On-device: audio never leaves your machine. No bot, no cloud.
Trilla is the Mac-only, local-first meeting-notes tool for the privacy-maximalist buyer. It runs Whisper and Ollama on-device on Metal, with no bot in the call and no audio leaving the machine. There's no account, no subscription, no feature gating, and no telemetry. Every feature is free, forever. Local voice prints handle speaker ID on-device, so the diarisation step stays local too. Custom templates, action items, and a chat-with-your-meetings feature round out the set. Direct audio capture means the app talks to the microphone and system audio itself, no virtual device required. You bring your own API keys if you want cloud summarisation, or you run Ollama locally for fully offline summaries.
For a Mac user who wants a no-bot, no-cloud, no-account transcriber and is happy to run Ollama, that's a generous pitch. The price is zero, the features are unlocked, and the privacy posture is clean. Most local-first tools charge for something, gate a feature, or nudge you toward a subscription. Trilla doesn't, and that purity is rare. It's the thing the Mac privacy-maximalist buyer is specifically shopping for.
The walls are structural, not defects. The first is macOS only, Apple Silicon specifically. No Windows build, no Linux build. A team with a single Windows laptop, a mixed-platform household, or an IT policy that standardises on Windows can't use Trilla at all. You either have a Mac on Apple Silicon or you don't. The second is the Ollama dependency. Trilla has no built-in local LLM, so on-device, offline summaries mean installing and running Ollama, pointing Trilla at it, and keeping it running. Fine for a developer who already runs Ollama. Friction for everyone else. The BYO API keys path works without Ollama, but then the notes step leaves the device, which trades away the local-LLM story.
The third wall is the smaller integration surface. Audio file import and auto call detection are not specified, export formats are not specified, and there's no Parakeet model option. For a buyer whose meeting notes need to flow into a task manager, a notes app, or a CRM, Trilla doesn't ship those pipes. That's the price of the all-free, no-account pitch.
People who switch off Trilla tend to fall into one of three camps: a team or individual whose primary machine is Windows and needs the same tool on both platforms; a Mac user who wants local summaries without running a separate LLM server; or a user whose notes need to sync to a task manager and who's willing to trade the all-free pitch for those pipes. This is a close local-first-versus-local-first match. Both Trilla and Clearminutes are local-first, no-bot, no-cloud-audio tools. Trilla is Mac-only Apple Silicon, every feature free, and leans on Ollama for local summaries. Clearminutes runs on Windows too, ships a built-in local LLM (Gemma) so you don't have to install Ollama, and offers Pro integrations like TickTick task sync, Outline export, and audio file import.
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.
Fathom is a free Zoom-only cloud notetaker. Clearminutes works with any audio source, runs locally on Mac and Windows, and doesn't need Zoom.
Best for: teams on Zoom who want a free, simple cloud notetaker with unlimited recordings and 28-language support. A bot joins every call, coverage is Zoom-only, and audio is uploaded to Fathom's servers. There's no on-device transcription path and no offline option.
Price: $0/forever
Fathom is best for teams on Zoom who want a free, simple cloud notetaker with unlimited recordings and broad 28-language support. A bot joins every call, coverage is Zoom-only, and audio is uploaded to Fathom's servers with no on-device transcription path. Strong on free-tier generosity and language coverage, weak on platform breadth and privacy. Pick it when you live on Zoom and want free cloud notes.
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.
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 | Otter.ai | Fathom | 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) | Bot joins call | Yes (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) | No (cloud-only) | No (cloud-only) | Yes (Whisper) | No | Yes (on-device models) |
| Speaker identification | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (confirm-name flow) | — | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | — | Yes (English only, 1:1 best) | Yes (Pro) |
| Works offline | — | No | — | — | No | Partial (noise cancellation offline) | No | 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 (300 min/month) | Yes (unlimited recordings) | 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 | 28 languages | — | 16 languages | 6+ languages |
These aren't bugs. They're the shape of a free, Mac-only, privacy-maximalist tool, and each one bites a specific kind of buyer.
They bite only when your requirement is Windows, a built-in local LLM, or integration pipes. If you're on a Mac, happy to run Ollama, and don't need your notes synced elsewhere, none of these bite, and Trilla's all-free pitch is hard to argue with.
Pick the tool that matches your hard constraint, not the one with the longer feature list. Trilla optimises the free, Mac-only, no-account, no-gating pitch and accepts macOS-only support, an Ollama dependency, and a smaller integration surface. Clearminutes matches the local-first, no-bot core and adds Windows support, a built-in local LLM, and Pro integrations.
Your hard requirement is Windows, or you want local summaries without installing Ollama, or your notes need to flow into the rest of your workflow. Clearminutes runs on Windows as well as macOS, ships a built-in local LLM (Gemma) so on-device summaries work out of the box with no separate LLM server, and offers Pro integrations like TickTick task sync, Outline export, and audio file import. The trade is the pitch: Clearminutes has a free tier and a £12/mo Pro tier with the integrations, where Trilla is £0 forever with every feature included.
You're on macOS Apple Silicon, you're happy to run Ollama for local summaries, and you want every feature unlocked at £0 forever with no account and no subscription. Trilla gives you local Whisper, local voice prints, BYO API keys, custom templates, action items, chat with your meetings, Metal GPU acceleration, direct audio capture, and no telemetry, all free. The privacy posture is clean and the price is unbeatable.
Do the maths for your team before you commit. A single user on Clearminutes Pro pays around £144 a year against Trilla's zero. For a buyer whose constraint is price, Trilla is the clear pick. For a buyer whose constraint is the platform, the LLM install, or the integrations, the Pro fee buys the features that make the tool fit, and the free tier still covers the local-first core. Trilla keeps the all-free pitch, the no-account posture, and the clean privacy stance. It gives up Windows, the built-in LLM, and the integration pipes. Clearminutes keeps the cross-platform reach, the built-in Gemma, and the Pro integrations. It gives up the £0-forever, everything-unlocked pitch. Neither is the better tool across the board; each is the right tool for one shape of buyer.
Last updated: 2026-04-01. Compared from each tool's public pricing and feature data (see sources), as of the last-updated date.
Sources: Trilla official site (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.