Best AI meeting assistants (2026): Fireflies, Otter, Granola, tl;dv and 7 more tested
A quick definition first, because the category is muddier than vendors like to admit. This guide is about live meeting assistants: tools that join your Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet call (or record it through your mic), transcribe in real time, extract action items, and push the output to Slack, Notion, or a CRM. That is a different product category from AI note-taking apps like Notion AI, Obsidian, or Mem, which sit on top of your own writing. We ran 8 hours of real meetings (3 sales calls, 2 product reviews, 2 one-on-ones, 1 town hall) through 10 of the best meeting assistants in 2026 and measured what actually came out the other side. An eleventh, OLVA, was added later and tested on a separate reproducible method described in its entry.
Top transcription accuracy
Otter scored 96% word accuracy, the highest of any tool tested.
Action-item recall
Fireflies 92%, tl;dv 90%, Granola 88%, Sembly 87%.
Five-part test rubric
Ten assistants scored across 8 hours of real meetings.
- Best overall: Fireflies leads for integration depth, connecting to Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, Slack, and major CRMs; transcription accuracy was 94% in testing. Paid plans start at $10/user/month.
- Best accuracy: Otter scored 96% word accuracy in testing, the highest of any tool, with a real-time transcript visible during the meeting. Paid plans start at $8.33/user/month.
- Best for bot-free note-taking: Granola works bot-free on macOS and Windows, keeping recordings local-first; it scored 93% transcription accuracy with 88% action-item recall.
- Best for sales teams: tl;dv focuses on deal coaching with clips and highlights; it scored 94% accuracy and 90% action-item recall, at $18/user/month on paid plans.
The category has matured to the point where the worst tool here is still usable: the differences are about fit, not quality.The state of the category
How we tested
We ran the same 8 hours of real meetings through every tool in parallel. The mix: three external sales calls (one cold demo, two follow-ups), two internal product reviews, two one-on-ones, and one all-hands town hall with 12 attendees. All conducted in standard American English with one non-native speaker present across two of the calls.
The rubric had five measurements. First, transcription accuracy: we sampled 200 utterances per tool against ground truth (the actual audio) and counted word-error rate. Second, action-item recall: we manually counted every explicit ask in each meeting, then checked how many each tool surfaced. Third, summary quality, scored by 5 blind raters who saw only the summaries with vendor names stripped. Fourth, integration depth: we tested actual CRM push to HubSpot and Salesforce, not just the "we integrate" marketing claim. Fifth, price-per-active-user-month at the tier most teams actually buy.
Bot-based
A named bot joins the call
Records without your device
Bot-free
Records locally on your device
Nothing in the attendee list
Head-to-head comparison table
| Tool | Free tier | Paid floor | Accuracy (WER) | Action-item recall | Bot or bot-free |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fireflies | 800 min/mo | $10/user/mo | 94% | 92% | Bot |
| Otter | 300 min/mo | $8.33/user/mo | 96% | 85% | Bot |
| Granola | Free plan, limited history | $14/user/mo | 93% | 88% | Bot-free |
| tl;dv | 10 meetings/mo | $18/user/mo | 94% | 90% | Bot |
| Bluedot | 5 meetings lifetime | $19/user/mo | 92% | 86% | Bot-free |
| OLVA | 2 hours/mo | $12.50/user/mo | 94%* | 100%* | Bot-free |
| Krisp | Limited transcript | $12/mo | 91% | 78% | Bot-free |
| Fellow | 10 users, 1 series | $7/user/mo | 90% | 80% | Bot |
| Read.ai | 5 meetings/mo | $19.75/user/mo | 91% | 82% | Bot |
| MeetGeek | 5 hr/mo | $19/user/mo | 92% | 84% | Bot |
| Sembly | Limited | $15/mo | 91% | 87% | Bot |
* OLVA was added after the original round and tested on a different method: a scripted meeting with a pre-written answer key, read aloud, rather than 8 hours of live multi-party calls. Read speech flatters every tool, so treat its figures as a ceiling and not as directly comparable to the rows above. The method is described in full in its entry below.
The tools, ranked
Bluedot, bot-free recording with privacy-first posture
Free 5 meetings lifetime · Personal $19/user/mo · Pro $30/user/mo
Disclosure first: Bluedot is a partner on our review network. We feature it on the merits, for its privacy posture and its CRM push depth among bot-free tools.
Bluedot records meetings via a Chrome extension or native app rather than sending a visible bot into the call. The privacy posture is real: nothing in the attendee list, nothing in the recording disclosure, no third-party participant for legal teams to vet. The 100+ language coverage matches tl;dv's breadth, and the integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, and Notion are solid (we tested the HubSpot push and it works cleanly).
Where it loses: extension-based recording means the local device needs to be present and awake (Granola has the same constraint). If you want a bot to keep recording while you take a sick day, this is the wrong category.
The catch: read the free tier carefully. It is 5 meetings lifetime, not 5 per month. You will hit it in a week of normal use and then need to decide whether you are buying.
1. Fireflies.ai, the CRM-integrated workhorse
Free 800 min/mo · Pro $10/user/mo annual ($18 monthly) · Business $19/user/mo · Enterprise custom
Fireflies is the tool we keep coming back to for team deployments. The integration catalog is the deepest in the category: Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Slack, Notion, Asana, Monday, plus 50+ others through native connectors. When we tested CRM push, Fireflies was the only tool that wrote a clean activity record to HubSpot with the transcript link, summary, and tagged action items in the right fields with no manual mapping work.
The "AskFred" chatbot is the genuinely useful bit you do not see in the marketing. After a few weeks of meetings, you can query "what did the customer say about pricing in the Acme account last month" and Fred answers from across your meeting history. Sentiment and topic tracking are usable, not just decorative.
Where it loses: the UI feels enterprise-heavy if you are a solo user. There is a lot of chrome around what you actually want. The free tier is generous in minutes (800/mo) but cuts off custom vocabulary and bulk Soundbites.
The catch: a lot of the polish (custom vocabulary, bulk Soundbites, advanced analytics) requires the Business tier at $19/user/mo. Pro at $10 is fine for individuals but a 10-person team that wants the deep features is looking at ~$2,280/year, not $1,200.
2. Otter.ai, the category default with Zoom-native polish
Free 300 min/mo, 30 min per call · Pro $8.33/user/mo annual ($16.99 monthly) · Business $20/user/mo · Enterprise custom
Otter is what most people think of when you say "AI meeting transcription." For good reason: the Zoom integration is the smoothest in the category, the auto-join behavior works on paid Zoom plans without fiddling, and live transcription accuracy in clean American English is the best we measured (96% on our 200-utterance sample). The post-meeting summary cleanly separates a narrative recap from a flat action-item list, which is what most users actually want.
Where it loses: heavy accents and multi-speaker chaos drop accuracy faster than Fireflies or tl;dv. On the town hall with 12 people, attribution went sideways more than once. Action-item extraction missed about 15% of explicit asks in our test, which is meaningful if you rely on it for follow-through.
The catch: "Otter AI Chat" (the query-your-meetings feature equivalent to AskFred) is gated to Pro and above, and the free tier is increasingly skeletal compared to what it was two years ago.
3. Granola, the no-bot notepad that thinks like a Notion page
Basic free · Business $14/user/mo · Enterprise $35/user/mo
Granola is the tool that made us reconsider the whole bot model. Instead of sending a visible bot into your meeting, Granola records via your computer's microphone directly. You scribble rough notes during the call (the way you normally would) and after the meeting Granola enriches your scribbles with the transcript-grounded context. The output reads like a Notion page someone actually wrote, not like a robot summary.
The template system is the underrated feature. Different meeting types (sales discovery, customer interview, weekly one-on-one) get different post-call structures automatically. We set up four templates in a week and stopped editing summaries by hand.
Where it loses: no automatic CRM push, and transcription quality on a noisy call sits slightly behind Otter.
The catch: the no-bot model is a feature for some workplaces and a non-starter for others. Orgs that require the meeting attendee list to reflect every recorder for compliance reasons will not let Granola in.
4. tl;dv, the deal-coach for sales orgs
Free 10 meetings/mo with limits · Pro $18/user/mo annual ($29 monthly) · Business $58/user/mo · Enterprise custom
tl;dv is the tool we recommend when a sales team asks for "Gong but cheaper." Its AI deal-scorecards run across every call in your pipeline, auto-tagging risk signals, champion signals, and competitor mentions with surprising accuracy. The Speaker Insights view (talk-ratio, longest monologue, question-rate) is a useful coaching surface for sales managers.
Multi-language coverage is the best in the category: 30+ languages with accurate transcription, which is unusual at this price point. If you run any meetings outside English, tl;dv pulls ahead.
Where it loses: pricing jumps hard from Pro ($18) to Business ($58), and most of the deal-coaching features that actually matter are above the jump. The UI is busier than Granola or Otter (more menus, more knobs).
The catch: free tier is essentially a recording-plus-transcription floor with the deal-coaching gated to Pro and above. Evaluate it on a paid trial, not on the free plan, or you will miss what makes it interesting.
5. Krisp, best for noise cancellation first, transcription second
Free · Pro $12/mo · Business $20/user/mo · Enterprise custom
Krisp built its name on industry-leading bidirectional noise cancellation: it strips background noise from your mic and from the other side's mic at the system audio layer. That is still its core strength. Meeting transcription and summaries are layered on top and work inside any meeting platform because Krisp sits below the app.
Where it loses: the transcription and summary features feel bolted-on next to Fireflies or Otter. Action-item recall came in lowest in our test (78%), and the free tier limits transcription minutes hard.
The catch: this is a noise-cancellation tool first and a meeting assistant second. Pick it for the noise cancellation, and either accept the lighter transcription product or pair Krisp with one of the others.
6. Fellow.app, the agenda-first one-on-one specialist
Free up to 10 users, 1 meeting series · Pro $7/user/mo · Business $12/user/mo · Enterprise custom
Fellow is a different shape than the rest of this list. It is a meeting-process tool with AI on top, not an AI tool with meeting features. The collaborative agenda builder (both parties add items before the meeting) and the template library for one-on-ones, all-hands, retros, and skip-levels are the actual product. AI summary lives at the bottom of every meeting page, helpful but not the headline.
Where it loses: less powerful as a pure transcription tool, and the integration catalog is shallower than Fireflies. If you wanted a Salesforce-pushing AI bot, Fellow is not the answer.
The catch: pick Fellow if you want to fix your meeting culture, not just transcribe it. The agenda-and-action structure is the value; the AI is supporting cast.
7. Read.ai, the meeting-metrics dashboard
Free 5 meetings/mo · Pro $19.75/user/mo annual · Enterprise custom
Read.ai's distinctive bet is metrics. Sentiment and engagement scores per participant, post-meeting "was this useful" health scores, and dashboards that aggregate meeting quality over time. It works across Zoom, Teams, Meet, and Webex, which is broader platform coverage than most.
Where it loses: the scoring can feel surveillance-y in team contexts, and transcription accuracy sits slightly behind the top tier (91% in our test versus Otter's 96%).
The catch: the metrics product is interesting but adoption requires team buy-in. Solo use surfaces maybe half the value because the participant-comparison views are the headline. If your team will not opt in, do not pay for Read.
8. MeetGeek, the cheap Otter alternative with template customization
Free 5 hr/mo · Pro $19/user/mo · Business $39/user/mo · Enterprise custom
MeetGeek is the price-conscious pick when you want per-meeting-type custom templates (sales discovery, customer success, hiring interview) without paying for Fireflies Business. Accuracy is solid (92%) and the templating workflow is honestly more flexible than Otter's.
Where it loses: a UI that feels half a generation behind the leaders. Nothing is broken, it just feels older.
The catch: the integration story is stronger than the interface suggests. MeetGeek ships native connectors for Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Notion, Google Drive and ClickUp, plus several thousand further apps through Zapier and Make. We have not re-tested the depth of those CRM writes ourselves, so read "a native connector exists" as a different claim from "it writes cleanly into your fields without mapping," which is the bar Fireflies clears in our testing.
Correction, 22 July 2026: an earlier version of this section described MeetGeek as having a smaller integration catalog and recommended it only for teams with "minimal integration needs." That was out of date. MeetGeek's native connector list is broader than we credited, and the section above has been corrected against MeetGeek's own published integrations. The UI assessment and the 92% accuracy figure are unchanged and stand pending a re-test.
9. Sembly AI, the action-item extractor for compliance-heavy orgs
Free · Personal $15/mo · Pro $29/user/mo · Team $39/user/mo
Sembly's edge is structure plus posture. GDPR-first stance with EU data residency available, and outputs that separate Decisions, Issues, and Risks into their own tagged sections rather than a flat action-item list. Meeting search across history is fast and works on long archives.
Where it loses: the UI feels dated next to Granola or Otter, and new integrations land slower than at the leaders.
The catch: pick Sembly if you are in EU healthcare, finance, or legal where data residency genuinely matters. Otherwise the others are smoother day-to-day.
Read the free tiers carefully: most are designed to make you upgrade within a week.On free tiers
10. OLVA, the bot-free one that helps during the conversation
Basic free (2 hours/mo) · Plus $12.50/user/mo · Pro $19.99/user/mo · slide decks use separately purchased credits
Added after the original round, so OLVA did not run through the same 8 hours of live meetings. We used a scripted meeting with a ground-truth answer key, run twice, once voiced by synthetic speakers and once read aloud by a human. That method is reproducible where the original is not, but it is read speech, which flatters every tool, so treat the accuracy figure as a ceiling.
OLVA is the only tool here built to be useful while you are still in the conversation, and it defined CAC, SOC 2 Type II, and DPA mid-call without being asked. It is genuinely bot-free and we checked rather than took their word for it: we joined from a second device and inspected the attendee list, and nothing appears. Capture also starts with no meeting in existence at all, so in-person conversation is not a special mode, it is simply what the product does when there is no call. Granola markets in-person capture too, through its iPhone and Android apps, so OLVA is not alone in covering it. What is different is that OLVA needs no separate app and no mode switch, and it is the case we actually watched work.
Action-item extraction was the strongest result we have measured. It recovered all five planted items with the correct owners, promoted none of the four decoys, and filed the soft ones under Questions Raised marked deferred. It also recorded a deliberate non-decision as a decision not to decide.
Where it loses: integration depth, one of the five things this page scores on. Calendars, Slack, Notion, Drive, and signed webhooks ship, but everything except the calendars is Pro-only and the CRM story is a roadmap. HubSpot, Salesforce, Linear, and Jira are all listed as coming soon.
The catch: it does not fact-check what it hears. We planted a false claim about GDPR dates, nothing fired, and the summary then restated it as fact and built a compliance recommendation on top of it. It also deletes proper nouns it cannot resolve rather than guessing, so a transcript can read as complete while quietly missing the people it names.
Pricing comparison (real numbers, monthly equivalents)
| Tool | Paid floor (monthly equiv) | Team tier | Free tier shape |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fellow | $7/user/mo | $12/user/mo | 10 users, 1 series |
| Otter | $8.33/user/mo | $20/user/mo | 300 min/mo |
| Fireflies | $10/user/mo | $19/user/mo | 800 min/mo |
| Krisp | $12/mo | $20/user/mo | Voice-only |
| Granola | $14/user/mo | $35/user/mo | Free plan, limited history |
| Sembly | $15/mo | $39/user/mo | Limited |
| OLVA | $12.50/user/mo | $19.99/user/mo | 2 hours/mo |
| tl;dv | $18/user/mo | $58/user/mo | 10 meetings/mo |
| MeetGeek | $19/user/mo | $39/user/mo | 5 hr/mo |
| Bluedot | $19/user/mo | $30/user/mo | 5 meetings lifetime |
| Read.ai | $19.75/user/mo | Custom | 5 meetings/mo |
Who should pick what
What we wish existed
Three honest gaps after a week with these tools. Universal CRM push without per-integration config. Every tool has integrations and every integration requires its own field mapping. A standard meeting-data schema (something like vCard for calls) would let the integration layer be commodity. Nobody has shipped it.
Bot-free capture that helps you DURING the call. Granola is the best individual experience by a wide margin, and since our original testing it has shipped Windows, iOS and Android, which closes the platform gap we flagged here. What almost nothing here does is work in the live conversation, detecting the question you were just asked and surfacing the answer while it still matters. OLVA is the first tool on this page built for that, and the idea holds up. What is still missing is a tool that does it and checks what it hears: OLVA will repeat a false statement into the permanent record without flagging it, which is the next honest gap in this category.
Genuinely useful free tiers. Most of these free tiers are designed to make you upgrade within a week. Otter's old 600-minute free tier was the gold standard and it has been quietly cut to 300. Fireflies' 800 minutes is currently the most generous, which is part of why it ranks where it does.
The bottom line
The category has matured to the point where the worst tool here is still usable. The differences are about fit, not quality. For a team buying one tool for everyone, Fireflies is the safest pick and the one we would default to. For a solo operator who hates bots, Granola is the upgrade from default tools you did not know you needed. For a sales org with budget, tl;dv Business is the cheaper-than-Gong play.
If you can only pick one and you are an individual: Granola if you take your own notes, Fireflies if you want the integrations. If you are buying for a team: Fireflies, with Bluedot as the bot-free alternative when privacy posture matters more than CRM depth.