AI meeting note takers: Fireflies vs Otter, and the consent rules at work

What makes an AI meeting note taker worth using?

A good AI meeting note taker transcribes accurately in your language, works on the call platform your employer uses, and gives you enough free minutes to find out whether you like it. These are the numbers to check before you sign up.

• Free allowance. Otter's free Basic plan gives 300 transcription minutes a month and stops each recording at 30 minutes. Fireflies' free plan has no transcription cap when its bot, Chrome extension or mobile app records, but only 400 minutes of storage per team and limited AI summaries. Look for at least a few hours a month if you have more than two meetings a week.
• Longest single meeting. A 30-minute cap covers a stand-up and cuts off a one-hour team meeting halfway. Otter Pro raises it to 90 minutes.
• Languages. Otter transcribes six: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese. Fireflies says it covers 100+ languages, with English as the main one.
• Where it works. Both join Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet. Fireflies also lists Webex, GoToMeeting, Dialpad and Lifesize. Granola does not join at all: it records your computer's audio, so it works alongside any call app.
• What happens to the recording. Fireflies says it does not train AI on customer data by default. Otter says it de-identifies user data before training its models. Neither page we read says which country your recordings sit in, and a UK employer will want to know.
• Price per seat. Fireflies Pro is $10 per seat a month billed annually, or $18 monthly. Otter Pro is $8.33 per user a month billed annually. Both charge in US dollars, so the pound price moves with the exchange rate.

Fireflies vs Otter vs the built-in options

Fireflies, Otter and Granola are our picks from this table. The built-in tools are named alternatives.

Before paying for anything, check what you already have. Standard Microsoft Teams includes basic transcription, and Microsoft says everyone in the meeting sees a notification when it starts. Google Meet's "Take notes for me" writes notes into a Google Doc in eight languages and tells all participants it is on, but it needs an eligible Google Workspace edition or Google AI plan.

Do you need to tell people before an AI note taker records?

Yes. Tell people before you record, and at work get your employer's agreement too. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) says organisations must give people privacy information at the time they collect their personal data. Its guidance on monitoring workers says that, apart from very exceptional circumstances, workers must be told about any monitoring. A meeting recording is personal data about everyone who speaks in it.

In practice:

• Say it in the invite. "I use Fireflies to transcribe so I can listen instead of writing. Tell me if you'd rather I didn't." That gives people time to object without doing it in front of the whole call.
• Say it again at the start. A bot in the participant list is easy to miss on a busy screen.
• Check your employer's policy first. If you record work meetings as an employee, you are doing it for your employer's purposes, so their data protection and IT rules apply. Many organisations allow only approved tools. For employers, the ICO expects a data protection impact assessment for higher-risk monitoring, and the controller and processor roles settled with any third-party tool before it is used.
• Leave some meetings out. HR, grievance, health and disciplinary conversations are the wrong place to add an outside tool unless everyone has agreed in advance and the policy allows it.
• Stop if anyone objects. Switch to handwritten notes and ask for the actions in writing afterwards.

The ICO's monitoring guidance does not cover purely personal or household recording, unless there is professional or commercial activity involved. If you run your own business and record client calls, the duty to give privacy information is yours.

If writing while listening makes you lose the thread

A note taker moves the note-taking to after the meeting, so during it you can look at people and follow what is being said. That is the honest case for one. It will not decide what matters for you, and it can mishear names, accents and jargon, so read the summary as a first draft and check anything you are about to act on or send.

Three habits make the output useful:

1. Pull out actions the same day. Copy anything with your name on it into a task app with a date. Todoist reads "Friday 3pm" and sets it for you.
2. Search, don't reread. Both Fireflies and Otter let you search past meetings, which beats scrolling an hour of transcript.
3. Keep a paper fallback. For meetings you cannot record, a reusable notebook you can scan keeps handwritten notes findable.

If you want your employer to provide a note taker, our guides to reasonable adjustments and Access to Work cover how to ask.

Things to know

• We have not tested these tools. Limits and prices come from the makers' pricing, security and help pages on 11 September 2026. Free plans change often, so check before you rely on one.
• Storage location. Neither Fireflies nor Otter says on the pages we read where recordings are stored. Fireflies mentions private storage at a location you choose on its Enterprise plan. If your employer needs UK or EU storage, ask the supplier in writing.
• Tools without a bot. Granola describes itself as a notepad rather than a note taker that joins the call. That means no bot in the participant list, so the whole job of telling people falls on you.
• Accuracy. Speaker labels and names are where transcripts most often go wrong. Do not paste an unchecked summary into anything formal.
• Deleting. Find out how to delete a recording before you make your first one, and set a habit of clearing old meetings, especially on a free plan with limited storage.
• This is not legal advice. For anything contentious, ask your employer's data protection officer or HR before you press record.