosted AWS virtual private cloud and encrypted in transit and at rest. On desktop, Granola doesn’t keep meeting audio at all; on mobile, audio is cached temporarily so it can be transcribed after the meeting. Granola trains on anonymized data, but you can opt out in settings, and it says it doesn’t let third parties such as OpenAI or Anthropic train on your data.

If your note taking is mostly lectures, interviews or ideas you speak into your phone, 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 add the transcript to the note or copy it elsewhere.

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. The same guide says you can record a call in the Phone or FaceTime app and read its transcript in Notes (iOS 18.1 or later).

A phone on the table works, but it ties up your phone and relies on one microphone. The Plaud Note Pro is built for people who record many hours a day. 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. It’s 0.12 inches thin, weighs 1.06 ounces, and detects whether you’re in an in-person conversation or on a phone call. For video calls, Plaud says its free Plaud Desktop app covers online meetings.

Plaud’s pricing page lists transcription in more than 112 languages, more than 10,000 summary templates plus custom templates, a timeline view, and export and sharing on every plan. The device includes the free Starter plan with 300 transcription minutes a month. Pro adds up to 1,200 minutes for $8.33 a month and Unlimited costs $20.00 a month, both billed annually. On privacy, Plaud’s product page says your data isn’t used to train AI models unless you opt in, and its pricing page lists ISO 27001, ISO 27701, SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, HIPAA and EN 18031 compliance and AES-256 encryption at rest. Our in-person meeting guide covers Plaud’s hardware lineup in more detail.

If your note taking is mostly video calls for a team, Fireflies is our top pick in the best AI meeting assistant guide, and it’s a strong alternative to Otter here. Its pricing page lists Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and other platforms on every plan, plus real-time notes, meeting search, file uploads, desktop and mobile apps, a Chrome extension and API access. The Chrome extension can record without the Fireflies bot joining.

Pro ($10 per seat per month billed annually) adds unlimited AI summaries, 8,000 minutes of storage per seat, video recording and downloads. Business ($19 billed annually) adds unlimited storage, a multi-language mode and conversation intelligence. Fireflies’ security page says it doesn’t train on customer data by default, encrypts notes and transcripts with 256-bit AES at rest, and is certified for GDPR, SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA; the pricing page adds ISO 42001.