Tactiq

What Tactiq is

Tactiq is a browser extension, not a meeting bot. You install it in Chrome or Edge, join a Google Meet, Zoom or Microsoft Teams call the way you normally would, and it reads the transcript out of the meeting window while you sit in it. Nothing called Tactiq appears in the participant list, nobody has to admit a notetaker from the waiting room, and IT does not have to approve a calendar-scope integration. The transcript is shown only to you, and Tactiq can post a short message in the meeting chat so the room knows it is running.

What it stores is text. Tactiq's own FAQ says it does not record or store the audio from your meetings, and that single sentence is both the privacy pitch and the functional ceiling. You get a searchable, editable, timestamped transcript with speaker names, screenshots, highlights and tags, in more than 60 languages, and you can push it to Slack, Notion, Linear, HubSpot or Confluence. What you do not get is a recording to replay, a clip to send to a colleague, or the option to run a bad transcript through a better model next year. The audio is gone the moment the call ends.

The AI layer runs on credits. One credit buys one AI action: a meeting summary, an action-item list, a follow-up email, a project update, or a question asked of the transcript. Free gets 5 a month, Pro gets 10, and Team and above are unlimited. That number is the axis the whole pricing page turns on, and it gets its own section below.

Two more things stand out for a tool at this price. The compliance stack is SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR and HIPAA, all claimed on the vendor's own pages. And the adoption signal is large: the Chrome Web Store listing shows 1,000,000 users and 4.8 out of 5 from about 4,200 ratings, which is more than Tactiq's own pricing page bothers to claim for itself.

Pricing

Tactiq publishes every plan except Enterprise, and the numbers below were checked in September 2026 against tactiq.io/buy, which is where tactiq.io/pricing now redirects. All figures are US dollars. The page says prices are shown in your local currency and its price table carries eleven currencies; Pro, for example, is EUR 10 or GBP 9 a month billed monthly and EUR 80 or GBP 70 a year billed annually, which are set prices rather than conversions of the dollar figure.

All figures in US dollars, from tactiq.io/buy in September 2026. The page never displays an annual total; it shows a per-user monthly figure with the label "Per user/mo. Annual billing." The totals in the fourth column are taken from the page's own embedded price data (9,600, 20,000 and 35,000 cents a year), which is why they are round dollars and not the $200.04 or $350.04 you get by multiplying the rounded display figures by twelve.

How to read the pricing page

The prices you see first are the annual ones. The page loads with the "Annual (Save up to 33%)" toggle pre-selected, so $8, $16.67 and $29.17 are what you pay only if you commit for a year. Switch the toggle to Monthly and the same plans are $12, $20 and $40 per user/month. Anyone quoting $8 as the monthly price is quoting the discounted annual rate.

"Save up to 33%" is true for one plan. Pro drops from $12 to $8, a genuine 33.3 percent. Team drops from $20 to $16.67, which is 16.7 percent. Business drops from $40 to $29.17, which is 27.1 percent. "Up to" is doing real work in that banner.

Seat bands are ranges, not suggestions. Pro is sold for one user. Team is sold for 1 to 20 users, Business for 20 to 200, Enterprise for 200 and up. SAML SSO and advanced data retention live only on Business, so the practical floor for SSO is a 20-seat purchase: exactly $7,000 a year billed annually, or $9,600 a year billed monthly. Whether the bands are enforced at checkout or are guidance is not stated on the page.

Plan changes are published; a few other things are not. The page's FAQ says you can upgrade, downgrade or cancel from billing settings, that upgrades apply immediately, and that downgrades and cancellations take effect at the end of the current billing period. When you hit a transcript or credit limit, transcription continues but AI features pause until the limit resets at the start of the next month or you upgrade, and existing transcripts stay accessible. What the page does not publish: a refund policy, whether unused credits roll over (the monthly reset is stated, rollover is not), the actual retention windows behind "advanced data retention", and whether uploading a file consumes a credit. A Tactiq for Education plan exists but its pricing is application-gated, so we cannot quote it.

What we verified, and what we did not

Reviews in this category often read as if someone sat through a week of calls with the tool running. This one did not, so here is the boundary in plain terms.

Verified from the vendor: every plan price under both billing toggles, the annual totals from the page's price data, the seat bands, the credit allowances, the plan-change and limit rules in the pricing FAQ, browser support (Chrome and Edge), the Zoom requirements in the help centre, the macOS app on the download page, the integrations list and its "Coming soon" labels, the security claims, the no-audio statement, and the Chrome Web Store rating and user count.

Not tested: transcript accuracy, speaker labelling in a crowded call, how fast ten credits go in practice, the AI Workflows, file upload, the MCP server and Claude Connector (both beta, both Business-only), and the macOS Zoom app. Where this page describes those, it is describing what Tactiq says they do.

That means the score below rests on published facts and architecture, not on measured output. The axis that lifts it most, usability, is the one with the least evidence behind it, and we have rounded accordingly.

Where Tactiq is the strongest pick

Tactiq is at its strongest when the bot is the problem. Client calls, candidate interviews, therapy and coaching sessions, journalist interviews, relationship-stage sales calls: any room where "Notetaker has joined" changes how people talk. Every bot-based competitor handles that with an awkward pre-call email. Tactiq handles it by not being in the participant list at all.

The second argument is that nothing has to be approved. It installs per user in the browser, needs no calendar scope and no workspace-wide rollout, so one person in a locked-down organisation can start using it this afternoon. The third is the free plan, which at 10 transcripts and 5 AI credits a month with export included is a usable product rather than a demo, and the strongest free option in the category for someone with two or three worthwhile calls a week.

Best for

Individuals and small teams who need meeting transcripts without a bot announcing itself in the call: consultants, recruiters, therapists, journalists and salespeople on relationship calls, plus anyone in an organisation where getting a notetaker bot approved is harder than taking notes by hand. It is also the strongest free option in the category if ten meetings a month covers you. It is the wrong tool if you need to rewatch calls, cover meetings you did not attend, or run coaching and revenue-intelligence workflows off recorded video.

Key features

• Bot-free capture: a Chrome or Edge extension reads the transcript from the meeting window while you attend, so no extra participant joins and no admin approval is needed
• Real-time transcription for Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams with speaker names and timestamps, in more than 60 languages
• Text-only storage by design: Tactiq states it does not record or store meeting audio
• AI credit actions: one-click summaries, action items, follow-up emails, project updates and free-form questions asked of a transcript
• Ask Tactiq AI across multiple meetings, plus custom AI prompts you can save and re-run on future calls
• AI Workflows for pushing structured meeting output into other tools automatically
• Integrations listed as available on tactiq.io/integrations: Slack, Notion, Linear, HubSpot, Confluence, Salesforce and Pipedrive. Google Docs is marked "Coming soon" there, even though the Chrome Web Store description says transcripts save to it, so treat that one as unconfirmed
• Tactiq MCP server and Tactiq Claude Connector, both marked beta and both gated to the Business tier
• Global search across transcripts and AI-generated insights
• In-meeting widget with highlights, tags and meeting screenshots
• Upload video, audio or transcript files for meetings the extension did not attend; whether an upload consumes a credit is not stated
• Native macOS app, labelled beta, for transcribing Zoom desktop calls without the browser. No Windows equivalent is offered
• SOC 2 Type II attestation, ISO 27001 certification, GDPR and HIPAA compliance, as claimed on tactiq.io

Best-fit use cases

• Transcribing client and candidate calls where a visible notetaker bot would change how people speak
• Solo consultants and freelancers who need a record of every call but cannot justify a per-seat AI notetaker subscription
• Recruiters running back-to-back Google Meet interviews who want speaker-labelled text and one-click action items
• Teams in organisations where IT will not approve a bot or a calendar-scope integration but will allow a browser extension
• Multilingual teams needing transcripts across more than 60 languages
• Wiring meeting transcripts into an agent or Claude workflow through the Business-tier MCP server and Claude Connector

Pros

• No bot in the participant list, the single best reason to pick it, and genuinely useful for client calls, interviews and any room where a visible notetaker changes the conversation
• Nothing to approve: it installs per user in the browser, so an individual can start without IT, calendar access or a workspace rollout
• The free plan is usable rather than ornamental: 10 transcripts and 5 AI credits a month, export included, no card, no time limit
• $8 per user/month billed annually ($12 monthly) for unlimited transcripts is at the cheap end of the category
• Never storing audio is a real answer to a real procurement objection, not just a marketing line
• Compliance stack (SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA) is stronger than the price suggests
• An MCP server and a Claude Connector put it ahead of most rivals on agent tooling, even in beta
• Adoption signal is hard to fake: 1,000,000 Chrome Web Store users and 4.8 out of 5 from about 4,200 ratings

Cons

• Pro gives you 10 AI credits a month. Unlimited transcripts, ten AI actions: anyone summarising daily calls is out of credits in two weeks
• No recording at all, so no playback, no clips, no re-transcribing later with a better model; Fathom, tl;dv and Bluedot all keep the video
• Browser-bound: Chrome or Edge on a desktop or laptop. No Firefox, no Safari, no mobile
• Join Zoom or Teams in the desktop client and the extension sees nothing; the only workaround is a beta macOS app that covers Zoom desktop alone
• No bot means no unattended coverage: skip the meeting and there is no transcript
• On Zoom you must switch on Zoom's own automated captions first, so part of the transcript accuracy is inherited from the platform rather than produced by Tactiq
• SAML SSO and advanced data retention are Business-only, and Business starts at a 20-seat band
• The pricing page defaults to annual rates, so the headline numbers are not what a monthly buyer pays
• Google Docs is "Coming soon" on the integrations page while the Chrome Web Store copy says it is live, and Team analytics is also "Coming soon" in the plan table

What to watch out for

Six things, in the order they cost you.

Ten AI credits a month on Pro is the number to look at, not the $8. Pro's headline feature is unlimited transcripts, which sounds generous until you notice the AI layer is metered separately at ten actions a month. A summary is one credit. Action items is another. A follow-up email is a third. Ask one question of the transcript and that is a fourth. On that arithmetic a single meeting can consume four credits, and two and a half meetings empty the month. Unlimited AI credits do not arrive until Team, which is $20 per user/month billed monthly or $16.67 billed annually ($200 a year). The practical read is that Pro is a transcription plan with a small AI sampler attached, and most people who like the AI will end up on Team. Budget for $20, not $12.

It reads the meeting platform's captions, and on Zoom you turn those on yourself. Tactiq's help centre says to enable Zoom's automated captions setting before transcribing. That means a meaningful share of transcript accuracy is Zoom's or Google's speech recognition rather than Tactiq's, and where the platform's captions are poor, with heavy accents, crosstalk or bad audio, Tactiq's transcript is poor too. Because no audio is retained, there is no way to go back and fix a bad passage.

No audio means no audio, permanently. This is the honest cost of the privacy pitch. You cannot replay a passage to check what someone actually said, cannot cut a 30-second clip for a colleague, and cannot re-process the meeting when transcription models improve. If your reason for buying a meeting tool is to review calls rather than to read them, this is the wrong product and no plan tier fixes it.

The browser requirement is a hard gate, not a preference. Chrome or Edge, desktop or laptop. Join Zoom through the desktop client, which is how most people join Zoom, and the extension captures nothing. Tactiq's help centre says the extension works only when you join Zoom in Chrome or Edge and tells you to pick "Join from your browser". The workaround is a native macOS app on tactiq.io/download, labelled beta, which the page says transcribes Zoom desktop calls only. No Windows build is offered on that page. A Windows team that lives in the Zoom client should confirm this works before buying seats.

No bot also means no coverage of meetings you miss. Every bot-based competitor can attend a call you skipped. Tactiq cannot. The file-upload feature is the partial answer, but it needs a recording obtained some other way, and whether an upload spends a credit is not stated on Tactiq's pages.

SSO is behind a 20-seat wall. SAML SSO and advanced data retention sit on Business, and Business is sold in a 20 to 200 user band. A twelve-person company with an SSO requirement has no route to it short of talking to sales, and the published floor is $7,000 a year billed annually.

Is Tactiq worth it?

Yes, for one specific buyer, and the case is simple. If a notetaker bot is unwelcome in your calls, or unapprovable in your organisation, Tactiq does the job with less friction than anything else on the shelf: install, join, done. The free plan is honest, the paid entry is cheap, the compliance stack is better than the price implies, and the no-audio policy is a substantive commitment rather than a slogan.

It scores 4.0 rather than higher for two reasons. The first is capability: with no recording, no playback, no clips, no unattended coverage and a browser-only gate, it is a thinner product than Otter, Fireflies or Avoma, and no plan tier changes that. The second is that Pro's ten credits make the $8 headline misleading in practice; the plan most people who want the AI will land on is Team at $20, or $16.67 billed annually. Neither is a reason to avoid it. Both are reasons to buy it for what it is, the best bot-free transcript you can get for the money, rather than for what a bot tool would give you.

Worth saying plainly: we have not run it. Transcript accuracy, credit burn in real use and the MCP and Claude connectors are all unmeasured here, and the score can move in either direction once someone measures them.

How we arrived at 4.0

Eight axes, each scored out of 5 from the vendor's published product, pricing, download and help pages. The unweighted mean is 4.05. We publish 4.0 rather than rounding up because the highest axis, usability, is an argument about install friction rather than a measurement, and nothing on this page was tested hands-on.

The 5 point score is a product rating rather than a linear map of that mean, and it reflects a tool that is the best answer to one specific constraint, the unwelcome bot, rather than the category leader on capability.

FAQ

Pricing, plan limits and feature claims verified 3 September 2026 from tactiq.io/buy (where tactiq.io/pricing redirects), tactiq.io/download, tactiq.io/integrations, the Tactiq help centre and the Chrome Web Store listing. Annual totals are taken from the pricing page's own embedded price data, since the page displays per-month figures only. ToolChase did not install or test Tactiq, is not an affiliate of Tactiq and received no payment for this review. Scores, rankings and list positions are never sold. See our methodology for how we score tools.