The best AI note taking tools

01 / Fireflies.ai

Meeting assistant · Joins the call as a notetaker

• Best for — Calls. It joins as a participant and syncs what was said into your CRM.
• 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 / Otter.ai

Meeting assistant · Joins the call

• Best for — Calls, with a live transcript you can read while the other person is still talking.
• 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.

03 / Fathom

Meeting assistant · Joins the call

• Best for — Calls, with a summary waiting the moment the meeting ends.
• 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.

04 / Granola

Meeting notepad · Your computer’s own audio

• Best for — Calls taken at a desk, without a bot appearing in the participant list.
• 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 / Scriben — ours

AI pen · The room, offline

• Best for — Rooms. It records with nothing switched on, which is the only way to reach a conversation that has no call attached.
• Needs — Nothing running.
• Features — Up to 18 hours of offline recording and 400 hours of storage on the pen; speaker-aware transcript, summary, action items and approval-gated follow-up.
• Against it — iOS app only today, so an Android-only user is not served yet. It does not join video calls and has no live-transcription view while you talk.

06 / Plaud Note

AI recorder · The room, offline

• Best for — Rooms, when a single very long recording matters more than writing.
• Needs — Nothing running.
• Features — Up to 30 hours of recording on a charge, with transcription and summaries in its app.
• Against it — Not a pen. It records but does not write, so it is a second object alongside your notes.

07 / Notta

Transcription app · Web meetings and uploads

• Best for — Files you already have, plus calls.
• Needs — A signed-in device.
• Features — Transcribes web meetings and audio files you upload.
• Against it — It needs a call or a file. It does not capture a room on its own.

08 / Livescribe Echo 2

Smart pen · The room, while you write

• Best for — Handwriting. Tap a written word and hear that moment — nothing else here does it.
• Needs — Its dot-pattern paper.
• Features — Links each written word to the audio from that moment; 4GB of memory in the pen.
• Against it — It needs Livescribe’s dot-patterned paper, and its output is synced notes and audio rather than a structured summary and action items.

09 / Zoom AI Companion / ZoomMate

Built-in assistant · Inside Zoom

• Best for — Zoom, and only Zoom.
• 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.