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A ghost records your meeting. The audio stays on your Mac.

What makes an AI notetaker the best one for you depends on where your audio ends up. Most of these tools can now record without a visible bot in the call, so that is no longer the dividing line. What still separates them is where the audio goes. Every other tool here uploads it. Ghosty Notes transcribes it on your Mac with the built-in models and never uploads it, on the free tier. Here's how it stacks up against Granola, Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, and Krisp.

	Ghosty Notes	Granola	Otter	Fireflies	Fathom	Krisp
Audio never leaves your device	Yes	No - uploaded	No - uploaded	No - uploaded	No - uploaded	No - uploaded unless Enterprise
Can record with no bot in the call	Yes, always	Yes	Yes	Yes - but loses speaker labels	Yes - Mac only	Yes
Fully local transcription, on the free tier	Yes	No - cloud, even on free	No	No	No	No - local is Enterprise-only
Notes stored as files you own	Yes - markdown on disk	No - Granola's cloud	No - Otter's cloud	No - Fireflies' cloud	No - Fathom's cloud	Not found
MCP server on the free tier	Yes, unlimited	No - Business plan only	Yes - within the 300 min/mo cap	Not offered	No - paid tiers only	No free tier at all
Real free tier	Yes, unlimited meetings	Yes, 30-day history cap	Yes, 300 min/mo	Yes, 400 min storage per team	Yes, unlimited recordings	No - 7-day trial only
Cheapest paid tier	$5.00/mo ($54/yr)	$14/user/mo, monthly only	$8.33/mo annual ($16.99 monthly)	$10/seat/mo annual ($18 monthly)	$15/user/mo annual ($19 monthly)	$8/user/mo annual ($16 monthly)

Pricing and feature figures sourced from each company's own pricing page, cross-checked against third-party pricing aggregators (claap.io, lindy.ai, sonix.ai, felloai.com), verified 2026-08-27 and 2026-08-28. Krisp publishes no free tier and no public price for its paid plans - it offers a 7-day trial only. "Cheapest paid tier" reflects each vendor's lowest advertised paid plan billed at its cheapest interval, not feature-equivalent tiers.

One page per competitor

For the full detail on any one comparison - including honest calls on where each competitor is genuinely better - read the dedicated page.

vs GranolaBot-free like Ghosty, but the audio is still uploaded, and MCP is gated behind a paid plan.vs OtterThe biggest install base and 100+ languages, with a visible bot and no MCP.vs FirefliesA genuinely strong zero-retention policy, but still a bot and a cloud upload.vs FathomThe one bot-based tool with free MCP too - the difference is the bot and the cloud.

See it for yourself. No account, no upload.

Download Ghosty Notes and record your next meeting on your own machine.

Download free for Mac