What is the best free AI note taking app?

Fathom, for video calls. Its free plan has no cap on recordings or transcription and summarizes every call. On an iPhone 12 or newer, Apple Notes records and transcribes for free.

What is the best AI note taking app for iPhone?

Apple Notes, because it's free and already installed. It records and transcribes on an iPhone 12 or later, and writes summaries on an iPhone 15 Pro or an iPhone 16 or later.

What is the best AI note taker for in-person meetings?

Otter, because its phone app shows the transcript live while people talk. Granola's iPhone and Android apps also record meetings in a room, and Apple Notes does it for free on an iPhone 12 or later.

Does an AI note taker have to join the call as a bot?

No. Granola, Mem and Notion's AI Meeting Notes listen from your own device, and Fathom offers bot-free capture as a beta on Mac. Otter's assistant does join Zoom, Teams and Google Meet calls.

Should I tell people I'm using an AI note taker?

Yes, before you start recording. Ask out loud, stop if someone says no, and read the summary before you share it. An iPhone plays a notice to both people when you record a phone call.

8 best AI note taking apps in 2026, free and paid

Q: What is the best AI note taking app?

Granola, for most people who take notes in meetings. It listens through your laptop or phone, so no bot joins the call, and its free plan keeps 30 days of notes. If you want help with notes you write yourself, look at Evernote or Mem.

How we chose

An AI note taking app has one job. You stay in the conversation, and the notes are waiting when it ends. Which app does that best depends on where your conversations happen: a week of video calls needs a different tool from a lecture hall or a coffee with your accountant.

We put six questions to every app:

What does the free version let you keep, and for how long?
Does a bot join the call, or does the app listen from your own device?
Can it record a conversation in a room, from your phone, with no laptop open?
What do you get afterwards: a transcript, a summary, a list of things to do?
Which phones and computers does it run on?
What happens to the recording once the notes are written?

Every price and feature below comes from the maker's own website or help pages, read on 29 October 2026. We didn't test these apps by hand, so you won't find accuracy scores or star ratings here. Prices are in US dollars.

Meeting note taker or notes app?

Search for an AI note taking app and you'll find two different tools sold under one name.

A meeting note taker records a conversation and writes it up for you, the way Granola, Otter, Fathom and Fireflies do. A minute or two after you hang up, there's a transcript and a summary waiting, often with next steps.

A notes app with AI holds the notes you write yourself and helps with them afterwards. Apple Notes, Notion, Evernote and Mem sit here. Here the AI tidies a messy page or answers a question about last month's notes. Most of them record meetings now too, but the notes you write come first.

Then there's the bot. Some note takers join your video call as an extra participant, with its own name in the list. Otter's pricing page says its assistant joins your video calls to write and share notes. Others listen through your computer's audio, so nobody sees a new guest. Granola works that way, and so do Mem and Notion's AI Meeting Notes. Fathom offers both, with the bot-free option in beta on Mac, and Fireflies has a Chrome extension that records without its bot.

A bot does its job fine, but everyone on the call can see it. With someone you've just met, that extra name in the participant list needs explaining before the meeting can start.

The 8 best AI note taking apps

Try Granola first if you take notes in meetings. It listens from your laptop or phone, so no bot joins the call, and its free plan keeps 30 days of notes. Numbers one to four record meetings. Five to eight are notes apps that also listen, and for help with notes you write yourself, look at Evernote or Mem.

1. Granola: best for meetings without a bot

Granola runs on your laptop and listens through its audio, so no bot joins Zoom, Google Meet, Teams or any other app you meet on. You type a few rough lines during the meeting. When it ends, Granola uses the transcript to turn those lines into full notes, built around the points you thought mattered.

It leaves the desk, too. The iPhone and Android apps record walking meetings and coffee catch-ups, and there's an Apple Watch app. On computers it runs on Mac and Windows.

Granola's pricing page lists a free Basic plan that keeps 30 days of meeting history. Business costs US$14 per user a month, keeps everything and connects to Notion, HubSpot and Zapier. On every plan, the audio is deleted once it's transcribed.

Pick it if you have several video meetings a week and want notes without anyone asking who the bot is. Skip it if you want to replay the recording later. Granola keeps the transcript, not the sound.

2. Otter: best for talks in a room

Otter's phone apps record through the iPhone or Android microphone, a Bluetooth headset or AirPods, and the transcript appears while people talk. Put it on the table at a lecture, a school meeting or an interview and you can scroll back to a sentence while the speaker is still on the next one.

On video calls, Otter's assistant joins as a participant and shares the notes afterwards. It transcribes six languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese.

The free Basic plan gives you 300 minutes a month, stops each conversation at 30 minutes and keeps your 25 most recent. Pro raises that to 1,200 minutes a month and 90 minutes a conversation, for US$16.99 a month or US$8.33 a month paid yearly.

Pick it if you record people in the same room as you. Skip it if your talks run long and you won't pay, since the free plan cuts each one off at the half-hour.

3. Fathom: best free plan for video calls

Fathom's free plan puts no cap on recordings or transcription, and a summary is ready as soon as the call ends. Its home page lists Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams. You choose between a bot and bot-free capture, and the bot-free option is a beta for Mac.

The cheapest paid plan for one person adds AI action items, advanced summaries built from more than 15 meeting templates, and a chat that answers questions about a call. It costs US$20 a month, or US$16 a month paid yearly.

Pick it if most of your meetings are video calls and you'd rather pay nothing. Skip it if your conversations happen face to face. Fathom's pages are written for video calls, and Otter or Granola's phone app covers a room.

4. Fireflies: best for meetings that aren't in English

Fireflies transcribes in more than 100 languages, against Otter's six. If your book club meets in Portuguese or your family calls switch to Hindi, that's the reason to pick it. It joins Zoom, Google Meet, Teams and more, has apps for Android and iPhone, and its Chrome extension records without the bot.

On the free plan you get transcripts but a limited number of AI summaries, and the whole team shares 400 minutes of storage, under seven hours of talk. Pro gives unlimited summaries and 8,000 minutes of storage per seat, for US$18 a month or US$10 a month paid yearly.

Pick it if your meetings run in a language other than English. Skip it if you want months of recordings kept for free, because 400 minutes fills up within a few busy weeks.

5. Apple Notes: best free pick on iPhone

The Notes app on your iPhone records audio and writes out what's said as you go. Apple's guide has you open a note and choose Record Audio, and the live transcript shows while it records. Afterwards you can search the transcript or add it to the note.

Transcription needs an iPhone 12 or later with the phone set to one of ten languages, English included. Summaries need Apple Intelligence, so an iPhone 15 Pro or any iPhone 16 or later. If you record a phone call, both of you hear a notice that it's being recorded, and the recording lands with its transcript in a Call Recordings folder in Notes. Apple's call recording page lists the places it's switched off, the European Union among them.

Pick it if you own an iPhone 12 or newer and want to try AI notes for nothing. Skip it if you want summaries on an older iPhone, or if you carry an Android phone. Notes sits well beside the free tools in our pick of the best productivity iPhone apps.

6. Notion: best if your plans already live in Notion

Notion's AI Meeting Notes write a transcript and a summary while the meeting runs, with no bot in the call, and they know who's speaking. The notes sit on a Notion page next to the projects and lists the meeting was about, and Notion AI can turn the action items into tasks or the transcript into a first draft.

Notion's pricing page lists AI Meeting Notes on the Business plan, at US$20 a seat a month. The Free plan and Plus, at US$10 a seat a month, come with a trial of Notion AI.

Pick it if your to-do lists, trip plans or side project already sit in Notion. Skip it if meeting notes are all you want, because US$20 a month buys a whole workspace you'd barely open. Weighing Notion against a notes app built on plain files? Read Obsidian vs Notion.

7. Evernote: best for tidying notes you already keep

Evernote is where plenty of people's recipes, receipts and old lists already live, and its AI works on that pile. AI Edit rewrites or translates a note. Semantic Search finds notes by what they're about, not the exact words in them. AI Transcribe records a meeting and writes the transcript and a summary, and the AI Assistant answers questions about your notes in a chat.

Evernote's plans page caps the free plan at 50 notes in one notebook, synced to one device. Starter costs US$99 a year for 1,000 notes on three devices, and Advanced is US$249.99 a year. College students get 40% off a year of Advanced. The apps cover iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows and the web.

Pick it if you have years of notes and want AI to clean them up and find them again. Skip it if you'll stay on the free plan. Fifty notes on one device is a trial, not a home for everything you write.

8. Mem: best for pulling to-dos out of your notes

Mem reads the notes you create or edit and keeps a list of the tasks and projects it finds in them. Write "send Dana the photos by Friday" in Tuesday's note and it turns up on Mem's list of open tasks without you copying it anywhere.

Voice Mode records inside any note, whether that's a meeting or you thinking out loud, and because Mem listens from your own device, no bot joins the meeting. What comes back is a structured transcript. On Mac and Windows, a held-down shortcut called Push-to-Remember lets you say a thought without opening the app.

Mem's pricing page gives the free plan 25 new notes a month, 3 hours of Voice Mode and 15 open tasks. The first paid plan is US$9 a month for 50 notes and 10 hours. At US$29 a month, Mem connects one outside app such as Gmail, Slack or Todoist.

Pick it if your notes are full of small promises you lose track of. Skip it if you write more than 25 notes a month and won't pay for more.

What each one costs

These are the US dollar prices each maker's site showed on 29 October 2026. Paid from is the lowest monthly price, and for Otter, Fathom and Fireflies that means paying for a year up front.

App	Free version	Paid from	Best for
Granola	30 days of notes	US$14 a month	No bot
Otter	300 minutes a month	US$8.33 a month	In a room
Fathom	No recording cap	US$16 a month	Free video calls
Fireflies	400 minutes stored	US$10 a month	Other languages
Apple Notes	Everything	None	iPhone owners
Notion	AI trial	US$20 a month	Notion users
Evernote	50 notes	US$99 a year	Old notes
Mem	25 notes a month	US$9 a month	Finding to-dos

Every meeting note taker here has a free version, and so does Apple Notes. What separates them is what runs out first: Granola's history after 30 days, Otter's minutes after 300, Fireflies' storage after 400 minutes. Fathom's free plan puts no cap on recordings at all, so if your meetings are video calls and your budget is zero, start there.

Which one fits your day

Start from where your conversations happen, not from the longest feature list.

Video meetings, and you'd rather not have a bot in them: Granola.
Video meetings on a budget of zero: Fathom.
Lectures, interviews and meetings in a room: Otter, or Granola's phone app.
Meetings in a language other than English: Fireflies.
An iPhone 12 or newer and no wish to install anything: Apple Notes.
An Android phone: Otter, Granola, Fireflies and Evernote all list Android apps. There are more in our list of the best productivity apps for Android.
Notes you write yourself: Evernote to tidy them, Notion if your plans live there, Mem if they're full of to-dos.

A summary's next steps only help once they reach the list you check every morning. Before you close the notes, copy each one into your task app with a date beside it. No task app yet? Start with our guide to the best task management app.

Not every note comes from a meeting. In ActivityTracker you talk a note in and it turns into text, and one search looks through every note you've kept.

See how notes work

Ask first. Everyone in the conversation should know it's being recorded before it starts. These five habits keep it simple:

Say it out loud at the start: "I'm using an app to take notes, is that OK?" Then wait for the yes.
Use the app's own notice where there is one. Granola can let people know it's running, and Notion lists consent handling among its meeting note features. On an iPhone call, Apple plays a notice to both of you.
Stop when someone asks. Pause for the private part, and say that you've paused.
Read the summary before you share it. Apple's own call recording page says to check a transcript's accuracy before you rely on it. Treat every app here the same way. Names, numbers and dates are what go wrong.
Delete what you don't need. Granola already deletes the audio after transcribing it, and Notion lets admins auto-delete transcripts on a schedule.

Where you live sets its own rules on recording people, which is one reason Apple switches call recording off in the European Union and several other countries. When you're unsure, ask before you press the button.

Rosa's week with three free apps

Made-up example: Rosa runs a three-person design studio, and on Thursday nights she's at a woodworking class. Her week holds six video meetings on Google Meet, two visits to a tile showroom and the class.

On Monday she signs up for Fathom's free plan and lets it into the team meeting. The summary is waiting when she closes the tab, and she copies three next steps into her task list with dates.

On Tuesday a new supplier asks what the extra name in the participant list is. So for the next outside meeting she switches to Granola's free plan, and nobody new shows up on the call.

On Wednesday she's at the showroom with no laptop. She opens Apple Notes on her iPhone 15 Pro, says she's recording, and has a transcript and a short summary of the tile prices by the time she's back in the car.

On Thursday she records the teacher's ten-minute demo on finishing oils. On Sunday she searches the transcript for "tung oil" and finds the drying time in seconds.

By Friday she's spent nothing. Fathom handles the team calls, Granola the outside ones and Notes anything in a room. She'll look at Granola's Business plan when 30 days of history stops being enough.