Ranked, with our bias declared
The best AI meeting assistants
Fireflies.ai is the strongest all-round meeting assistant if you want conversation intelligence and CRM sync. Fathom is the quickest route to a summary, with recordings and instant summaries. Otter is the best known, and the one with a live transcript you can read during the call. Granola is the one that does not put a bot in your call. Zoom AI Companion is built in if every meeting you have is already in Zoom.
§Our bias, stated. Scriben is not a meeting assistant and does not appear in this ranking. We make an AI pen, which is a different product for a different problem, and putting ourselves into a list of meeting assistants to be first in it would tell you nothing useful. There is a note at the end about when a pen is the better answer instead. Every fact below was read off the vendor’s own site, checked on 15 September 2026. Products change — check theirs before you buy, and tell us if anything here has gone out of date.
The ranking
5 tools, in order, and why.
01 / Fireflies.ai
Meeting assistant · Joins the call as a notetaker
- Best for — The strongest all-rounder: transcription, conversation intelligence and CRM sync.
- Needs — A signed-in device.
- Features — Transcription, conversation intelligence and CRM sync for recorded calls.
- Against it — The notetaker is visible in the participant list, which changes how some rooms talk, and some organisations block bots outright.
02 / Fathom
Meeting assistant · Joins the call
- Best for — The quickest to a usable summary: recordings and instant summaries with almost no setup.
- Needs — A signed-in device.
- Features — Call recordings with instant summaries.
- Against it — Video calls only. Anything said in a room with no call running is outside what it can capture.
03 / Otter.ai
Meeting assistant · Joins the call
- Best for — The best known, and the one to choose for a live transcript you can read during the call.
- Needs — A signed-in device.
- Features — A live transcript you can read while the call is running, plus summaries afterwards.
- Against it — It needs a call to join. A conversation across a desk with no meeting attached is invisible to it.
04 / Granola
Meeting notepad · Your computer’s own audio
- Best for — The one that does not join your call. It takes your computer’s own audio instead.
- Needs — The app open on the machine.
- Features — Fills in your own typed shorthand from the computer’s audio, with no bot in the call.
- Against it — Something has to be running on a computer in the conversation.
05 / Zoom AI Companion / ZoomMate
Built-in assistant · Inside Zoom
- Best for — Built into Zoom. Sensible if every meeting is a Zoom meeting, irrelevant otherwise.
- Needs — A Zoom meeting.
- Features — Meeting summaries and assistance inside Zoom.
- Against it — Bounded by Zoom. Conversations that never become a Zoom meeting are invisible to it.
Side by side
The same facts, in a table.
- Fireflies.ai
- Meeting assistant — Joins the call as a notetaker; needs a signed-in device. Transcription, conversation intelligence and CRM sync for recorded calls. Source: fireflies.ai
- Fathom
- Meeting assistant — Joins the call; needs a signed-in device. Call recordings with instant summaries. Source: fathom.video
- Otter.ai
- Meeting assistant — Joins the call; needs a signed-in device. A live transcript you can read while the call is running, plus summaries afterwards. Source: otter.ai
- Granola
- Meeting notepad — Your computer’s own audio; needs the app open on the machine. Fills in your own typed shorthand from the computer’s audio, with no bot in the call. Source: granola.ai
- Zoom AI Companion / ZoomMate
- Built-in assistant — Inside Zoom; needs a zoom meeting. Meeting summaries and assistance inside Zoom. Source: zoom.com
All facts checked on 15 September 2026 against each vendor’s own published pages, in a browser. Third-party round-ups were not used as sources.
Where this comes from
When a pen is the better answer.
Every tool above needs the conversation to be a meeting on a screen. Scriben is an AI pen: a real ballpoint that records the room to its own storage for up to 18 hours with no phone and no network, then turns it into a transcript, a summary and the work that follows, for $99 once. It belongs in a different list to this one — but if half your important conversations happen away from a screen, it is the half nothing above can reach.