7 Best AI Meeting Note Takers for Remote Teams (2025)

If your team runs on video calls, you already know the problem: the meeting ends, and the decisions and follow-ups live only in someone's memory. AI meeting note takers fix that by recording, transcribing, and summarizing calls automatically—then surfacing action items so nothing slips. Adoption has gone mainstream, too. Research from Fellow's 2025 survey found that 75% of professionals now use an AI note-taker in their work meetings.

Below are seven of the best AI meeting note takers for distributed teams, with what each one does well, where it falls short, and what it costs. Prices reflect annual billing unless noted.

What to look for

The value isn't the raw transcript—it's the summary. The best tools produce concise recaps, flag decisions, and pull out action items without manual cleanup, then push those notes into the tools your team already uses: calendars, Slack, your CRM, and your docs. Two other decisions matter for remote teams: whether you want a visible meeting bot or a "bot-free" tool that captures audio quietly, and whether a genuine free plan exists so you can test before you commit.

1. Fireflies.ai — best all-around for teams

Fireflies is the tool most roundups put at the top, and for good reason. It's an AI-powered assistant that transcribes, summarizes, records, and analyzes virtual meetings—joining your call like a fly on the wall to capture video and audio along with AI notes you can read, listen to, or share.

It offers four plans: Free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise, and every plan includes unlimited transcription and unlimited AI summaries. Pro runs $10/user/month billed annually ($18 monthly), Business is $19/user/month annually ($29 monthly), and Enterprise is $39/user/month annually. The catch on the free tier is storage and AI limits—the free plan stores only 800 minutes and comes with a limited one-time AI credit pool. If you need CRM sync, budget for Business: Salesforce and HubSpot connections require Business plans or higher, not Pro.

Best for: Teams that want unlimited capture plus deep integrations and are willing to move up a tier for CRM sync.

2. Otter.ai — best for live transcription

Otter is the veteran here, strongest at real-time transcription you can follow as the meeting happens, with an assistant that works across Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. The Basic plan is free but limited to 300 minutes per month, and it's permanently free. The Pro plan costs $16.99 per user billed monthly or $10 per user/month billed annually, offering 1,200 monthly transcription minutes with a 90-minute limit per conversation. For teams, the Business plan is $20 per user per month annually and comes with 6,000 minutes and a 4-hour limit per meeting, plus admin tools like usage analytics and priority support.

Best for: People who want to watch an accurate transcript scroll in real time and don't need heavy video features.

3. Fathom — best free plan

Fathom's free tier is the most generous in the category. Its free plan offers unlimited recordings, unlimited transcription, and unlimited storage—although the free plan includes only 5 AI summaries per month. Paid tiers add team and sales features: Premium is $19 per user/month, Team Edition is $29, and Team Edition Pro is $39. Notes flow where you work, too—meeting notes, insights, and action items sync automatically with tools including Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot, Notion, and Asana.

Best for: Solo users and small teams who want unlimited recording at zero cost, and sales teams that live in a CRM.

4. Granola — best bot-free option

Granola has become the buzzy pick because it doesn't send a bot into your call. Instead, it acts as a smart notepad: it automatically transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes meetings, and works as a live notepad where you jot rough notes that Granola then enhances with context pulled from the transcript. It runs as a desktop and mobile app rather than a call participant. The trade-off is on the free tier—the Basic plan is free with no meeting cap and unlimited AI-enhanced notes, but meeting history is limited. Paid plans remove that ceiling: Business at $14/user/month unlocks unlimited history, and Enterprise at $35 adds admin controls. Note that the lineup recently changed—the older single-user tier (around $18/month) was retired in Granola's February 2026 rebrand, so the free plan is now how you evaluate the product.

Best for: Teams that find meeting bots intrusive and want natural conversations with quiet capture.

5. tl;dv — best for multilingual and sales teams

tl;dv pairs a generous free plan with strong language support. Its free plan includes unlimited meetings, 10 AI notes, and 30+ language transcription. The Pro plan is $20 per user per month billed annually and adds unlimited AI meeting notes, global meeting search, AI summaries, and unlimited integrations. The bot joins your call as a visible participant across the major platforms, and the company has leaned into compliance—it hosts data on EU servers and is GDPR, SOC 2, and EU AI Act compliant.

Best for: International teams and salespeople who need many languages and CRM automation on a low-cost plan.

6. Fellow — best for meeting culture, not just notes

Fellow goes beyond capture to help teams run better meetings with shared agendas and nudges. Its free plan is $0 for teams of up to 10 users and includes core meeting notes, AI transcription, summaries, action items, and basic integrations. The Team plan is $7/user/month annually with 10 AI recordings and project-management integrations like Asana and Jira, while Business at $15/user/month annually adds unlimited AI and CRM integrations like HubSpot and Salesforce. Beyond notes, Fellow adds analytics and gentle policy nudges such as timers and meeting cost estimates, so leaders can track time spent and reinforce agendas.

Best for: Managers who want to improve how meetings run, not just document them.

7. Krisp — best if audio quality is the priority

Krisp started as a noise-cancellation tool and grew into a full voice-AI suite, which makes it a smart pick for remote workers in noisy environments. All plans include bot-free recording and on-device noise cancellation. The free plan includes 60 minutes of noise cancellation daily and two AI summaries. On privacy, Krisp supports on-device English transcription for speed and privacy, plus server-based transcription in 15 additional languages. Paid tiers unlock the rest—the Pro plan at $8/month on annual billing consolidates noise cancellation, transcription, and meeting intelligence in one platform.

Best for: Anyone whose calls suffer from background noise or who wants clean audio and notes from one app.

How to choose

Start with a free plan and let real meetings decide. If you want the widest integrations and unlimited capture, test Fireflies. If you just want to record everything for free, Fathom's unlimited free tier is hard to beat. Prefer no bot in the room? Try Granola or Krisp. Need many languages? tl;dv. Want to fix meeting habits, not just take notes? Fellow. And if you simply want to read along live, Otter still does that better than most.

One practical note for remote teams: whichever tool you pick, agree on when the note taker records and tell participants. That keeps the conversation natural and the notes trustworthy—which is the entire point.