What they have in common
Clearminutes and Meetily share a remarkably similar technical foundation. Both are desktop applications built with Tauri, the Rust-based framework that packages a web frontend (React/TypeScript) into a native desktop binary. Both use Whisper for transcription, running the model locally on your CPU or GPU so audio never needs to travel over a network. Both capture system audio without sending a bot into your call. Both store meeting data locally rather than syncing it to a cloud service.
If you care about privacy and want a meeting tool that processes audio on-device, either app starts from the right place. The core value proposition is identical: record, transcribe, and summarise your meetings without surrendering audio to a third party.
Given that they share a stack and a philosophy, why does this comparison exist? Because the two projects have diverged considerably in scope, maturity, and direction over the past year — and that divergence matters depending on what you need.
Where they differ
Platform support
Meetily is macOS-only. If you're on Windows or Linux, it's simply not an option. Clearminutes supports macOS, Windows 10+, and Linux, and uses platform-appropriate audio capture on each: Core Audio on macOS, WASAPI on Windows, and ALSA/PulseAudio on Linux.
Speaker diarization
Meetily does not offer speaker diarization — the ability to identify and label who said what in a transcript. Clearminutes includes speaker diarization as a Pro feature. For one-on-one calls this is a minor point, but for team meetings with multiple participants, having a labelled transcript significantly reduces post-meeting editing time.
Integrations
Meetily has no external integrations. Clearminutes Pro includes sync with TickTick (task management) and Outline (team wiki), plus PDF export. If your workflow depends on getting action items or notes into the tools your team already uses, Clearminutes is the only option of the two.
LLM flexibility
Clearminutes includes a built-in local Gemma model for AI summaries, meaning it works completely offline out of the box. It also supports Ollama, and lets you bring your own API keys for Claude, OpenAI, Groq, or OpenRouter. Meetily uses local models via Ollama but does not support external API keys, limiting your model options to what you have installed locally.
Active development
This is the most important difference to be direct about. As of early 2026, Meetily's development activity has significantly slowed. The project's main branch last received a commit in March 2026, and the GitHub repository had approximately 194 open issues with no indication of prioritised triage. This isn't a criticism of the developers — open-source project maintenance is hard, especially without commercial backing — but it is a practical reality for anyone evaluating a tool for long-term use. Bugs may go unaddressed, and new platform features (macOS API changes, new Whisper model formats) may not be incorporated.
Clearminutes is a commercially supported product with ongoing development, regular releases, and an active support channel. It's bootstrapped rather than VC-funded, which keeps the incentives straightforward: it needs to be good enough that people pay for Pro.
Open source vs commercial
Meetily is fully open source under the MIT licence. You can read every line of its code, fork it, modify it, and self-host it. For security-conscious teams or organisations with strict vendor policies, this auditability is a genuine advantage. Clearminutes is a closed-source commercial product.
Onboarding
Clearminutes includes a guided setup flow for downloading Whisper models, configuring audio devices, and choosing an LLM provider. Meetily's setup is more manual and assumes familiarity with running local AI tools.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Clearminutes | Meetily |
|---|---|---|
| Local transcription (Whisper) | Yes | Yes |
| No meeting bots | Yes | Yes |
| Audio stays on device | Yes | Yes |
| macOS support | Yes | Yes |
| Windows support | Yes | No |
| Linux support | Yes | No |
| Speaker diarization | Yes (Pro) | No |
| AI summaries | Yes (local or BYO keys) | Yes (local only) |
| Built-in local LLM | Yes (Gemma) | Via Ollama |
| BYO API keys | Yes (Claude, OpenAI, Groq, OpenRouter) | No |
| Integrations | TickTick, PDF, Outline (Pro) | None |
| Audio file import | Yes (Pro) | No |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes (fully free) |
| Open source | No | Yes (MIT) |
| Active maintenance | Yes | Stalled (as of 2026) |
| Guided onboarding | Yes | Minimal |
| Commercial support | Yes | No |
| Price | Free / £12 mo (Pro) | Free (open source) |
Who should use each
Choose Clearminutes if...
You want a reliable, actively maintained tool that you can depend on week after week. If you're on Windows or Linux, Clearminutes is your only option of the two. If you need speaker diarization for multi-person meetings, need integrations with task managers or wikis, or want flexibility to use cloud LLMs alongside local ones, Clearminutes is the better fit. The free tier (full transcription and summaries, with meeting history) gives you ample time to evaluate before committing to Pro at £12 per month.
Choose Meetily if...
You are on macOS, comfortable with manual technical setup, and have a strong preference for fully auditable, open-source software. If your organisation has a policy requiring source code review before deployment, Meetily's MIT licence makes that straightforward. Go in with realistic expectations about the current development pace: you may encounter bugs that don't get fixed quickly, and the feature set is unlikely to expand significantly in the near term. That said, the core transcription loop is functional, and for technically inclined users who just want a simple local transcription tool without any subscription, Meetily works.
Both tools deserve credit for pursuing local-first AI at a time when most of the industry was racing to send everything to the cloud. The open-source Meetily project did meaningful work in demonstrating that a Tauri + Whisper desktop app was viable. Clearminutes picked up that foundation and built a more complete product around it.
The honest answer to "which should I use?" is: if you're a developer who wants something free, auditable, and simple — and you're on Mac — Meetily is fine. If you want something you can rely on, with active development and support, across any platform, Clearminutes is the stronger choice.