Every "free" AI notetaker runs a hidden meter. Here's which one you'll hit
Every "free" AI notetaker runs a hidden meter. Ignore the word "free" and ask the only question that sorts this whole category: what runs out?
Because something always does. "Free forever" is usually a trial in a trench coat — the plan is real, but there's a wall somewhere, and the trick is knowing which wall each tool hides. We ran the four we tested through the same meeting to find out (and read the fifth's docs, honestly flagged).
Here's the meter behind each one:
Otter caps minutes — 300 a month, and it cuts any single meeting off at 30 minutes, so one normal hour-long call overflows the free plan halfway through. It also allows only three file imports for the entire life of the account.
Granola caps history — you can record all you want, but older notes slide behind the paywall, so it's a home for this week's meetings, not a permanent archive.
Fireflies caps storage — unlimited transcription, but only 400 minutes kept for the whole team, which a few people fill in under three weeks, plus a monthly AI-credit allowance.
tl;dv caps the AI — unlimited recordings and transcripts, but only 10 automatic summaries for the lifetime of the account (per its own docs); after that you're the summarizer.
And Fathom caps… almost nothing you'll notice. The core — record, transcribe, summarize — is unlimited and kept forever. The only meter is a 30-day preview of the advanced AI assistant, after which the everyday product still runs free. It's the one plan on the right side of that line, which is why most people who start there never pay.
So the honest map isn't "which is best" — it's which meter you'll never hit, plus which narrow job you actually need: Fathom for a free plan that doesn't run out, Granola for bot-free client calls, Fireflies for team-wide search, tl;dv for a recording library, Otter for a live transcript. I put the walls, the tests, and the pick-by-your-reason breakdown in our hands-on best free AI notetaker breakdown. The one line to keep: the best free notetaker is the one whose meter you'll never reach.