5 Best AI Meeting Assistants in 2026: Which One Should You Use?

You finish a meeting, close the tab, and then realize you forgot who agreed to what, which deadline was mentioned, and what happens next.

That’s where AI meeting assistants come in.

In 2026, these tools do much more than record and transcribe calls. They can create summaries, pull out action items, search past conversations, update CRMs, and even take notes without an AI bot joining the meeting.

But krisp , Fathom, Fireflies.ai, Otter.ai, tl;dv are not built for exactly the same workflow.

So, which one should you choose?

We compared their features, pricing, free-plan limits, strengths, weaknesses, and best use cases to help you find the AI meeting assistant that actually fits the way you work.

Quick comparison

Pricing checked in September 2026.

Krisp’s Core plan is currently $8/user/month on annual billing, while its free access is a seven-day trial rather than an ongoing free plan. Otter’s Basic plan remains free with 300 transcription minutes per month, while its standard Pro annual price is shown at $8.33/user/month. Fireflies offers a free-forever tier and Pro at $10/seat/month annually. Fathom’s individual Free plan includes unlimited recordings and transcription, while Premium is $16/month on annual billing. tl;dv currently lists Pro at $18/user/month when billed annually.

1. Krisp – when the meeting itself needs fixing

Krisp feels different from the others because it starts solving the problem before the meeting ends.

Its strongest feature is still noise cancellation. Keyboard sounds, nearby conversations, traffic, room echo  Krisp tries to clean that up while you are speaking.

But it has grown well beyond audio cleanup.

The current Core plan includes bot-free transcription, audio and video recording, AI notes, action items, AI Chat, integrations, in-person meeting notes and Accent Conversion.

That bot-free part matters more than it sounds.

Sometimes I simply do not want another “AI Notetaker” participant appearing inside a client call. Krisp can capture meetings without adding a visible bot, although it also supports bot-based recording when needed.

Its weakness is the free access. Once the seven-day trial ends, you need a paid plan.

Krisp makes the most sense when: your calls happen in noisy environments, audio quality matters, or you want meeting notes without always adding a visible bot.

2. Otter.ai – still one of the strongest live-transcription experiences

Otter is one of the first names I associate with meeting transcription, and its product still feels centred around the live conversation.

You can follow the transcript while the meeting is happening, identify speakers, search the conversation and use AI Chat across meetings.

The free Basic plan gives you 300 transcription minutes per month, live transcription, speaker identification, AI Chat and support for Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet.

What has changed is that Otter is moving beyond simple note-taking.

Its current plans include AI meeting workflows, templates, cross-meeting AI Chat, MCP support and deeper workflow options on higher plans.

The limit becomes clearer once meetings get frequent. Pro currently includes 1,200 in-app recording minutes and a 90-minute limit per meeting, so high-volume users may eventually need Business.

Otter makes the most sense when: you care about live transcripts and want to ask questions across your meeting history afterwards.

3. Fireflies.ai – when the notes need to go somewhere

Fireflies became more interesting to me once I stopped looking at it as just a transcription tool.

Its real strength is what happens after the transcript exists.

The free plan includes unlimited transcription, limited AI summaries, meeting search, AskFred, apps, browser extensions and API access. Fireflies also lists transcription support for more than 100 languages.

Pro, at $10 per seat per month annually, adds unlimited AI summaries, downloads, integrations, action-item tools and more storage.

The platform is especially useful when meeting notes need to become part of a larger workflow.

Instead of leaving a summary inside another meeting app, Fireflies can push information into CRM, productivity and automation systems.

There is one thing worth watching: some of the more advanced AI capabilities now use AI Credits, which are separate from the core subscription.

So the headline price does not necessarily tell you the entire cost if your team uses advanced AI heavily.

Fireflies makes the most sense when: integrations, automation and turning conversations into follow-up work matter more than simply storing transcripts.

4. Fathom – the free plan is still difficult to ignore

Fathom surprised me most when I looked closely at what is available without paying.

The Free plan includes unlimited recordings, unlimited storage and unlimited transcription in 38 languages.

That is a genuinely useful free tier rather than a demo disguised as one.

You also get meeting summaries, while the first five calls each month receive access to more advanced summaries. The paid Premium plan adds unlimited advanced summaries, action items, follow-up emails and Ask Fathom.

Fathom is also becoming more interesting for people with large meeting archives.

Its AI Search can search across recorded meetings for things like competitor mentions, customer objections and recurring themes.

The free version still has limitations. Account-wide Ask Fathom on the Free plan currently searches only the previous two weeks of calls, while Premium expands that history.

Still, if I wanted to try AI meeting notes without immediately adding another subscription, Fathom would be one of the first places I would look.

Fathom makes the most sense when: you are an individual user who wants a strong free starting point.

5. tl;dv – when one meeting is not the whole story

tl;dv starts to make more sense when you stop thinking about one call at a time.

Its Free plan provides unlimited recording and transcription, while AI notes are available for a limited number of meetings each month. Its current Pro plan is $18/user/month annually and adds unlimited AI notes, global transcript search, CRM integrations, API/webhooks and thousands of integrations.

What I find more interesting is the cross-meeting angle.

If you have twenty sales calls, the useful question is not always:

“What happened in Tuesday’s call?”

It may be:

“What objections have customers mentioned repeatedly this month?”

That is where multi-meeting search, recurring insights and team-level workflows become more valuable than a single transcript.

Its weakness is price. Pro costs noticeably more than Krisp, Otter or Fireflies at their entry paid tiers.

tl;dv makes the most sense when: your team wants insights across many meetings, especially alongside CRM and workflow automation.

Bot or no bot? This matters more than I expected

This used to feel like a minor feature.

It is not.

A visible meeting bot can be perfectly fine for internal calls. On interviews, sales meetings or client conversations, it can sometimes feel intrusive.

Krisp supports bot-free capture. Fathom’s current pricing page also lists a choice between bot capture and a bot-free option that is currently in beta for Mac. Fireflies also supports recording through its Chrome extension without sending its bot into the meeting.

So I would check this before choosing a tool, not after.

So, which one should you use?

I do not think there is one answer for everyone.

If I were choosing purely by workflow, I would narrow it down this way:

Choose Krisp if meeting audio itself is part of the problem.

Choose Otter if you want a strong live transcript and conversational access to your meeting history.

Choose Fireflies if the meeting is only the beginning and the notes need to feed other tools.

Choose Fathom if you want to start free without being boxed into tiny recording limits.

Choose tl;dv if your team cares about patterns and insights across many calls rather than one meeting at a time.

That is also why I would not choose based only on the lowest monthly price.

The cheapest tool can become the wrong tool very quickly if it solves the wrong part of your meeting workflow.

Before you record anything

There is one less exciting feature that matters more than all the AI summaries: consent.

Meeting recording laws and company policies vary depending on where you and the other participants are located.

Before turning on automatic recording, teams should decide:

• when participants need notification,
• who can access recordings,
• how long transcripts are kept,
• and whether sensitive customer or employee information should be recorded at all.

The AI can save time. It should not quietly create a compliance problem.

Final thoughts

The biggest shift I noticed while researching these tools is that transcription is no longer the product.

It is becoming the starting point.

Krisp improves the live conversation. Otter makes it searchable. Fireflies connects it to workflows. Fathom lowers the barrier to getting started. tl;dv tries to turn a library of meetings into something a team can learn from.

That is the question I would use before paying for any of them:

Do you need better audio, better notes, better follow-up, or better intelligence across meetings?

Once you know that, the shortlist gets much shorter.

FAQs

Are AI meeting assistants free?

Some are. Otter, Fireflies, Fathom and tl;dv currently offer ongoing free plans. Krisp currently provides a seven-day free trial rather than a permanent free tier.

Which AI meeting assistant works without a bot?

Krisp supports bot-free recording, while Fathom currently offers a bot-free capture option in beta for Mac. Fireflies also supports bot-free capture through its Chrome extension.

Which tools work with Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams?

All five tools support common workflows around Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, although their capture methods and feature availability differ by platform and plan. Otter explicitly lists support for all three on its Basic plan, while tl;dv also supports all three major meeting platforms.

How accurate are AI meeting transcripts?

There is no honest universal percentage. Accuracy changes with microphone quality, overlapping speakers, accents, language and technical vocabulary. I would treat any single “98% accurate” claim cautiously unless all tools were tested on the same recordings under the same conditions.