Free tiers, compared
Free AI note takers, and where each one stops
Every AI note taker in this market has a free tier, and every one of them is limited somewhere. The useful question is not which one is free. It is where each one stops, and whether you will hit that wall. Here is the honest version, checked against each vendor's own pages.
| Tool | What the free tier gives you | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| Ghosty Notes | No limit. Unlimited meetings, full history kept | Apple Silicon Macs only. No mobile app, no live captions |
| Fathom | Unlimited recordings and transcriptions | A bot joins the call. Bot-free is a Mac-only limited beta. Smarter summaries are paid |
| Granola | Unlimited meetings, limited history window | No bot, but older meetings stop being reachable unless you pay $14 a user |
| Otter | 300 minutes a month | A bot joins the call. No call over 30 minutes, 3 file imports ever |
| Fireflies | Limited transcription credits | A bot joins the call. No integrations, and AI features spend credits |
Checked against each vendor's own pricing or documentation on 19 September 2026. Fireflies publishes its prices in JavaScript, so those figures come from its own knowledge base.
Pick by the wall you will hit first
The five free tiers fail in different ways, so the right one depends on which limit is irrelevant to you.
If you just want the most free transcription: Fathom
Fathom's free plan gives unlimited recordings, unlimited transcriptions and AI call summaries, with no minute counter and no per-call cap. It is the most generous free tier here and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Two things to know before you pick it. A Fathom bot joins your call and everyone can see it, unless you are in the Mac-only bot-free beta. And the smarter layer, advanced summaries, AI action items and the conversational assistant, starts at $16 a month. Read the detail on our Fathom pricing page.
If your calls are short and occasional: Otter
Otter Basic gives you 300 transcription minutes a month, which is about five hours. The sharper limit is 30 minutes per conversation, so a one-hour client call does not fit. Fine for stand-ups, wrong for the long call you most wanted a record of. Detail on ourOtter pricing page.
If you only ever look at recent meetings: Granola
Granola's free tier does not count your minutes. It limits how far back your history goes. If you never look at a meeting more than a few weeks old, that costs you nothing. If you look things up months later, this is the limit that eventually charges you $14 a user. Detail on our Granola pricing page.
If you want CRM sync later: Fireflies
The free tier is the thinnest here, running on limited transcription credits with no app or CRM integrations. It makes sense as a way in if a CRM integration is where you are heading. Worth knowing before you commit: the AI features spend credits on paid plans too. Detail on our Fireflies pricing page.
If nobody should see a bot in the call: Granola or Ghosty Notes
Three of the five tools here capture your meeting by sending a notetaker into it, where every other participant sees it in the attendee list. Otter and Fireflies do this by default. Fathom does too, unless you have been let into its Mac-only bot-free beta. If a visible bot is a problem with your clients, that narrows the list to two: Granola and Ghosty Notes both record the audio your own computer is already playing.
If the recording must not leave your machine: Ghosty Notes
This is the one thing none of the four above can do, on any tier, free or paid. Ghosty Notes records your Mac's own audio and transcribes it with a model running on the device. The audio never goes to a server. Unlimited meetings, full history, notes written as plain markdown files into a folder you choose, and the full MCP server so Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Codex can search your whole meeting history. All of that is the free tier.
The limit is hardware. It needs a Mac with Apple Silicon. There is no Windows, Linux or phone app, and no live captions during the call. If you are not on that hardware, one of the four above is your answer and that is a fine outcome.
The question behind "is it free"
Free transcription is not free to provide. Every tool on this page that transcribes in the cloud is paying for servers every time you record, which is why their free tiers are metered by minutes, by history or by credits. That is not a criticism, it is arithmetic.
A tool that transcribes on your own machine has no server bill per meeting, which is the only reason its free tier can be genuinely unmetered. That is the trade being offered here: you supply the computer, and in return nobody counts your minutes and your audio never leaves the machine. The cost is that you need a specific kind of computer.
Questions people actually ask
- What is the best free AI note taker?
- It depends on one question: can your meeting audio go to a cloud service? If yes, Fathom has the most generous free tier, with unlimited recordings and transcriptions. If no, Ghosty Notes is the one that runs entirely on your Mac, with unlimited local meetings and no history window, but it needs an Apple Silicon Mac.
- Are free AI note takers actually free, or is it a trial?
- They are real free tiers, not trials, but each one is limited somewhere. Otter limits you to 300 minutes a month and 30 minutes per call. Granola limits how far back your history goes. Fireflies limits your transcription credits. Fathom limits the smarter summary features. Ghosty Notes limits you to an Apple Silicon Mac.
- Is there a free AI note taker that does not put a bot in the meeting?
- Two of the five. Ghosty Notes records your Mac's own audio, so nothing joins the call and other participants see only people in the attendee list. Granola works the same way. Otter, Fireflies and Fathom all send a notetaker into the meeting, where everyone can see it. Fathom is building a bot-free mode, but as of September 2026 it is a limited beta on Mac only, handed out in batches.
- Is a free AI note taker safe for confidential meetings?
- Read where the audio goes. Almost every free tool uploads your recording to a server to transcribe it, which may be fine for you and may not be. Ghosty Notes transcribes on the device and the audio never leaves your Mac. If you turn on Pro hosted models, the transcript text is sent to that service, so that is a different decision to make.
- What is the catch with the Ghosty Notes free tier?
- You need a Mac with Apple Silicon. Intel Macs are not supported, and there is no Windows, Linux, iPhone or Android app. Within that, the free tier is genuinely unlimited: unlimited local meetings, full history, notes as markdown files, and the full MCP server. Pro at $5 a month adds cloud calendar, hosted transcription, speaker identification and priority support.
Feature-by-feature comparisons: Granola,Otter, Fireflies,Fathom, or all of them at once. Our own prices are on the pricing page.
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