AI Meeting Note-Takers: Are They Worth It, and Which One to Pick?
Fathom, Otter and the AI built into Zoom and Meet can take your meeting notes. What they do well, what they cost and the etiquette nobody mentions.
The pitch is irresistible: never take meeting notes again. An AI joins your call, records it, and five minutes after you hang up you get a summary, the decisions made and a neat list of action items.
For a lot of people, it really works. Here's what to know before you invite a bot to every meeting.
What these tools actually do
- Record the call (audio, and often video)
- Transcribe it, labelling who said what
- Summarize it into key points, decisions and to-dos
- Make it searchable, so "what did we agree about the budget in March?" takes seconds
Some also push summaries into Slack, your CRM or your email automatically.
Fathom: the most generous free plan
Fathom works with Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams. Its free plan includes unlimited recordings and transcripts, which is rare. The limit is on AI summaries: full summaries for 5 calls a month, then simpler ones unless you upgrade. Premium is about $20 per user a month.
Pick it if: you want to try AI notes without paying, or you mainly need recordings and transcripts.
Otter: strong all-rounder
Otter does live transcription you can watch during the call, plus summaries afterwards. The free plan includes 300 minutes a month with a 30-minute cap per conversation, which suits short calls. We cover it more in the best AI transcription tools.
Pick it if: you like seeing the transcript live, or you also record lectures and in-person meetings.
The ones you might already have
Before adding another tool, check what your video app already includes. Zoom offers its AI Companion on paid plans, Google Meet has Gemini note-taking on eligible Google Workspace plans, and Microsoft Teams has Copilot recap features on business plans with Copilot.
If your company already pays for one of these, the built-in option avoids sending recordings to yet another company.
The etiquette nobody mentions
- Always announce the bot. "I'm using an AI note-taker, is that OK?" Some people won't mind. Some will, and they deserve the choice.
- Check the law. Many places require consent from everyone being recorded.
- Don't send it alone. A bot attending a meeting on your behalf with nobody there reads as rude to most people.
- Be careful with sensitive meetings. HR, legal, medical and salary conversations often shouldn't be recorded at all.
- Read the summary before you share it. AI can mix up who said what or miss sarcasm completely.
Are they worth it?
Yes, if you have lots of external calls (sales, client work, interviews), you're bad at taking notes while talking, or you often need to find what someone said weeks ago.
Probably not, if you have a few internal meetings a week. A shared doc where someone writes three bullet points works fine, and it doesn't create a searchable archive of everything everyone said.
