The Verdict
Fireflies Pro at $10/seat/month annual (~£7.40) is the best all-round buy — unlimited transcription, 100+ languages and the deepest integration list. Fathom has the only free plan a solo operator can genuinely live on. Granola is the pick if you refuse to put a bot in the room, at $14/user/month with no annual discount. Otter earns its place on accuracy and live captions, not on value. tl;dv is the answer for EU data residency. Nobody should pay Otter Pro's minute cap unless captions are the requirement.
Every AI notetaker markets itself on the same promise: stop typing, start listening. They all do that. What separates them is the ceiling — the point where the free plan stops being useful, the minutes run out, or the feature you assumed was included turns out to sit one tier up.
This is a pricing-first comparison of the five tools worth shortlisting in September 2026, built from vendor pricing pages, documentation and independent pricing trackers. It is not a hands-on lab test. Where sources disagree — and on free-tier limits several of them do — we flag the disagreement rather than picking whichever number reads best.
Quick Answer
- Best overall value: Fireflies — Pro at $10/seat/month annual (~£7.40), unlimited transcription on every tier, 100+ languages
- Best free plan: Fathom — unlimited recordings, five AI summaries a month, no minute cap
- Best without a bot in the meeting: Granola — captures audio on your machine, $14/user/month, monthly billing only
- Best for accuracy and live captions: Otter — strongest raw transcription on clean English, but Pro caps you at 1,200 minutes
- Best for EU/UK data residency: tl;dv — European data storage, Pro around $18/user/month annual
- Already paying for Notion Business? You may already own this. AI Meeting Notes is bundled — check before you buy a sixth subscription.
Pricing (checked September 2026)
| Free tier | Entry paid (annual) | Monthly rate | Approx GBP (annual) | Team tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fireflies | Unlimited transcription, 20 AI credits, storage capped | Pro $10/seat/mo | $18/seat | ~£7.40 | Business $19/seat/mo |
| Otter | 300 min/mo, 30 min per conversation | Pro $8.33/mo | $16.99 | ~£6.20 | Business $20/user/mo |
| Fathom | Unlimited recordings, 5 AI summaries/mo | Team $15/user/mo | $19/user | ~£11 | Team/Business, 2-seat minimum |
| Granola | Basic — limited note history, no integrations | Business $14/user/mo | $14 (monthly only) | ~£10.40 | Enterprise $35/user/mo |
| tl;dv | Unlimited recordings, AI notes capped | Pro ~$18/user/mo | $22/user | ~£13.30 | Business ~$59/user/mo |
GBP figures are approximate conversions at roughly $1 ≈ £0.74 (GBP/USD around 1.35 in early September 2026) and exclude VAT. All five bill in USD, so your sterling cost moves with the exchange rate on your card.
Two things this table hides. Granola bills monthly only — there is no annual discount, so its headline $14 is the real, undiscounted price rather than the usual annual teaser. And tl;dv’s Pro rate reflects a long-running 40% annual promotion that has been live since 2025; treat it as the current price, not a guaranteed one.
The Real Decision: How Each Tool Rations You
Every plan has a ceiling. They just put it in different places, and that placement is the whole choice.
Otter rations minutes. Free gives 300 minutes a month with a 30-minute cap per conversation. Pro raises that to 1,200 minutes — twenty hours of audio — with a 90-minute per-conversation limit. That per-meeting cap is the one that bites: a long workshop or an all-day planning session gets cut off mid-sentence. Business removes the monthly cap.
Fireflies rations AI credits, not transcription. Recording and transcribing is genuinely unlimited on every tier including Free. What’s metered is AI credits — the currency for summaries, action-item extraction and the AskFred assistant. Sources also disagree on whether the Free plan’s storage is effectively capped (some report an 800-minute total storage limit) and whether Pro’s credit allowance refreshes monthly or is a one-time workspace pool. Those are materially different products. Confirm both on the pricing page before you commit.
Fathom rations summaries. The free plan records and transcribes without limit but gives you five AI summaries a month. If you only need the notes for a handful of important calls, that is a genuinely generous free tier — the most usable of the five. Past five, you’re upgrading.
Granola rations history and integrations. Basic is free forever but restricts how far back your notes go and excludes integrations entirely. Business unlocks unlimited history plus Notion, Slack, HubSpot, Zapier and CRM connections.
tl;dv rations AI notes. Recordings and transcription are unlimited on Free; the AI summaries are the capped resource, and reports of the exact allowance vary.
Fireflies Pro at $10 per seat per month annual is the most defensible purchase for most teams. Unlimited transcription on every tier removes the anxiety that defines this category — you never plan your week around a minute allowance — and 100+ languages plus native CRM connections cover the two requirements that usually force an upgrade elsewhere. The caveat is real: its AI credit system is the least transparent of the five, and the vendor's own documentation is ambiguous enough that reviewers disagree about it. Otter transcribes marginally better on clean English and is the only one of the five with true live in-room captioning, which makes it the right buy if accessibility is a stated requirement rather than a nice-to-have. Fathom is the answer for anyone who only needs summaries occasionally, and Granola for anyone whose clients would object to a bot joining the call.
What We Liked
- Fireflies: unlimited transcription on every plan, including Free
- Fireflies: 100+ languages and native CRM integrations
- Fathom: the only free plan that works as a permanent home for light use
- Granola: no meeting bot — captures audio locally, nothing joins the call
- tl;dv: European data storage for UK and EU compliance requirements
- Otter: best raw accuracy on clean English audio, plus live captions
What We Didn't
- Otter Pro's 1,200-minute cap and 90-minute per-meeting limit are hard stops
- Fireflies' AI credit model is poorly documented and reported inconsistently
- Granola has no annual discount — monthly billing only
- Fathom's Team tier requires a 2-seat minimum
- tl;dv's headline price depends on a promotion that could end
- All five bill in USD, so UK buyers carry exchange-rate risk
Which One to Buy
Buy Fireflies if you take calls constantly, work across languages, or need meeting notes to land in your CRM automatically. The unlimited transcription is the feature you’ll actually feel every week. Start on Free to test the transcription quality — it’s uncapped — and upgrade when the AI credits run dry.
See Fireflies pricing →Buy Otter if you need live captions displayed during the meeting for accessibility, or you’re transcribing clean English audio where every accuracy point counts. Independent testing in 2026 puts Otter at roughly 93-95% on clean audio against Fireflies at 90-93%. That’s a few extra corrections per call — meaningful if you’re publishing transcripts, irrelevant if you’re skimming summaries. Go straight to Business if you take more than twenty hours of calls a month; Pro’s cap will find you.
See Otter pricing →Buy Fathom if you’re solo or nearly solo and only need proper summaries for a few calls a month. The free plan is the genuine article rather than a trial, and £0 beats every paid tier on value. Watch the 2-seat minimum if you later move to Team.
Buy Granola if a bot joining the call is a problem — client-facing consultants, regulated conversations, anyone whose meetings would feel surveilled with a visible recorder in the participant list. It listens on your machine instead. The trade is price rigidity: $14/user/month, monthly only, no annual saving.
Buy tl;dv if your data has to stay in Europe. That’s a compliance answer, not a features answer, and it’s the cleanest reason to pick it over the other four.
Before You Buy Anything: Check What You Already Own
This category has a subscription-stacking problem. Three things you may already be paying for:
- Notion Business ($20/user/month) bundles AI Meeting Notes as part of the 2026 AI suite. If you’re already on Business, you own a notetaker. See our Notion AI review.
- Zoom, Teams and Google Meet all ship native AI summaries on paid business tiers now. They’re worse than the dedicated tools — shallower summaries, no cross-meeting search — but they’re free at the point of use.
- Your CRM. Several sales platforms include call recording and summarisation. Check before adding a fifth seat.
The honest framing: a dedicated notetaker earns its money through cross-meeting search, integrations and language coverage. If all you need is “what did we agree on that call,” your video platform probably already does it.
FAQ
What’s the difference between a bot-based and bot-free notetaker? Bot-based tools (Fireflies, Otter, tl;dv, Fathom) join the call as a visible participant and record from inside it. Bot-free tools (Granola) capture system audio on your own machine, so nothing appears in the participant list. Bot-free is less intrusive and works on any call including in-person; bot-based generally gets cleaner per-speaker separation.
Do I need consent to record meetings in the UK? Recording a meeting where participants are identifiable involves processing personal data under UK GDPR, so you need a lawful basis and participants should be informed. Most tools announce the bot automatically, which handles notification but not necessarily your legal basis. This is general information, not legal advice — check your own policy before rolling one out across a team.
Which has the best free plan? Fathom, by a distance — unlimited recordings and transcription with five AI summaries a month. Fireflies’ Free tier is also uncapped for transcription but restricts downloads and AI credits.
Can these tools transcribe in languages other than English? Fireflies leads with 100+ languages. Otter supports around six. If multilingual coverage matters, that gap effectively makes the decision.
Which is most accurate? Otter, marginally, on clean English audio — independent 2026 testing puts it a few percentage points ahead of Fireflies. On accented, noisy or multilingual audio the ranking is less settled.
Is a dedicated notetaker worth it if Zoom already summarises my calls? Only if you need cross-meeting search, CRM integration or language coverage. For a solo user taking a handful of internal calls, the native summary is usually enough.
The Verdict
Fireflies for most teams. $10 per seat per month annual, no transcription ceiling, and the integration list that actually matters. Verify the AI credit terms before you commit — it’s the one genuinely murky thing about the product.
Fathom if you’re solo. The free plan is good enough to be a permanent answer rather than a trial, which is not true of anyone else here.
Granola if bots are the objection, Otter if captions are the requirement, tl;dv if the data has to stay in Europe. Those three are bought for one specific reason each, and if you don’t have that reason, you don’t need them.
Pricing checked September 2026 from vendor pricing pages and independent pricing trackers. This category reprices frequently and several free-tier limits are reported inconsistently across sources — confirm current terms with the vendor before you buy. Sieva may earn a commission on some links; it doesn’t change what we recommend.
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