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, and its free tier includes unlimited transcription. Fathom has the most generous free plan — unlimited recordings and summaries — but its paid tiers need two seats. Otter is the best known and the most metered. Granola is the one that does not put a bot in your call. Zoom AI Companion is free-ish if you already pay for 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 price below was read off the vendor’s own pricing page on 15 September 2026. Prices change — check theirs before you buy, and tell us if anything here has gone out of date.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 · Free tier · Pro $18/mo ($10 annual); Business $29 ($19 annual); Enterprise $39
- Best for — The strongest all-rounder: conversation intelligence, CRM sync, and unlimited transcription even on free.
- Captures — Joins the call as a notetaker. Needs: a signed-in device.
- Limits — Unlimited transcription on every tier; free storage 400 min per team
- 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 · Free tier · Team $19/mo ($15 annual); Business $34 ($25 annual). Two-seat minimum
- Best for — The best free plan, and the one that cannot be upgraded by a single person — both paid tiers need two seats.
- Captures — Joins the call. Needs: a signed-in device.
- Limits — Free plan covers unlimited recordings and summaries
- Against it — Both paid tiers state a two-user minimum, so one person cannot buy one seat.
03 / Otter.ai
Meeting assistant · Free tier · Pro $16.99/mo ($8.33 annual); Business $30 ($19.99 annual)
- Best for — The best known and the most metered. Buy it for the live transcript, not for the allowance.
- Captures — Joins the call. Needs: a signed-in device.
- Limits — Free 300 min/mo, 30 min per conversation; Business unlimited
- Against it — Metered on every tier below Business, and the free tier’s 30-minute conversation cap is shorter than most real meetings.
04 / Granola
Meeting notepad · Free tier · Business $14/user/mo; Enterprise $35
- Best for — The one that does not join your call. It takes your computer’s own audio instead.
- Captures — Your computer’s own audio. Needs: the app open on the machine.
- Limits — Basic limits how far back history goes
- Against it — Something has to be running in the conversation, and unlimited history is a paid tier.
05 / Zoom AI Companion / ZoomMate
Built-in assistant · Bundled with Zoom · Free tier limited; full suite is a paid subscription
- Best for — Bundled rather than bought. Sensible if Zoom is already on the invoice, irrelevant otherwise.
- Captures — Inside Zoom. Needs: a zoom meeting.
- Limits — Free tier lists 3 hosted meeting summaries a month
- 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
- Free tier — Pro $18/mo ($10 annual); Business $29 ($19 annual); Enterprise $39. The strongest all-rounder: conversation intelligence, CRM sync, and unlimited transcription even on free. Source: fireflies.ai/pricing
- Fathom
- Free tier — Team $19/mo ($15 annual); Business $34 ($25 annual). Two-seat minimum. The best free plan, and the one that cannot be upgraded by a single person — both paid tiers need two seats. Source: fathom.video/pricing
- Otter.ai
- Free tier — Pro $16.99/mo ($8.33 annual); Business $30 ($19.99 annual). The best known and the most metered. Buy it for the live transcript, not for the allowance. Source: otter.ai/pricing
- Granola
- Free tier — Business $14/user/mo; Enterprise $35. The one that does not join your call. It takes your computer’s own audio instead. Source: granola.ai
- Zoom AI Companion / ZoomMate
- Bundled with Zoom — Free tier limited; full suite is a paid subscription. Bundled rather than bought. Sensible if Zoom is already on the invoice, irrelevant otherwise. Source: zoom.com
All figures checked on 15 September 2026 against each vendor’s own published pricing page, in a browser — several of these pages render their prices in JavaScript and return nothing to a plain fetch. Third-party pricing round-ups were not used as sources; two of the ones we looked at disagreed with the vendor by $10 a seat.
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 $129 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.