A free AI note-taker that joins your calls, writes the transcript and hands you a clean summary is one of the rare productivity upgrades with almost no downside. The catch is that "free" means very different things across these tools. Some, like Fathom and tl;dv, give you unlimited recording and transcription and only meter the AI extras. Others hand you a monthly minute bucket that empties fast, or a history window that quietly deletes your notes after two weeks. This guide ranks the nine best on what you actually keep, not on the headline "free" label.

Every free plan below was checked on the vendor pricing page in July 2026, and we focused on the three numbers that decide whether a free tier survives daily use: how much you can record (unlimited minutes, a monthly cap, or a daily cap), how many AI summaries you get, and how long your library sticks around. Those are the levers vendors pull to nudge you toward paid, so knowing them up front tells you exactly when, and whether, you will ever need to upgrade.

This is written for solo professionals, founders, recruiters, researchers and small sales teams who live in back-to-back calls and want reliable notes without a purchase order. If you record only a few meetings a week, a 300-minute tier is genuinely all you need. If your calendar is wall-to-wall, only the unlimited tiers keep pace. Either way, the free plan is usually enough to work full-time, not just to trial.

If you have already outgrown free and want the full paid feature breakdown (conversation intelligence, CRM depth, admin controls), read our best AI note-takers guide and our wider AI meeting assistants roundup, or browse every option in the meeting tools category.

Top picks at a glance

The state of the market in 2026

The 2026 free note-taker market splits cleanly into three shapes. The unlimited-recording camp (Fathom and tl;dv) lets you capture and transcribe every call at no cost, then gates the AI layer: Fathom caps free AI summaries at five a month, while tl;dv keeps recording open and pushes its advanced and CRM features onto paid Pro. The minute-capped camp (Otter at 300 minutes a month, Laxis at 300, MeetGeek at three hours, Fireflies on limited credits with 800 minutes of storage) suits lighter or occasional users. And a third route, Granola, skips the bot entirely and records your system audio with unlimited free meetings, trading only a 14-day history window.

These free tiers exist because meeting notes are a land-and-expand product: the value compounds as your searchable history grows, so vendors give away enough to hook a habit, then meter the pieces power users cannot live without. That is why the free gates cluster around AI summaries, history length and CRM sync rather than raw recording. It also explains why the generous end of the market (unlimited recording) is now table stakes, and the real competition has moved to summary quality, search across your archive, and how discreetly the tool captures audio.

The clearest 2026 shift is the rise of bot-free capture and the accompanying consent conversation. Granola's desktop-audio model proved you can skip the "notetaker has joined" popup, and even bot-based tools are reacting: Granola's own enterprise tier now pilots a Heads Up feature to notify participants in two-party consent states. As AI note-takers become default rather than novelty, whether a tool announces itself, and how it handles recording consent, matters as much as its transcription accuracy.

1. Fathom: Best free unlimited recording

Note: AI recorder (Zoom, Meet, Teams) · Pricing: paid from $19/mo · Free: unlimited recording + transcription, 5 AI summaries/mo

Fathom's free plan is the most generous on this list: unlimited meeting recording and transcription across Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, a searchable library and shareable highlights, with the only real cap being five AI summaries a month. Where it earns its reputation is summary quality, structured, contextual write-ups organised by topic with action items, in formats ready to paste into a CRM (including BANT for sales calls), rather than a raw transcript dump. Ask Fathom lets you query your entire meeting history conversationally and get answers with timestamps, and the interface is deliberately minimal so it stays out of the way. The honest limitations are that heavy AI users hit the five-summary cap fast and that Fathom started Zoom-first, so its Teams support is newer. It is the default free pick for anyone who lives in back-to-back calls and wants reliable recording with optional AI on top.

Ideal for: Anyone who wants the most generous free meeting recorder with optional AI summaries.

Visit Fathom →Full review

2. Otter.ai: Best free transcription accuracy

Note: AI transcription + real-time notes · Pricing: paid from $8.33/mo (annual) · Free: 300 min/mo, 30 min/conversation, AI chat

Otter has the most accurate transcription of the group and a genuinely usable free tier: 300 transcription minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation, basic AI summaries and Otter Chat to query your meeting history in natural language. Speaker identification improves as it learns voices, real-time collaboration lets teammates highlight and comment during a live transcript, and the mobile app captures in-person meetings too. The two constraints to plan around are the 30-minute-per-conversation limit, which cuts long calls short on free, and accuracy that dips with heavy accents, overlapping speakers or poor audio, custom vocabulary helps but is a paid feature. It also lacks native CRM integration on the free plan, needing Zapier or similar. For clean audio and light-to-moderate volume, Otter is the free transcription benchmark and the tool to beat on raw quality.

Ideal for: Anyone needing accurate, searchable transcription with a solid free allowance.

Visit Otter.ai →Full review

3. tl;dv: Best free for sharing clips

Note: AI recorder with timestamps · Pricing: paid from $29/mo · Free: unlimited recording + transcription, timestamped clips

tl;dv (short for Too Long; Didn't View) matches Fathom on the headline that matters, unlimited free recording and transcription, and differentiates on sharing: you can timestamp and tag key moments during or after a call and send a specific clip to a teammate instead of asking them to watch the whole recording. That makes it excellent for async teams, product managers and sales coaching where the useful part is a two-minute exchange, not the hour. The AI summarisation pulls out action items, decisions and next steps, and CRM logging to Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive is a strength for reps. The trade-offs: its advanced and CRM-heavy capabilities live on paid Pro at $29/mo, and its coverage is strongest on Zoom and Google Meet, with thinner Microsoft Teams support. Choose it when unlimited free recording plus painless moment-sharing is the priority.

Ideal for: Teams that want unlimited free recording plus easy moment-sharing.

Visit tl;dv →Full review

4. Granola: Best bot-free note-taker

Note: Bot-free (system audio) · Pricing: paid from $14/mo · Free: unlimited meetings, AI notes, 14-day history

Granola is the pick when you do not want a visible bot in the attendee list. Instead of joining the call, it runs as a macOS or Windows desktop app that captures your computer's audio directly, so there is no "notetaker has joined" popup and no bot to add to every calendar invite, ideal for sensitive or external meetings. The free plan is unlimited on meetings with AI notes, key points, action items, custom templates and AI chat; the deliberate catch is a 14-day meeting history, after which older notes require the Business plan ($14/user/mo), which also unlocks unlimited history plus Notion, HubSpot, Attio and Slack integrations. Because capture is desktop-based, there is no mobile recording. It suits solo professionals and consultants who want frictionless, discreet notes and either revisit calls within two weeks or are happy to upgrade for a permanent archive.

Ideal for: Solo professionals who want notes without a bot in the attendee list.

Visit Granola →Full review

5. Fireflies.ai: Best free for sales intelligence

Note: AI recorder + conversation intelligence · Pricing: paid from $10/mo (annual) · Free: limited credits, 800 min storage, AskFred search

Fireflies leans hardest into conversation intelligence, making it the sales-minded choice among the free options. Its free tier includes limited transcription credits, 800 minutes of storage, AI summaries for recent meetings, basic search and AskFred to query your entire meeting history, and it records across Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and other conferencing tools. Beyond transcripts it tracks topics, sentiment and talk-to-listen ratios, and can cut shareable Soundbites from key moments. The honest picture is that the free plan is more limited than Otter's on day-to-day recording, and the features that make Fireflies genuinely shine, sentiment dashboards, topic tracker, and CRM integrations with Salesforce and HubSpot, sit on the paid Business plan at $19/user/mo (Pro at $10/user/mo adds unlimited transcription and 8,000 minutes of storage first). It is best for sales teams that want affordable transcription now and a clear upgrade path into conversation analytics later.

Ideal for: Sales teams wanting affordable transcription plus conversation analytics.

Visit Fireflies.ai →Full review

6. MeetGeek: Best free for automated summaries

Note: AI meeting assistant + CRM sync · Pricing: paid from $9.99/mo · Free: 3 hrs/mo transcription, unlimited AI summaries

MeetGeek automatically joins, records, transcribes and summarises your Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls, then organises everything in a searchable repository, and its free Basic plan is unusually well-rounded. You get three hours of transcription a month, but crucially unlimited AI summaries even on free, plus meeting analytics, global search, mobile apps and a Chrome extension, with transcription in 100-plus languages and automatic language detection that makes it strong for international teams (free stores transcripts for three months, with a two-hour per-meeting limit). Native and Zapier, Make and n8n connectors push notes and action items into your CRM and tools like Notion and Slack. The trade-off is the tighter three-hour monthly cap versus Fathom's or Otter's allowances, and it does send a bot into the call to record. It is a strong free all-rounder for teams that value automated, multilingual summaries flowing straight into their stack.

Ideal for: Teams that want automated meeting notes flowing straight into their CRM.

Visit MeetGeek →Full review

7. Krisp: Best free for call audio

Note: AI noise cancellation + assistant · Pricing: paid from $8/mo (annual) · Free: 60 min/day noise cancellation + limited transcription

Krisp starts from a different premise than the rest of this list: its core is best-in-class AI noise cancellation, and meeting notes come along as a bonus. It works as a virtual microphone and speaker layer between your hardware and any app, Zoom, Meet, Teams, Slack, Discord, even phone calls, so it cleans audio bidirectionally without needing integrations or plugins, filtering 100-plus noise types plus echo and room reverb. The free plan gives 60 minutes a day of noise cancellation and limited transcription, plenty for occasional calls but not heavy daily use, and unlimited noise cancellation, transcription, summaries and action items move to Pro at $8/user/mo (annual). It has no native CRM integration for sales. Krisp is the right free pick for remote workers and call-center agents whose first problem is messy call audio, with clean notes as a welcome extra rather than the main event.

Ideal for: Remote workers who mainly need clean call audio with notes as a bonus.

Visit Krisp →Full review

8. Avoma: Best free conversation intelligence

Note: Notes + scheduler + CI · Pricing: paid from $19/mo · Free: AI notes, basic transcription, limited history, scheduler

Avoma bundles three products revenue teams usually buy separately, a meeting scheduler (like Calendly), AI meeting notes (like Otter or Fireflies) and Gong-style conversation intelligence, into one subscription, and its free plan is genuinely useful for a solo user: AI meeting notes, basic transcription, a basic scheduler and limited meeting history, with viewer and collaborator seats free on every plan so only recorder seats need paying for. That makes it a low-friction way to test conversation intelligence without a Gong-sized contract, with paid tiers scaling from Startup ($19/user/mo) up through Plus and Business as you add CRM sync, call scorecards and pipeline risk signals. The honest limitations are that free history and features are pared back, and recording uses a visible bot in the call. It suits SMB sales teams that want scheduling, notes and intelligence in one tool and a clear, affordable ladder up from free.

Ideal for: SMB sales teams wanting conversation intelligence without enterprise pricing.

Visit Avoma →Full review

9. Laxis: Best free for CRM auto-notes

Note: AI assistant for sales · Pricing: paid from $15.99/mo · Free: 300 min/mo, AI summaries, CRM auto-update

Laxis is the most sales-specific assistant here, and its free Basic plan is built around that: 300 minutes of transcription a month, AI summaries, and CRM auto-update so notes flow straight into HubSpot or Salesforce without manual entry, plus real-time transcription across Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Webex and access to its report templates. That CRM-first workflow on a free tier is unusual and makes it a good no-cost way for a rep to test automated call logging. The realities to weigh: 300 minutes a month runs out quickly for a busy rep (Premium at $15.99/mo raises the cap to 2,000 minutes, Business at $29.99/mo to 5,000), and because Laxis joins calls with a bot you should handle the usual recording-consent step. It is the pick for sales teams already living in HubSpot or Salesforce who want their meeting notes handled automatically from the free tier up.

Ideal for: Sales teams in HubSpot or Salesforce who want CRM notes handled automatically.

Visit Laxis →Full review

Compared side by side

Pricing snapshot (verified July 2026)

• Fathom: Free: unlimited recording + transcription, 5 AI summaries/mo; paid from $19/mo.
• Otter.ai: Free: 300 min/mo, 30 min/conversation, AI chat; paid from $8.33/mo (annual).
• tl;dv: Free: unlimited recording + transcription, timestamped clips; paid from $29/mo.
• Granola: Free: unlimited meetings, AI notes, 14-day history; paid from $14/mo.
• Fireflies.ai: Free: limited credits, 800 min storage, AskFred search; paid from $10/mo (annual).
• MeetGeek: Free: 3 hrs/mo transcription, unlimited AI summaries; paid from $9.99/mo.
• Krisp: Free: 60 min/day noise cancellation + limited transcription; paid from $8/mo (annual).
• Avoma: Free: AI notes, basic transcription, limited history, scheduler; paid from $19/mo.
• Laxis: Free: 300 min/mo, AI summaries, CRM auto-update; paid from $15.99/mo.

How to choose

Start with your call volume, not the brand. If you record all day, only the unlimited free tiers keep up: Fathom and tl;dv both offer unlimited recording and transcription, and Granola allows unlimited meetings (within a 14-day free history). If you record a handful of calls a week, the 300-minutes-a-month tiers from Otter and Laxis, or MeetGeek's three free hours, are plenty and often come with better summaries or extras than the unlimited plans.

Read the free-tier gotchas before you commit your history to one. The "free" label hides three different meters. Fathom records unlimited but caps AI summaries at five a month. Otter gives 300 monthly minutes but also limits each single conversation to 30 minutes, which cuts long calls short. Granola's notes are unlimited but its free history only holds 14 days, so anything older disappears unless you upgrade. Fireflies pairs limited transcription credits with 800 minutes of storage. Match the meter to how you work: a recruiter doing many short screens cares about per-conversation caps, while a consultant revisiting old calls cares about history length.

Decide whether you want a bot in the room. Most of these tools send a visible bot into the call to record, which everyone sees in the attendee list and which some IT policies block outright. Granola is the standout bot-free option: it runs as a macOS or Windows desktop app on your own system audio, so nothing joins the meeting. That makes it the discreet pick for sensitive, external or client-facing calls, at the cost of being desktop-only with no mobile recording.

Weigh summary and search quality, not just minutes. Raw transcription is close to solved; the differentiator is what the tool does after. Fathom is known for structured, share-ready summaries and its Ask Fathom conversational search across past calls. Otter leads on transcription accuracy and pairs it with Otter Chat to query your history. MeetGeek gives unlimited AI summaries even on free and transcribes 100-plus languages, which matters for international teams. If you often ask "what did we decide three weeks ago," prioritise the tools with strong archive search over the ones with the biggest minute bucket.

Sales teams should look at CRM sync and conversation intelligence early. If notes need to land in HubSpot or Salesforce automatically, that capability shapes the choice. Laxis builds CRM auto-update into its free-tier workflow, Fireflies leans into conversation intelligence (talk-to-listen ratio, sentiment, topic tracking) though its CRM integrations sit on the paid Business plan, and Avoma bundles a scheduler, notes and Gong-style intelligence in one subscription with free viewer seats. For coaching-heavy teams, tl;dv's timestamped clips and Fathom's shareable highlights make specific call moments easy to pass around.

Mind consent and where your data lives. In many places recording a conversation requires the participants' consent, so announce that an AI note-taker is present. Bot-based tools surface this automatically because attendees see the bot join; with a bot-free tool like Granola you should tell people yourself before recording. Also check retention and compliance: several tools here are SOC 2 Type II compliant and store transcripts in the cloud, and enterprise tiers add controls like SSO, custom data retention and org-wide opt-out from model training if that is a requirement for your organisation.

Related guides

• Best AI Note Takers 2026
• Best AI Note-Taking Apps
• Best AI Meeting Assistants
• All AI productivity tools