Best AI meeting assistant for Zoom

If you already pay for Zoom Workplace Pro or Business, you have unlimited AI meeting summaries and Zoom's My Notes note-taker at no extra cost, according to Zoom's pricing page on 13 November 2026. Buy a second tool only for a gap: client calls on Teams or Meet, notes that must land in a CRM, a bot-free capture rule, or longer searchable history.

We compared Zoom's own AI (Workplace and the ZoomMate add-on) with Fireflies.ai, Fathom, Otter.ai and Granola. Zoom, Otter and Granola prices were read on 13 November 2026; Fireflies and Fathom figures come from our 10 and 11 November checks, shown in the table.

Disclosure: our Fireflies.ai link is an affiliate link; that doesn't change the order or the facts. We haven't tested these tools hands-on in Zoom yet.

Quick shortlist for Zoom

• Your team only meets on Zoom and pays for Workplace: use the built-in meeting summaries and My Notes first. They're included on Pro ($14.16 per user a month billed annually) and Business ($18.33).
• You want summaries in your own format, or AI that drafts the follow-up deck and email: look at ZoomMate, $16.67 per user a month on annual billing, with 2,200 AI credits per user a month.
• Calls are split across Zoom, Teams and Meet, and notes should reach a CRM: Fireflies.ai Pro at $10 per seat on annual billing, or Fathom if one person mostly needs free recordings.
• Clients shouldn't see a bot join: Granola captures your computer's audio instead.
• You want a live transcript on screen during the call: Otter.ai, which lists integrated live notes for Zoom.

Comparison table

USD per user per month, before tax. "Annual" means the per-month price when billed yearly. Zoom's AI features are listed as unavailable to users with Basic permissions on paid accounts, so check each person's licence, not just the company plan.

Bot, built-in or local capture

There are three ways an AI tool gets the audio from a Zoom call, and the choice matters more than the summary style.

1. Built into Zoom. Meeting summaries and in-meeting questions run inside Zoom for the host. Zoom's comparison table lists My Notes as an AI note-taker for Zoom, third-party and in-person conversations, with cross-platform support on every plan, but speaker identification only in Zoom Meetings. Nothing extra joins the call.
2. A bot participant. Fireflies.ai, Fathom and Otter.ai join the meeting as an attendee that records and transcribes. Everyone can see it, which helps with transparency, and the same bot works on Teams and Meet. Your Zoom admin settings decide whether outside participants and apps can join.
3. Local device audio. Granola listens to your computer's microphone and system audio, works with any meeting app and deletes the audio after transcription. No bot joins, so you have to tell participants yourself.

Fireflies' pricing page also lists a Chrome extension that records without the Fireflies bot, and Fathom lists bot-free capture as a Mac beta, so the line between the second and third groups is blurring. Check which mode a vendor supports on your operating system before you count on it.

Free limits and history

Free plans differ less on transcription and more on how much you can keep and how long a meeting can run.

• Zoom Workplace Basic: meeting summaries and in-meeting questions for 3 hosted meetings a month, 3 uses of My Notes, 20 AI queries, and a 40-minute cap per meeting.
• Fathom Free: unlimited recordings and transcription for individuals; advanced summaries and Ask Fathom are limited.
• Otter Basic: 300 transcription minutes a month and 30 minutes per conversation, plus 3 lifetime file imports.
• Granola Basic: unlimited AI notes, but meeting history is limited to the last 30 days.
• Fireflies Free: a Free plan with limited storage and AI summaries; see our Fireflies review for the current limits.

For a freelancer with a handful of client calls a month, Zoom's three free summaries may be enough. Someone running daily discovery calls will hit Basic's 40-minute cap before the AI limit, which is an argument for a paid Zoom licence rather than a separate notetaker.

Monthly vs annual billing

Zoom, Fireflies, Fathom and Otter all show a lower per-month price for annual billing. Granola Business is billed monthly only. ZoomMate's annual rate ($16.67) is about 17% below its monthly price ($20). Otter also shows first-time-subscriber promotions; we use the standard prices above.

CRM handoff and participant consent

Summaries are useful only if they reach the place your team works. Zoom lists workplace integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft, Google and ServiceNow, and ZoomMate adds agents that can update Salesforce after a meeting. Fireflies lists app and CRM integrations on its paid tiers, Fathom lists CRM field sync on Business, and Otter's plan table lists synced notes to Salesforce or HubSpot on paid plans; Granola's Business plan lists HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, Notion and Zapier, with Salesforce on Enterprise.

Consent and data use

1. Tell participants before AI notes start, especially on calls with people in the EU. A visible bot helps but doesn't replace saying it.
2. Read each vendor's training policy. Zoom says it doesn't use meeting audio, video or chat to train its own or third-party models. Granola trains on anonymised data unless each user opts out (off by default on Enterprise). Fireflies says it doesn't train on meeting data and bars its AI vendors from doing so.
3. Check retention. Granola deletes audio after transcription; Otter lists custom data retention on higher plans; Zoom Pro lists audit logs and a data retention policy for its productivity suite.
4. For EU clients, ask for a DPA and where data is stored before connecting client meetings. Zoom lists regional data centers from Pro upwards.

What a 10-person team pays

Illustrative totals for 10 paid users, before tax, using annual billing where available. These packages don't do identical jobs, and the Zoom line only counts if you'd otherwise be on the free plan:

• Zoom Workplace Pro: 10 × $14.16 = $141.60/mo, which buys the meetings themselves plus unlimited AI summaries.
• ZoomMate on top: 10 × $16.67 = $166.70/mo extra.
• Fireflies.ai Pro: 10 × $10 = $100/mo; Business $190.
• Fathom Team: 10 × $15 = $150/mo.
• Otter.ai Pro: 10 × $8.33 = $83.30/mo; Business $199.90.
• Granola Business: 10 × $14 = $140/mo (monthly billing).

Most small teams don't need ten seats of anything. Count the people who host client calls, then check whether colleagues can read shared notes without a paid seat. The meeting notes cost calculator does the multiplication for other team sizes.

Pilot checklist

1. Pick two or three real meeting types: an internal stand-up, a client call and one long workshop.
2. Run Zoom's own AI summary on each, then one other tool on the same meetings.
3. Check names, numbers and action items against what was actually said. Note any missed decisions; a fluent summary can still be wrong.
4. Test the handoff: does the summary reach the CRM, Slack or the client email the way you need?
5. Confirm admin settings, consent wording and retention before rolling out to the whole team.

For Microsoft-heavy teams, read our Teams guide; for Google Workspace, the Google Meet guide. The meeting notes hub covers the wider workflow.

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