Free AI note taker: what each free plan covers

Published November 6, 2026 · By Cho Yin Yong

A free AI note taker is free inside limits, and each vendor counts those limits in a different unit. Otter's free plan gives 300 minutes a month and stops each conversation at 30 minutes. Fathom's has no stated cap on recordings. Granola keeps 30 days of history. Memory Notch, a Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android app, transcribes on the device for free, any number of recordings, up to five minutes each.

So the useful question is which unit you'll run out of first. Check these five on any free plan:

• Minutes a month: how much you can record before the plan stops you.
• Length per recording: whether a long meeting gets cut off partway.
• History: how long your notes stay before they expire.
• Bot: whether a visible assistant joins the call, or the app records your own device's audio.
• Summaries: whether the free plan writes them, and how many.

What does "free" cover in each AI note taker?

The free plans below differ most on length per recording and on history. The table quotes each vendor's own pricing or help page. Where a page doesn't state a limit, the table says "not stated" instead of guessing.

Checked November 6, 2026.

All prices in this post are in American dollars.

Each plan has a real strength. Fathom's free tier is the most generous for video calls: unlimited recordings, unlimited storage and summaries, with a bot-free option on Mac in beta. Fireflies lets one recording run for two hours. Otter adds AI chat across your meetings. Granola writes meeting notes without a bot joining the call.

The limits sit in different places. Otter cuts a conversation off at 30 minutes and keeps only the 25 most recent. Fireflies stores 400 minutes for the whole team. Granola's free history lasts 30 days. Google Meet's built-in note taker isn't free at all: Google's June 29, 2026 post names Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers and eligible Workspace business customers.

The per-tool comparisons for Otter, Fathom, Fireflies and Granola go feature by feature.

Is a free AI note taker for Zoom, Teams or Google Meet different?

Yes: the free plans built for video calls usually work through a bot that joins the meeting. Fireflies' free plan counts unlimited transcription "for shared bot meetings, chrome extension, and mobile app", and its Chrome extension can capture Google Meet without the bot. Fathom offers a bot or, on Mac, a bot-free beta. Otter's Basic plan lists Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet among its features.

A bot is visible to everyone on the call, which some people prefer, because everyone knows they're being recorded. Others don't want an extra participant. The bot-free note takers guide covers the tools that record your own computer's audio instead.

Which free AI note taker works for in-person meetings and lectures?

For a conversation in a room, you want an app that records the microphone, not a bot that joins a call. Granola Basic records device audio, and its pricing page lists desktop, iOS, Android and Apple Watch apps. Pixel Recorder and Voice Memos come with the phone and record whatever the microphone hears. Memory Notch records the microphone on a Mac, iPhone, iPad or Android phone.

Length per recording matters most here. A lecture or a planning meeting often runs an hour. On Otter's free plan that becomes two conversations, because each stops at 30 minutes. Memory Notch stops a free recording at five minutes on the Mac. On iPhone and Android, your first two longer recordings run to the end before the five-minute cap applies.

The in-person meetings guide covers microphone placement and consent. The lecture recording guide covers classrooms and asking the lecturer first.

Is there a free AI note taker that works offline?

Some free built-ins do part of the work offline, and they say which part. Google's Pixel help page says speaker labels "happen on your phone or tablet", and only in US English. The same help pages say re-transcribing "may process audio files on Google servers" and that summaries run "in the cloud". Apple's Voice Memos page says transcription "isn't available in all countries or regions". It doesn't say where the transcription runs.

Memory Notch transcribes and labels speakers on the device. On the Mac, the privacy policy lists three network requests, and none carries a recording. They fetch a revoked-licence list, check for updates once a day (you can turn that off) and download an update when you ask for one. The Android offline guide covers phones in more detail.

What Memory Notch gives you free

On the Mac, every recording is free for up to five minutes. That includes recording, live transcription, speaker labels and the local library. There's no expiry, no limit on how many recordings you make, and no account. At 5:00 the recording stops and keeps everything it captured: audio, transcript and note.

Dictation is also free for everyone on the Mac. Double-tap ⌘, say a phrase, and the text is pasted into the app you're typing in. It needs macOS's Accessibility permission. The dictation page explains it.

On iPhone and iPad and on Android, the app is free to download. Free recordings last up to five minutes, everything captured is saved, and your first two longer recordings run to the end. A one-time in-app purchase of $5.99 (the price in the United States) removes the limit, with no subscription.

The five-minute trial post explains why the limit is on length and not on features.

When is a free tier enough?

A free tier is enough when your conversations fit inside its unit. For Memory Notch, that means anything under five minutes: a stand-up, a quick call, a voice note to yourself, a dictated message. Those run free on the Mac indefinitely, with speaker labels and the transcript saved as files.

A five-minute free tier isn't enough for a lecture, an hour-long meeting or a research interview. Those need a plan whose length per recording covers them: a paid plan, or a free one with a longer cap, such as Fireflies' two hours.

To go longer on the Mac, Memory Notch costs $79 once or $7.99 a month, which you can cancel anytime. The no-subscription cost comparison adds up three years of paid plans side by side.

What the free plans don't tell you

• Limits change. Each vendor sets its own free limits and can change them. The table is dated for that reason.
• Some pages leave things out. Fathom's page states no length per recording. Granola's states no monthly minutes. The table says "not stated" for each.
• We didn't test every tool. The table comes from the vendors' pages, not from recording a meeting in each one. tl;dv lists a free plan too, but its limits didn't show on the page we could read, so it isn't in the table.
• Memory Notch writes no summaries. You get a live transcript with numbered speakers, plus the audio and a note. Speakers are numbered, not named. Overlapping voices are hard to separate, and library search covers titles and metadata only.
• System audio on the Mac needs macOS's Screen Recording permission.
• Consent still applies. Recording on your own device doesn't replace the consent of the people you record, so ask first.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Otter: Pricing
• Fathom: Pricing
• Fireflies: Pricing
• Granola: Pricing
• Google: Take notes for me in Google Meet (June 29, 2026)
• Google Pixel Help: Create, edit and manage transcriptions
• Google Pixel Help: Use speaker labels in a recording
• Apple Support: View a Voice Memos transcription on Mac
• Memory Notch privacy policy
• Memory Notch for iPhone and iPad
• Memory Notch for Android

Related posts

• AI note taker, no subscription: 3-year costs
• How the five-minute trial works
• Record and transcribe an in-person meeting
• Bot-free AI note takers: capture isn’t privacy
• Download for Mac

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