5 best AI note takers that work across Zoom, Meet, Teams, and everything else

Every AI note taker claims it works with Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams. That part is easy. The question is what happens on meeting number four: the Webex call with a client’s IT team, the Slack huddle where a real decision gets made, the workshop you attend in a room with actual chairs.

After six weeks with 12 of these tools, the pattern had nothing to do with which logos a vendor puts on its homepage. It came down to how the tool gets the audio. Bot-based tools need a meeting link, so coverage stops at the vendor’s integration list. Device-audio tools capture whatever plays on your machine, so the platform stops mattering.

Every fact below comes from the vendor’s own documentation. Where a marketing page and a help centre disagreed, I went with the help centre.

How I tested

I scored the five finalists on the situations that actually break these tools:

• Which platforms does the bot officially join, and what happens on the ones it does not?
• Can it capture an app the vendor has never heard of, and on which operating systems?
• Does it record in-person conversations, and with usable speaker labels?
• Can you feed it an existing recording?
• Can it cover a meeting you cannot attend yourself?

How they compare

Tool	Any desktop app	In-person	Uploaded files	Bot for meetings you skip	Languages	Audio processing
Krisp	Yes, audio-layer, Win + Mac	Yes, iOS and Android	Yes, Core and up	Yes, Zoom, Meet, Teams	16	Two-sided noise cancellation, accent conversion
Fireflies.ai	Yes, system audio, Win + Mac	Yes, web and mobile	Yes, with size caps	Yes, 9 platforms listed	100+	None advertised
Granola	Yes, system audio, Win + Mac	Yes, iOS and Android	No, explicitly	No bot at all	32 desktop, 17 mobile	None, “passes audio directly”
Otter.ai	Yes, system audio, Win + Mac	Yes, mobile and web	Yes, 3 free for life	Yes, Zoom, Meet, Teams	6	None, advises turning it off
Fathom	Bot-free is Mac and English only	Not yet, iOS waitlist	No, explicitly	Yes, Zoom, Meet, Teams	38	None advertised

Two columns deserve a warning label. Uploaded files is where Fathom and Granola both stop dead, and both say so plainly in their docs, which I respect more than a vague roadmap promise. And the language column is not a tiebreaker on its own: Fireflies documents 100+ and Otter documents six, but Otter is still the name your clients recognise.

1. Krisp: platform independence is built into how it works

With Krisp AI note taker, “works with everything” falls out of the architecture instead of a list somebody keeps extending. It installs a virtual microphone and speaker and sits between your hardware and whatever app is running: “Krisp creates an additional layer between the physical microphone/speaker and the communication app you are using.” The homepage draws the conclusion: “Because Krisp works at the audio level, it integrates with every conferencing app such as Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack Huddles, and more.”

I stopped checking whether things were supported. A Webex call with a client, a Discord standup, a FaceTime call with a contractor: all captured, nothing joining the participant list. Krisp is also the only vendor here whose help centre publishes a general method rather than a list. Alongside guides for 20 named apps including Discord, RingCentral, Skype and Loom, there are articles called “Set up any app with Krisp” and “Set up apps with no audio settings with Krisp”.

It covers all four routes into a transcript: any desktop app, in-person through the mobile apps, existing recordings through upload on Core and above, and meetings you skip entirely, by adding [email protected] to the invite so “the bot will record and transcribe the meeting whether you can join or not.” Fireflies matches that four for four; Otter manages three.

What separates Krisp is how little the everything-else mode gives up. Fireflies covers the same ground without a bot but “does not save audio or video files” and labels people “Speaker 1 / Speaker 2”. Fathom’s equivalent runs on Mac in English only. Krisp keeps the recording and works on Windows and Mac. It is not penalty-free, as the list below shows, but the penalties are smaller.

The two things none of the others do

Because Krisp already sits in the audio path, it does two jobs that none of the other four tools in this test offer at all.

Two-sided noise cancellation. It “removes both inbound and outbound background noise”, so you can “cancel my noise” or “cancel others’ noise”, and it runs locally: “Krisp never sends audio data from your machine to its servers. All the processing happens on the local device.” Echo cancellation is on by default. One asymmetry worth knowing: the microphone direction strips “all background human voices”, while the speaker direction removes noise but keeps human voices, which is what you want when three people are talking on the far end. Krisp connects this to the notes directly: “your transcripts are already cleaned from background noise, which directly improves note quality.” Read that as a claim about note quality, not a measured accuracy figure, because Krisp publishes no number.

Accent conversion. Nothing in the other four comes close to this. It “adjusts your LatAm-English, Indian-English and Filipino-English accents in real time, helping native speakers understand you more easily, without changing your natural voice.” There is a listener-side version too, running at 200 milliseconds or under: “Convert others’ accents in meetings for you. Speakers don’t change anything.” On Core you get one hour a day. On Advanced, speaker side runs four hours a day and listener side is unlimited. I have not found it on the mobile apps, so treat it as desktop and Chrome for now.

The competitors’ own documentation makes this gap clearer than I could. Otter’s help centre lists the software that applies noise suppression and names Krisp in it, then tells you to switch it off so Otter can hear properly. Granola states that it “passes audio directly from your microphone and system audio to our transcription provider”, and its blog argues that moving the microphone closer beats “trying to compensate with software noise reduction afterward”. Fathom says accents are “covered”, which is a claim about transcribing accented speech, not changing how it sounds.

One honest caveat, because somebody will raise it. Fireflies does ship something called “Voice and Accent Control”, but that picks the synthetic voice of an outbound AI calling agent. It does not touch a human speaker’s live voice, which is a different product doing a different job.

What annoyed me:

• No Linux or ChromeOS: “The Krisp app isn’t supported on Linux and Chrome OS yet.”
• No permanent free plan, just a 7-day trial.

Pricing, September 2026: 7-day trial, then Core at $16 per user monthly or $8 billed annually, Advanced $30 or $15, Enterprise on request. G2: 4.7 from 1,599 reviews.

2. Fireflies.ai: the longest official platform list

For breadth on paper, Fireflies wins. Its supported-platforms page names Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, GoToMeeting, Dialpad, Lifesize and Jitsi, which is the longest official list of the five. The desktop app adds bot-free system-audio capture on Windows and Mac, covering WhatsApp, Aircall, FaceTime, Discord, phone calls and in-person. Uploads work, capped at 500 MB and 150 minutes per file, across 100+ languages.

The catch is that the two modes are not equivalent. Bot-free recording “does not save audio or video files”, and speakers show up as “Speaker 1 / Speaker 2 instead of named participants”. The mode that covers everything is the mode that loses the recording and the names. In bot mode the notetaker is “always visible in the participant list to ensure compliance”, and the Chrome extension only works with Google Meet. Its detailed joining documentation covers Zoom, Teams and Meet only, so I would not assume the other six platforms get equal treatment.

Pricing, September 2026: free tier with 400 minutes of storage per team and 20 AI credits, Pro $18 per seat monthly or $10 annually, Business $29 or $19, Enterprise $39 per seat annual only. G2: 4.7 from 752 reviews.

3. Granola: genuinely app-agnostic, with a mobile blind spot

Granola takes a similar approach to Krisp and states it cleanly: “Granola uses your system audio to capture transcription, capturing whatever audio inputs and outputs happen on your computer.” No bot exists in any mode, which is unusual and, if you take a lot of client calls, restful.

Then I hit the wall that matters here. Granola cannot capture virtual meetings on a phone, and it explains why: “Phones don’t let apps capture audio from other apps, so Granola can’t transcribe virtual meeting calls on mobile.” Its mobile apps handle in-person conversations well, but if you take Zoom calls from your phone this is a desktop-only product. Uploads are refused outright: “it does not support importing or uploading pre-recorded audio files”.

Speaker names are patchy too. Named tags work on Google Meet through the browser extension and on Zoom on macOS, and the support matrix omits Teams and Zoom-on-Windows entirely. Free-plan notes vanish from view after 30 days, and there is no annual billing.

Pricing, September 2026: Basic $0 with 30 days of visible history, Business $14 per user monthly, Enterprise from $35, monthly billing only. G2: 4.7 from 36 reviews, so treat that score as early days.

4. Otter.ai: the familiar one, with a narrow bot

Otter is the name people in the meeting already recognise, which counts when you tell six participants you are recording. Its Notetaker “joins Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams meetings as a guest participant and will be visible in the meeting”, and Otter is upfront that it “cannot join a meeting anonymously”.

Outside those three you drop to the desktop app’s botless recording, which picks up Zoom, browsers, Teams, Slack huddles, dialers and WhatsApp on Mac and Windows. It keeps the recording, which Fireflies’ bot-free mode does not, but automatic speaker identification is Notetaker-and-Zoom-only; elsewhere you get “Speaker 1, Speaker 2” and tag them by hand after the fact. The Chrome extension is weaker still: it “only supports meeting links associated with Zoom or Google Meet”.

The hard limit is language. Otter “currently only supports English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese (Simplified)”, two of those in beta, and it “can only transcribe in one language at a time”. Six is the narrowest coverage here by a wide margin. Free-plan uploads stop at three imports for life, and Otter’s answer for Webex is to record in Webex yourself and import the file afterwards, which is not the same as capturing the call.

Pricing, September 2026: Basic free with 300 monthly minutes, 30 minutes per conversation and three lifetime file imports; Pro $16.99 monthly or $8.33 annually; Business $30 or $19.99. G2: 4.4 from 505 reviews.

5. Fathom: excellent product, narrowest coverage

Fathom has the best reviews in this category by a distance and I understand why. It is also the one I would not pick for cross-platform work, and its own documentation is why.

“Fathom supports Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.” No Webex anywhere on the site. Uploads are out: “we do not support uploaded calls.” So are “Phone calls or any calls without a meeting link”, webinars, breakout rooms, Chromebooks, Linux and, notably, “Mobile devices” and “Tablets and e-readers (including iPads)”. In-person capture is still a waitlist: “In-person meeting capture is coming soon as part of Fathom for iOS!”

The bot-free mode everyone is excited about, me included, is still narrow: “The new bot-free experience is currently available on Mac only” and “only available for Mac users with English-language meetings.” The marketing page says Windows is available now, which the help centre contradicts.

None of that makes it a bad tool. If your working life happens in Zoom and Teams on a laptop, its free tier is the most generous here: unlimited recordings and transcription in 38 languages, forever.

Pricing, September 2026: free forever, Premium $20 monthly or $16 annually, Team $19 per user or $15, Business $34 or $25, Enterprise on request. G2: 5.0 from 7,016 reviews.

How to choose

Start with your fourth-most-common platform, not your first. All five handle Zoom, Meet and Teams. If you need Webex live, Fireflies is the only one that lists it on an official supported-platforms page, and Fathom’s compatibility page omits it entirely.

Then read the fallback mode’s fine print, because that is where the compromises hide. Fireflies keeps no recording and no speaker names without its bot. Fathom’s runs on Mac in English. Otter makes you tag speakers by hand after the call. Krisp needs both virtual devices selected or you get half a conversation.

If you take calls from your phone, rule out Granola and Fathom. If you have a backlog of recordings, rule out both again. And if your problem is the audio itself, noisy rooms or accents your clients struggle with, only one tool in this test does anything about it.

Verdict

Krisp takes the top spot for two reasons. Its platform coverage is a property of how it works rather than a list it has to maintain, which is why it is the only vendor here documenting how to set up any app, including apps with no audio settings of their own. And because it already sits in the audio path, it does two things none of the other four offer at all: two-sided noise cancellation that runs on your machine, and real-time accent conversion. Those are not note-taking features, which is exactly the point. Everyone else starts working after the audio is already bad.

It does not win on everything, and the gaps are real. Fireflies has the longer official platform list and six times the languages, and if I worked in Thai I would not think twice about it. Granola’s no-bot-ever stance is the cleanest in the category. Otter is the name your clients already trust. Fathom’s free tier beats Krisp having no free tier at all. Which trade-off matters depends on which meeting you are worried about.