On-device: audio never leaves your machine. No bot, no cloud.
Fathom is a free, simple cloud notetaker for people who live on Zoom. A bot joins each call, sends the audio to Fathom's servers, and returns a transcript, a summary, and action items. Speaker ID is included. For a sales team or small business that runs every meeting on Zoom, doesn't mind a bot, and has no compliance constraint on where the audio goes, Fathom is a strong free option. The paid tiers add CRM sync and team features.
Three walls stop it being universal. The first is platform lock-in. Fathom only works with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. No audio file import, no desktop capture outside those three, no path for an interview, a podcast, a phone call, or system audio from a browser tab. A team that uses Webex, a recorded event, or anything off-platform can't use Fathom for it.
The second wall is the audio path. Everything uploads to Fathom's servers. No on-device transcription, no offline mode. For a sales team running disclosed calls, that's fine. For healthcare, legal, or regulated work, it's a hard line. The audio has already left the device before any opt-out could matter, and a data-training posture doesn't change where it was sent.
The third is the bot. A Fathom bot joins every call as a visible participant. On an internal standup nobody cares. On a customer call it changes the tone before the rep finishes the intro. On a confidential call it's a non-starter. Bot-free and on-device aren't the same thing, but a visible bot is its own friction, separate from where the audio goes.
Where Fathom does well is the free-tier generosity and the language coverage. Unlimited recordings on the free tier, no per-minute cap, is rare; most free plans in this category cap you at 15 to 60 minutes per meeting or a few hundred minutes a month. 28 languages is broader than Otter, Fireflies, or Granola. The summary and action-item layer is competent. The weakness isn't the free tier. It's everything around it: which platforms it runs on, where the audio goes, and the bot in the participant list.
People who switch off Fathom fall into one of three camps: a team that needs to transcribe something Fathom doesn't cover, a regulated team that can't let audio leave the device, or a team whose external-facing or confidential calls can't show a bot. The list below speaks to each camp differently, which is why the ranking isn't a single axis.
Ranked by fit for local, bot-free meeting notes. Clearminutes is the local-first anchor at the end.
Otter.ai puts a bot in every call and sends audio to its servers. Clearminutes runs on your machine.
Best for: sales teams that want CRM-synced cloud notes and a polished shared workspace. A bot joins every call and audio goes to Otter's servers. The free tier caps at 300 minutes a month, with no on-device or offline option.
Price: $0/forever
Otter.ai is best for sales teams who want CRM-synced cloud notes and a polished shared workspace. A bot joins every call and audio goes to Otter's servers, with a free tier capped at 300 minutes a month and no on-device or offline option. Strong on Zoom, Teams, Salesforce, and HubSpot integration, weak on privacy and native cross-platform apps. Pick it when team collaboration matters more than keeping audio on the device.
Meeting transcription without the awkward "Fireflies has joined" announcement or monthly subscription.
Best for: teams that want a rich searchable transcript archive and deep CRM integrations with Salesforce and HubSpot. A cloud bot joins every call and audio is stored on Fireflies.ai's servers. The free tier is limited to 800 minutes of storage per seat.
Price: $0/forever
Fireflies.ai is best for teams who want a rich searchable transcript archive and deep CRM integrations like Salesforce and HubSpot. A cloud bot joins every call and audio is stored on Fireflies.ai's servers, with the free tier limited to 800 minutes of storage per seat. Strong on search and CRM workflows, weak on privacy and offline use. Pick it when searchable team transcripts matter more than local processing.
Jamie is bot-free but summarises in the cloud on Mac and Windows. Clearminutes keeps the summary on-device too, with a real free tier and Linux support.
Best for: individuals who want a free, bot-free local summary on Mac and Windows with export to Notion, Slack, and HubSpot. The free tier is limited and the paid plan is £25/month for fuller features. The feature set is lighter than the cloud incumbents.
Price: £0/forever
Jamie is best for individuals who want a free, bot-free local summary on Mac and Windows with Notion, Slack, and HubSpot export. Processing is partial — offline is available but summaries are not fully on-device. The free tier is limited and the paid plan is £25 a month. Strong on bot-free capture and export, weak on Linux, a real free tier, and a local LLM. Pick it for solo Mac or Windows use.
Granola is a polished Mac-only drafting app that processes audio in the cloud. Clearminutes runs on-device, on Mac and Windows, with a one-off Pro price.
Best for: Mac users who want a polished meeting summary app that drafts notes and exports to Notion, Slack, and HubSpot. It's Mac-only with cloud-only audio processing, a limited free tier, and a £14–35/month subscription. The integration surface is smaller than the cloud incumbents.
Price: £0/forever
Granola is best for Mac-only users who want a polished cloud-native drafting workflow with custom templates, chat-with-meetings, action items, cross-meeting search, and speaker diarization, plus Notion, Slack, and HubSpot export. Audio is processed on Granola's servers with no local option, and the paid plans run £14–35 a month. Strong on the Mac drafting experience, weak on Windows, Linux, offline, and a real free tier. Pick it for Mac-only work in those three tools.
Krisp pioneered noise cancellation. Clearminutes is a complete AI meeting assistant: transcription, summaries, action items, and task sync.
Best for: teams that need noise cancellation first and a meeting assistant second. Transcription is a cloud add-on, not the core product. There's a 14-day trial then a limited free tier, 16-language support, and an $8–15/month paid plan for full features.
Price: $0/forever
Krisp is best for teams who need noise cancellation first and a meeting assistant second. Transcription is a cloud add-on rather than the core product; noise cancellation runs locally but transcription does not. A 14-day trial gives way to a limited free tier, with a paid plan at $8–15 a month for full features across 16 languages. Strong on noise removal, weak on on-device transcription and offline notes. Pick it when call audio is noisy.
tl;dv records Google Meet, Zoom, and Teams in the cloud with a bot in the call. Clearminutes keeps the recording on your machine and works offline.
Best for: teams on Google Meet, Zoom, and Teams who want a free-tier cloud recorder with 30+ language transcripts and Chrome-based capture. A bot joins every call and audio is uploaded to tl-dv's servers. The paid plan is $20–25/month, with no on-device transcription option.
Price: $0/forever
tl;dv is best for teams on Google Meet, Zoom, and Teams who want a free-tier cloud recorder with 30+ language transcripts and Chrome-based capture. A bot joins every call and audio is uploaded to tl;dv's servers, with a $20–25 a month paid plan and no on-device transcription option. Strong on multi-platform recording and language coverage, weak on privacy and offline use. Pick it for free cloud recording across meeting platforms.
Avoma is a cloud sales-intelligence platform for revenue teams. Clearminutes is a local-first desktop app with no bots, no uploads, and on-device AI.
Best for: revenue teams that want conversation intelligence, CRM auto-entry, and AI coaching scorecards on top of meeting notes. A bot or integration joins every call and audio is uploaded to Avoma's cloud on AWS. There's no free tier, just a 14-day trial, and no on-device transcription.
Price: $19/seat/mo/annual
Avoma is best for revenue and customer-success teams who want conversation intelligence, CRM auto-entry, and AI coaching scorecards on top of meeting notes. A bot or integration joins every call and audio is uploaded to Avoma's cloud on AWS, with no free tier beyond a 14-day trial and no on-device transcription. Strong on Salesforce, HubSpot, and coaching analytics, weak on privacy and any offline or no-bot workflow. Pick it when revenue analytics matter more than keeping audio on the device.
Two local-first Tauri apps built on similar technology. Meetily is open source with a new Pro tier. Clearminutes adds speaker diarization, integrations, guided onboarding, and active commercial development.
Best for: developers who want an open-source local notes tool that runs Whisper on-device with unlimited free use. There are no integrations and no diarization polish. The split is Free Community / $10 Pro, and on Linux it's buildable from source rather than a packaged app.
Price: £0/forever
Meetily is best for developers who want a fully auditable, MIT-licensed local notes tool that runs Whisper on-device with unlimited free use. There are no integrations, diarization is only coming soon on Pro, and there's no commercial support, just the community. On Linux it's buildable from source rather than a packaged app. Strong on openness and local processing, weak on polish, integrations, and support. Pick it when an auditable open-source codebase matters more than a finished product.
Notion AI Meeting Notes lives in your Notion workspace and sends audio to cloud sub-processors. Clearminutes keeps audio on your machine with no account and no uploads.
Best for: teams already living in Notion who want meeting notes inline in their workspace. Audio goes to OpenAI, Anthropic, and other third-party LLMs, with no on-device transcription. Speaker identification is English-only and 1:1-best, and a Notion account is required.
Price: £0/forever
Notion AI Meeting Notes is best for teams already living in Notion who want meeting notes inline in their workspace. Audio goes to OpenAI, Anthropic, and other third-party LLMs, with no on-device transcription, and a Notion account is required. Speaker identification is English-only and works best 1:1. Strong on in-workspace notes and custom templates, weak on privacy, offline, and any no-account workflow. Pick it when workspace notes matter more than keeping audio off third-party servers.
Speechmark is a Mac menu-bar app that processes on-device after the call. Clearminutes adds Windows and Linux, a live transcript during the call, and a network monitor.
Best for: UK teams on macOS who want a local-first, no-bot meeting notes tool with one-time pricing (free during beta) and a Claude Desktop connector. It's Mac-only, with no live transcript and no privacy network monitor. Summaries are processed after you stop recording.
Price: Free/during beta
Speechmark is best for UK teams on macOS who want a local-first, no-bot meeting notes tool with one-time pricing, free during beta then a single purchase, and a Claude Desktop connector. It's Mac-only on Apple silicon, with no live transcript because it processes after you stop, and no privacy network monitor. Strong on local audio and no-account simplicity, weak on cross-platform and live capture. Pick it when a one-time Mac tool matters more than Windows, Linux, or a live transcript.
Trilla is a free local-first Mac app on Apple Silicon. Clearminutes adds Windows, task sync, and a Pro tier.
Best for: Mac users on Apple Silicon who want a free, local, no-bot transcriber running Whisper and Ollama on-device, with local voice prints and no account. It's macOS-only, with no Windows or Linux build. The integration surface is smaller and the feature set is lighter than the cross-platform options.
Price: £0/forever
Trilla is best for Mac users on Apple Silicon who want a free, local, no-bot transcriber that runs Whisper and Ollama on-device with local voice prints and no account. Every feature is free with no subscription and no gating. It's macOS-only, with no Windows or Linux build, and it relies on Ollama for local summaries rather than shipping a built-in LLM. Strong on free local capture, weak on cross-platform and integrations. Pick it when free and local on Mac matters more than Windows or Pro integrations.
On-device, no bot, no cloud audio.
Best for: privacy-first teams who want meeting notes without uploading audio to the cloud.
Price: £0/forever
Clearminutes is best for teams who need meeting audio to stay on the device. Transcription runs on local Whisper and summaries on a built-in local LLM, with no cloud upload at any step. It works offline, ships for Windows alongside macOS, and shows zero outbound audio connections in its in-app network monitor. A real free tier and bring-your-own API keys make it the local-first pick when every other tool on this list sends audio to the cloud.
| Feature | Granola | Avoma | Jamie | Speechmark | Fireflies.ai | Krisp | tl;dv | Trilla | Otter.ai | Meetily | Notion AI Meeting Notes | Clearminutes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meeting bots | No | Yes (bot or integration joins call) | No | No | Yes (bot joins call) | No (bot-free option) | Yes (bot joins call) | No | Bot joins call | No | No | No |
| Local processing | No (cloud-only) | No (cloud-only) | Partial (offline available) | — | No (cloud-only) | Partial (noise cancellation local, transcription cloud) | No (cloud-only) | Yes (Whisper + Ollama) | No (cloud-only) | Yes (Whisper) | No | Yes (on-device models) |
| Speaker identification | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (confirm-name flow) | — | Yes | Yes | Yes (local voice prints) | Yes | — | Yes (English only, 1:1 best) | Yes (Pro) |
| Works offline | — | No | — | — | No | Partial (noise cancellation offline) | No | — | No | — | No | Yes (local models) |
| Free tier | Yes (limited history) | No (14-day trial only; viewers free on paid plans) | Yes (limited) | — | Yes (limited AI summaries, 800 min storage) | Yes (14-day trial, then limited) | Yes (limited recordings) | Yes (unlimited) | Yes (300 min/month) | Yes (unlimited, open source) | Limited AI trial (Free/Plus) | Yes |
| Language support | — | 40+ languages (translation on Organization tier+) | — | — | 69 languages | 16 languages | 30+ languages | — | English, French, Spanish | — | 16 languages | 6+ languages |
These aren't bugs. They're the shape of a Zoom-centric, bot-attended, cloud-only product, and each one bites a specific kind of buyer.
If you live on Zoom, don't mind the bot, and have no compliance constraint, none of this bites. Fathom's free tier is worth running. The question is which of the three is your hard line.
Pick the tool that matches your hard constraint, not the one with the longer feature list. Fathom optimises the free Zoom-notetaker experience and accepts a bot, cloud audio, and three-platform lock-in. Clearminutes optimises where the audio goes and accepts a lighter collaboration layer.
Your hard requirement is that meeting audio never leaves the device, or that the tool works on audio sources Fathom doesn't cover. Transcription and summarisation run locally on Whisper and Gemma with no cloud upload at any step. Clearminutes captures microphone and system audio on the machine, works with any audio source, runs offline, and shows zero outbound audio connections in its in-app network monitor. No bot joins the call. A built-in local LLM, bring-your-own API keys, no monthly subscription. For healthcare, legal, regulated work, or anyone whose meetings don't happen on Zoom, Meet, or Teams, that's the structural difference. The trade is the collaboration layer: no shared cloud workspace, no mobile apps, no Salesforce or HubSpot sync.
You live on Zoom, want a free notetaker with unlimited recordings and 28-language support, and you're fine with a bot in the participant list and audio on Fathom's servers. Fathom is the right call for a sales team or small business that runs every meeting on Zoom, has no compliance constraint, and wants CRM sync on the paid tier. If your calls are internal standups or disclosed sales calls, the cloud processing default is fine and the free tier is hard to beat.
Do the maths for your team before you commit. Fathom's free tier is genuinely generous, and for a solo user who only needs free Zoom recordings, it's the cheaper pick, no question. The catch is what the free tier doesn't include: CRM sync, team features, and any control over where the audio goes. A team that outgrows the free tier upgrades to Pro at $19 a month or Team at $15 a seat a month, both billed annually. A local-first tool's one-off Pro price doesn't compound across a team the way a per-seat subscription does.
The platform lock-in is the easy one to underestimate. A team that picks Fathom because it's free and works on Zoom often doesn't notice the lock-in until the first non-Zoom meeting: a phone call, a recorded event, an interview on a different platform. At that point the workflow splits. Fathom for Zoom, something else for everything else, and the free tool turns into a second tool to maintain. A capture tool that handles any audio source doesn't force that split.
No. Fathom uploads audio to its servers for transcription with no on-device path and no offline mode. The recording pipeline needs an internet connection.
Fathom works with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. There's no audio file import and no capture outside those three platforms — interviews, phone calls, podcasts, and system audio from a browser tab aren't covered.
Yes. A Fathom bot joins every call as a visible participant. There's no bot-free option, so on customer or confidential calls the bot is in the participant list.
The free tier gives unlimited recordings with no per-minute cap. CRM sync to Salesforce and HubSpot and the deeper team features are on the paid Pro plan.
No. Summaries run on Fathom's cloud AI only. There's no bring-your-own-API-key option and no on-device summarisation path.
Entirely in Fathom's cloud. Transcription and summarisation run server-side — there's no local processing step at all, and no on-device fallback.
Last updated: 2026-04-01. Compared from each tool's public pricing and feature data (see sources), as of the last-updated date.
Sources: Fathom official site (2026-06-21), Fathom pricing page (2026-06-21), Fathom privacy page (2026-06-21).
Clearminutes is our own product; we've kept the comparison fair.
Local transcription, live transcript view, AI summaries, and a verifiable privacy network monitor. No cloud uploads, no bots, runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux.