Best Free Ai Meeting Assistants: What the Free Tiers Really Allow
Fathom gives unlimited free recording and transcription. Fireflies rations storage, Otter rations minutes, and Notta caps calls at three minutes.
By Galactic News Editorial · Published 2026-11-13T22:21:12+00:00 · Updated 2026-11-13T22:21:12+00:00
Best Free AI Meeting Assistants: What the Free Tiers Really Allow
Every major AI meeting assistant has a free plan, and every free plan hides its limit somewhere different. One caps minutes per month. Another caps storage. A third caps AI summaries. The best free AI meeting assistant depends on how you meet: how long your calls run, whether a bot may join, and whether you need the notes kept. This guide compares the free tiers on the limits that actually bite, using each vendor's published pricing.
Best free AI meeting assistants compared
| Tool | Free plan limit | Bot joins the call? | Cheapest paid plan | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fathom | Unlimited recordings and transcription; advanced AI summaries on 5 calls a month | Yes; bot-free capture in beta on Mac | Premium $16/user/mo annual | Most people |
| Fireflies.ai | Unlimited transcription; 400 minutes of team storage; limited AI summaries | Yes | Pro $10/seat/mo annual | Teams and CRM users |
| Otter.ai | 300 minutes a month; 30 minutes per conversation; 25 most recent conversations kept | Yes | Pro $8.33/user/mo annual | Searchable transcripts |
| tl;dv | Unlimited recordings; full AI notes on 10 meetings a month | Yes | Pro $18/seat/mo annual | Sharing clips and review |
| Notta | 120 minutes a month; 3 minutes per conversation | Yes | Pro $8.17/mo annual | Multilingual meetings |
| Granola | Unlimited meeting notes; limited history | No, device audio only | Business $14/user/mo annual | Bot-free capture |
| MeetGeek | 3 hours a month | Yes | $9.99/user/mo annual | Budget teams |
| Fellow | 5 AI notes and 5 recordings per user, lifetime | Yes | Team $7/user/mo annual | Structured meetings |
Fathom: the most generous free plan
Fathom has the most generous free plan in this group. The free individual plan includes unlimited recordings, unlimited transcription, and unlimited storage. It also includes instant AI summaries, clips, playlists, and search. The single catch is that advanced AI summaries, Ask Fathom, and AI action items only cover your first five calls each month.
That cap is easy to live with for most solo users. Five calls with full AI summaries, plus unlimited plain transcripts, covers a normal week of meetings. Fathom works with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. A bot-free capture option is in beta on Mac only. In September 2026, the AI email client Superhuman acquired Fathom.
Paid plans start at Premium at $16 a user a month on annual billing, or $20 month to month. Team costs $15 a user a month on annual billing with a two-user minimum. Business costs $25 a user a month on annual billing. All paid tiers carry a 90-day money-back guarantee, the most generous in this category.
Fireflies.ai: unlimited transcription, capped storage
Fireflies.ai is built around a shared, searchable library of the whole team's calls, with topic trackers, comments on specific moments, and integrations with Slack, Notion, and the major CRMs. Its free plan transcribes without a minute cap, which suits teams with heavy meeting loads. It supports more than 100 languages.
Storage is where free Fireflies ends. The current pricing page lists 400 minutes of storage for the free plan, while some of Fireflies' own older pages still show 800 minutes. Plan around 400 and check your account. There is another condition for newer accounts. Since September 1, 2026, accounts get unlimited transcription only when auto-join for calendar meetings is switched on. With auto-join off, those accounts get three meeting transcriptions.
Free also includes limited AI summaries and 20 AI credits. The recording limit is two hours. Downloading transcripts is a Pro feature. Pro costs $10 a seat a month on annual billing, or $18 month to month. It raises storage to 8,000 minutes per seat, adds unlimited AI summaries, video recording, transcript downloads, action items, and unlimited integrations. Business costs $19 a seat a month on annual billing. Enterprise costs $39 a seat a month on annual billing.
Otter.ai: the tightest free plan, the cheapest paid seat
Otter.ai is the strongest choice if you want to watch a transcript develop live and search it later. Its transcripts are the most usable as a searchable record. You can search across meetings, highlight passages, add comments, and export. Otter has iOS and Android apps, which also makes it the easiest way here to capture in-person conversations on your phone. It transcribes in six languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese.
The free Basic plan is tight. It gives 300 transcription minutes a month, caps each conversation at 30 minutes, allows three file imports for the life of the account, and keeps only your 25 most recent conversations in view. Older ones are archived, not deleted. One weekly hour-long meeting breaks both the per-call cap and the monthly minutes, so treat free Otter as a short-meeting tool.
Pro costs $8.33 a user a month on annual billing, or $16.99 month to month. It raises the allowance to 1,200 minutes a month, extends meetings to 90 minutes, and adds unlimited conversation history, advanced search, exports, templates, and more file imports. Business costs $19.99 a user a month on annual billing. It removes the monthly limit on in-app meeting recordings, supports meetings up to four hours, and adds custom AI workflows, usage analytics, and activity logs.
tl;dv: unlimited recordings, capped AI notes
tl;dv fits teams that want to review recorded meetings and share clips. Its free plan records without a minute cap, like Fathom. The limit is on AI notes: full AI notes cover ten meetings a month, and Ask AI queries are capped at ten. Recordings can run up to three hours. Pro costs $18 a seat a month on annual billing. If your workflow is to record everything and share the key moments, tl;dv's free plan is worth testing. If you need AI notes on every call, the ten-meeting cap will push you to Pro fast.
Notta: strong on languages, weak as a free meeting tool
Notta is the pick for multilingual transcription and translation. It covers 58 transcription languages, with translated transcripts on paid plans and bilingual and real-time translation views as add-ons. It works with Zoom, Meet, Teams, and Webex, and it has a desktop app, web app, mobile apps, and a Chrome extension.
Its free plan is not a meeting tool. It gives 120 transcription minutes a month, but each conversation is capped at three minutes. That is a demo, not a way to cover a real meeting. Pro costs $8.17 a month on annual billing, or $12.99 month to month, for one seat. It gives 1,800 minutes a month and ten AI summaries a month. Business costs $16.67 a month on annual billing, with unlimited minutes. If you need non-English transcription, Notta is worth paying for. If you only need English, the free plan will not carry you.
Granola, MeetGeek, and Fellow: the bot-free and budget options
Granola is the bot-free option. It captures device audio only, with no bot joining the call. That matters when clients or employers block meeting bots. The free plan gives unlimited meeting notes, but history is limited to about 30 days. Business costs $14 a user a month on annual billing. Granola works with Zoom, Meet, Teams, Slack Huddles, and in-person meetings.
MeetGeek gives three hours a month on its free plan, with whole-team auto-capture and a choice of EU or US data hosting. Paid plans start at $9.99 a user a month on annual billing. Fellow gives five AI notes and five recordings per user for the lifetime of the account, which is a trial rather than a plan. Its Team plan costs $7 a user a month on annual billing, the cheapest paid entry here, and it works with Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, and Slack Huddles.
One more option if bots are blocked: a Chrome extension such as Tactiq gives ten transcripts a month with no bot in the call. It transcribes the meeting in the browser instead of joining it.
How to choose the best free AI meeting assistant
Ask three questions before you sign up.
- Can a bot join your calls? If bots are blocked, Granola is the only full option here, and Tactiq is the browser-based fallback.
- How long are your meetings? Otter caps free calls at 30 minutes. Notta caps them at three minutes. Fathom, Fireflies, and tl;dv have no per-call cap on free plans.
- What runs out first for you? Fathom rations AI summaries at five a month. Fireflies rations storage at 400 minutes per team. Otter rations minutes at 300 a month. tl;dv rations AI notes at ten meetings a month.
Also check the platform. All eight tools cover Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, except Granola, which also covers Slack Huddles and in-person capture. Notta adds Webex. If your meetings happen on Webex, Notta is the only free option here that covers it.
Bottom line
Fathom is the best free AI meeting assistant for most people. Unlimited recordings, unlimited transcription, and unlimited storage, with only advanced AI summaries capped at five calls a month, is the strongest free tier in this group. Fireflies is the best free option for teams that need CRM sync and a shared call library, as long as you watch the 400-minute storage cap and keep auto-join on. Otter is the best free option for live transcription and searchable notes, but its 300-minute monthly cap and 30-minute per-call limit make it a short-meeting tool. If bots are blocked, Granola is the answer. If you need another language, pay for Notta.