On-device: audio never leaves your machine. No bot, no cloud.
Otter.ai is the meeting-notes tool most people have heard of. A bot joins every call, the audio goes to Otter's servers, and you get back a transcript, a summary, action items, and a shared workspace the team can edit together. The Zoom, Teams, Salesforce, and HubSpot integrations are genuinely strong, the iOS and Android apps are polished, and the shared workspace is the best collaboration layer of anything on this list. For a sales team that lives in Salesforce and wants every call synced to the CRM, Otter is the default pick, and $8.33-20 a seat a month is the going rate for that workflow.
How much the bot matters depends on the call. On an internal standup, nobody cares. On a customer call, the prospect sees "Otter" in the participant list and asks why you're recording before the rep has finished the intro. For a revenue team that's a known trade-off. For a coach, a lawyer, a researcher, or anyone on a confidential board call, a visible recording bot ends the conversation, however good the workspace is behind it.
The audio path is the second wall. Otter uploads everything to its servers with no on-device option and no offline mode. That's fine for disclosed sales calls. It's a hard line for healthcare, legal, or regulated work, and it stalls on a flight or a locked-down network. The third wall is the free tier: 300 minutes a month, roughly five hours of meetings. Run more than a couple of calls a week and you hit the paywall, and the upgrade is a per-seat subscription.
Otter's strength is the workspace, not the capture. Everyone editing the same transcript, calls syncing to Salesforce, reviewing on a phone — that works well. The live transcript scrolls during the call, and Otter's AI Chat can answer questions over your past meetings ("what did the client say about pricing in March?"). What sits around it is the problem: the bot, the cloud audio, the cap, and a subscription that compounds across a team.
The cap moves up rather than away. Free is 300 minutes a month with basic transcription, three voice prints, and limited AI Chat. Pro lifts that to 1,200 minutes. Business is unlimited with team features. CRM sync to Salesforce and HubSpot sits on the paid tiers, not the free one. So the free plan is a trial of the capture, and the collaboration layer you actually came for is behind the subscription.
People who switch off Otter tend to fall into one of three groups. Some can't have a visible bot on external or confidential calls. Some are in regulated work and can't let audio leave the device. Some are a solo user or small team that ran into the 300-minute cap and found a local option with no cap. The list below speaks to each group differently, which is why it isn't ranked on a single axis.
Ranked by fit for local, bot-free meeting notes. Clearminutes is the local-first anchor at the end.
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.
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 | 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) | No | 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) | 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 (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 | — | 28 languages | — | 16 languages | 6+ languages |
These aren't bugs. They're the shape of a cloud, bot-attended, CRM-heavy tool, and each one only bites a specific kind of buyer.
If you live in Salesforce, don't mind the bot, and stay under 300 minutes a month, none of this bites — Otter's workspace plus CRM sync is worth the subscription. The question is which of these is your hard line.
Two products, two shapes. Pick the one that matches your hard constraint, not the one with the longer feature list. Otter optimises the cloud collaboration and CRM workflow, and accepts a bot, cloud audio, and a 300-minute cap. 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 no bot joins the call. Transcription and summaries run locally on Whisper and a built-in LLM, with no cloud upload at any step. Clearminutes captures mic and system audio on the machine, works with any audio source, runs offline, and its in-app network monitor shows zero outbound audio connections. No bot, bring-your-own API keys, no monthly subscription. For healthcare, legal, regulated work, or anyone whose calls can't show a recording bot, that's the structural difference. The trade is the collaboration layer — no shared cloud workspace, no mobile apps, no Salesforce sync.
You want a polished cloud workspace where the whole team edits the same transcript, plus Zoom, Teams, Salesforce, and HubSpot integrations and mobile apps — and you're fine with a bot in the participant list, audio on Otter's servers, and a 300-minute free cap with a per-seat subscription behind it. Otter is the right call for a revenue team that lives in Salesforce, runs under 300 minutes a seat, and has decided the bot is acceptable on customer calls.
Do the maths for your team before you commit. A 10-person team on Otter's paid plan pays $1,000-2,400 a year; a one-off local Pro price doesn't compound. The shared workspace is real value for a team that lives in it, and overkill for someone who just wants meeting notes without a bot and a cloud upload.
Worth being precise about what each side keeps and gives up. Otter keeps the shared workspace, the mobile apps, the CRM sync, and the live-transcript-during-the-call view. It gives up the audio path, offline use, and any say in where the notes run. Clearminutes keeps the audio on the machine, offline transcription, bring-your-own keys, and a network monitor that shows zero outbound audio — so the privacy claim is something you can check in the app, not a line on a marketing page. It gives up the shared workspace and the CRM. Neither is the better tool across the board; each is the right tool for one of the two shapes above.
No. Otter.ai uploads audio to its servers for transcription with no on-device path and no offline mode. The recording pipeline needs an internet connection.
Yes. An Otter 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 caps you at 300 minutes a month (~5 hours of meetings). The paid plans run $8.33-20 a seat a month and add team features and CRM sync.
No. Summaries run on Otter's cloud AI only. There's no bring-your-own-API-key option and no on-device summarisation path.
Entirely in Otter's cloud. Transcription and summarisation run server-side — there's no local processing step, and the audio is stored in the shared workspace.
Yes. Zoom, Teams, Salesforce, and HubSpot integrations are a core strength — calls sync to the CRM and the team workspace. They're a paid-tier feature, not on the free plan.
Last updated: 2026-04-01. Compared from each tool's public pricing and feature data (see sources), as of the last-updated date.
Sources: Otter.ai official site (2026-06-21), Otter.ai pricing page (2026-06-21), Otter.ai 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.