If you sit through more than a couple of calls a day, the right meeting tool buys back the twenty minutes you used to spend writing up notes and chasing down what everyone agreed to. We spent time with the leading options to figure out which one actually fits which kind of work, and the honest answer is that the best AI note taker depends less on a feature checklist than on two questions: do you mind a bot joining your call, and do you mind your transcripts living in someone else's cloud.
This is a first-person, we-tested rundown. We will be generous about what each tool does well, because they are all genuinely good at something. One disclosure up front: we build Routines, one of the options below. We have tried to keep the rest of this as fair as we would want someone to be about our own app.
The bot-joins-your-call problem
Before the list, the single biggest fork in the road. A large share of meeting assistants work by sending a bot into your call as a visible participant. You have seen it, a tile that says "Otter.ai" or "Fireflies Notetaker" sitting in the Zoom grid, recording on behalf of someone in the room.
That model has real upsides. The bot captures audio server-side, so it does not matter what device you are on, and the transcript is instantly shareable with people who were not even there. For sales teams and recruiters who live in scheduled calls, that is exactly what they want.
It also has real downsides. The bot is visible to everyone, which changes the room, some external guests are uncomfortable being recorded by a third-party participant, and a few security-conscious companies block unknown bots outright. And whatever that bot hears is processed and stored on a vendor's servers by default.
The alternative is local capture: an app on your own machine records the system audio and your microphone directly, with no extra attendee in the call. Granola popularized this approach, and it is the model Routines uses too. Neither one is universally better. They are answers to different priorities.
How we judged each tool
We looked at four things that actually change your day: capture quality (does the transcript get the words and the speakers right), the notes themselves (are the summaries and action items usable without heavy editing), where your data goes (cloud by default or local), and the meeting experience (does a bot join, and how much setup is involved). Prices change constantly and vary by plan, so we are deliberately not quoting numbers here. Check each vendor's current pricing directly.
Granola
Granola earned its reputation by getting one thing right: it captures your meeting without a bot in the call. It listens to your Mac's audio locally and pairs the transcript with whatever you jot down yourself, then cleans your rough notes into something structured afterward. The result feels less like a transcription dump and more like the notes you wish you had taken.
What we liked: the no-bot capture is genuinely calmer than watching a recorder tile sit in the grid, and the note-enhancement step is excellent for people who already take sparse notes and want them tidied up. It is a polished, focused product.
Where it might not fit you: it is built around that personal-capture workflow, and your notes and transcripts still sync to Granola's cloud. If your priority is that meeting data never leaves your machine at all, that is worth checking against your own requirements. We wrote a fuller side-by-side in our Granola comparison if you are weighing the two directly.
Otter
Otter is one of the most established names in the category, and for good reason. Its live transcription is fast and readable, it handles shared team workspaces well, and its meeting assistant can join calls to capture audio and even surface summaries and action items automatically. For teams that want a searchable, shareable record of every conversation, Otter is a safe, mature choice.
What we liked: real-time transcript quality is strong, the collaboration features are well thought out, and the integrations into common workplace tools are broad.
Where it might not fit you: the assistant typically joins as a participant, and your transcripts live in Otter's cloud as the default. If a visible bot or cloud storage is a problem for your meetings, that is the trade-off to weigh.
Fireflies
Fireflies sits firmly in the team-and-CRM camp. It deploys a notetaker bot to your calls, transcribes them, and then pushes summaries and action items into the tools your team already runs, with particularly strong hooks into sales and CRM workflows. If your meetings feed a pipeline, Fireflies is built for exactly that motion.
What we liked: the integration breadth is impressive, the automatic summaries are solid, and the searchable archive across an organization's calls is a real asset for teams that need shared recall.
Where it might not fit you: same fork as Otter, a bot joins the call and the data is cloud-hosted by design. That is the right call for a sales org and the wrong one for a confidential one-on-one with an external party.
Routines
Full disclosure again: this is ours. Routines is a local-first macOS app, and meeting notes are one of several things it does. It records your microphone and your system audio as two separate streams, so you get a live, speaker-separated transcript that distinguishes you from everyone else in the Zoom, Teams, or Webex call, with cross-channel echoes filtered out. No bot joins the meeting, because the recording happens on your Mac.
When you stop recording, your chosen AI turns the full transcript, attendee list, and duration into a one-page summary with key points, decisions, and action items, stored right next to the transcript. You can also ask the live transcript questions mid-meeting ("what did I miss?", "draft a follow-up") and even paste a screenshot of a shared slide into the chat so the model sees the actual pixels.
The part that makes it different from everything above: your notes, transcripts, and summaries are plain markdown and a local SQLite database on your Mac, never uploaded. If you want to go fully offline, it can transcribe entirely on-device with a local Whisper model, no internet required. You bring your own Anthropic, OpenAI, or OpenRouter key, or simply sign in with your existing ChatGPT account, and there is a 7-day trial to test it on real calls.
Where it might not fit you: it is macOS-only, and because capture is local, it is built around you being in the meeting rather than dispatching a bot to a call you are skipping. If you need a server-side bot to attend calls without you, a cloud tool is the better answer. We go deeper on the meeting workflow on the meetings feature page and on the broader approach in our writeup on AI meeting notes.
So which one is the best AI note taker?
There is no single winner, and any honest list should say so.
- Choose a bot-based cloud tool like Otter or Fireflies if you want transcripts that are instantly shareable across a team, deep CRM and workplace integrations, and the ability to record calls you are not even on.
- Choose Granola if you want clean, bot-free personal notes on your Mac and you are comfortable with cloud sync for the convenience.
- Choose Routines if your priority is meeting notes that never leave your machine, captured without a bot in the call, with the option to run transcription fully offline, plus the freedom to bring your own model.
The clearest way to decide is to run a few real meetings through whichever one matches your priorities, then look at how much editing the notes need and how the recording felt in the room.
FAQ
What is the best AI note taker for meetings?
It depends on how you meet. Granola is excellent for solo capture without a bot, Otter and Fireflies are strong for shared team transcripts and integrations, and Routines fits people who want meeting notes that never upload, captured by a local app rather than a bot that joins the call.
Do AI note takers join my call as a bot?
Many do. Otter and Fireflies-class tools typically add a meeting assistant or bot as a visible participant to capture audio. Granola and Routines record locally on your Mac instead, so no extra attendee appears in the call.
Are AI note takers private?
It varies widely. Most cloud tools store your transcripts on their servers. Routines keeps notes, transcripts, and summaries as markdown and SQLite on your Mac, and can transcribe fully offline with a local Whisper model.
Do I need a subscription to use an AI note taker?
Usually yes, though several offer free tiers with limits. Routines runs on a 7-day trial and lets you bring your own API key or sign in with your existing ChatGPT account.
Try the no-bot, local option
If the part that pulled you in was meeting notes that never leave your Mac and no bot in the call, that is the whole point of how Routines records. Run it against your next few real meetings and see how the speaker-separated transcript and the one-page summary hold up.
Download Routines and record your next meeting locally, on a 7-day trial, with your own model.