"Free forever, unlimited" claims need a second look. Fathom's free tier is genuinely unlimited for recordings, but AI summaries with action items are capped at your first 5 calls per month. Otter cut its Pro-tier minutes from 6,000 to 1,200 without a price change.
Two tools are facing active litigation over recording consent. Otter is a defendant in a consolidated federal wiretap case (argued May 2026, decision pending); Granola faces a proposed class action alleging it records both virtual and in-person meetings without telling other participants.
Bot-based tools announce themselves; bot-free tools don't, and that's the legal issue. Granola, Krisp and Jamie capture system audio directly with no visible "X has joined the meeting" notice. Convenient, but the exact feature marketed as an advantage is what's driving the lawsuits.
Gemini Notebook isn't a competitor here. It doesn't join meetings or record live audio. It can only summarize a transcript or audio file you already have, including one Google Meet's own "Take notes for me" feature generates separately.
Free tier limits, exactly, checked against each tool's own pricing page
Tool Free tier - the actual cap Bot or bot-free
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Fathom Unlimited recordings; AI summaries capped at 5 calls/mo Bot
tl;dv Full notes on first 10 meetings only, then 10 min/mtg Bot
Otter.ai 300 min/mo, 30 min/conversation, 3 lifetime file imports Bot
Fireflies.ai "Unlimited" summaries gated by 400 min storage + 20 credits Bot
Granola Rolling 30-day note history, no meeting cap disclosed Bot-free
Krisp 7-day trial only - no standing free plan as of Aug 2026 OS-level
Notta 120 min/mo, but only 3 min per single conversation Bot
Read.ai 5 transcripts/mo, 1-hour max meeting length Bot
Jamie 10 meetings/mo, 30-min cap per meeting Bot-freeRead that table twice before picking a tool by its homepage headline. "Unlimited" appears on four of these pricing pages and means something different each time: unlimited raw recording (Fathom), unlimited until a credit pool runs out (Fireflies), or genuinely unbounded within a rolling window (Granola's 30-day history, though notes older than that become inaccessible, not deleted, until you upgrade).
The claim worth fact-checking before you pick a tool: Fathom's "free forever"
A widely cited July 2026 comparison calls Fathom "completely free forever with unlimited recordings," and the unlimited-recording half is accurate, confirmed on Fathom's own pricing page. What changed in 2026, confirmed via Fathom's own help center article on "Ask Fathom Usage Limits": the AI-generated summaries, action items and follow-up emails that make the free plan actually useful past the first few calls are now capped at your first 5 calls per month. After that, you still get a basic transcript and a generic summary template, not the templated, structured output (BANT, Sandler, custom templates) that's the actual selling point. "Unlimited recordings" is true. "Free forever" for the feature people actually want is not, as of this year.
Otter.ai: real shrinkflation, and an active wiretap lawsuit
Free tier: 300 transcription minutes/month, 30-minute cap per conversation, only 3 lifetime audio/video file imports total (not per month), and only your 25 most recent conversations retained. Pro is $8.33/month billed annually.
Two things worth knowing before you pay for Pro specifically: Otter cut the Pro plan's monthly minute allowance from 6,000 to 1,200 without lowering the price, the most-cited complaint in 2026 user reviews. And Otter trains on de-identified user data by default, opt-out rather than opt-in, a setting easy to miss during signup.
More seriously: Otter is a defendant in a consolidated federal class action (N.D. Cal., four suits filed Aug-Sep 2025) alleging it recorded and trained on meeting audio without every participant's consent. The case tests whether decades-old wiretap statutes apply to a silent AI bot sitting in on a call. Otter's motion to dismiss was argued before Judge Eumi K. Lee on 20 May 2026, with a decision still pending as of this writing. This is the first case of its kind to reach that stage, which makes it worth knowing about regardless of which tool you end up choosing.
Fireflies.ai and Granola: the consent problem in two different shapes
Fireflies' free tier ('unlimited summaries') is gated by 400 minutes of storage per user and 20 AI credits: generous for occasional use, tight for daily meetings. It states it does not train models on customer content and runs zero data retention post-processing, a real point of differentiation from Otter. But Fireflies is also facing an active biometric-privacy lawsuit: a plaintiff alleges it joined and recorded a meeting hosted by an Illinois nonprofit without her ever creating a Fireflies account, agreeing to its terms, or consenting to collection of her voiceprint.
Granola works differently from every bot-based tool on this list. It captures system audio directly from your device with no visible bot joining the call at all, which is genuinely convenient and exactly why it's now facing a proposed federal class action. The suit alleges Granola intercepts both virtual and in-person meeting audio without disclosing its presence to other participants by default, then uses those recordings to train its own models. Reddit users flagged this before the lawsuit existed: "nobody in your meeting knows" it's recording. If you're evaluating Granola for its bot-free convenience, know that the exact feature you're evaluating is the legal liability.
Read.ai: the auto-join problem
Free tier: 5 meeting transcripts/month, 1-hour max length. The specific complaint that shows up repeatedly: once connected to your calendar, Read.ai's bot auto-joins every meeting you're invited to by default, including ones the host never explicitly invited it to, and it can transcribe a meeting even when the connected user isn't personally attending. This has generated enough institutional concern that Cornell IT, UW-Madison, and Harvard's public health school have all published guidance specifically on identifying and removing Read.ai bots from meetings, solid, non-Reddit evidence that this is a real operational problem, not an isolated complaint.
Notta, Krisp and Jamie: smaller caveats worth a line each
- Notta: free tier's real limit is 3 minutes per conversation, not the headline 120 minutes/month, described repeatedly as "virtually useless for real meetings." Multiple Trustpilot reviews describe being charged the full $97.99 annual fee after cancelling within the advertised 3-day trial window.
- Krisp: as of this writing, krisp.ai's own pricing page shows a 7-day free trial only, no standing free plan. Several 2026 review sites still describe an older free "Basic" tier (60 min/day) that may no longer be current. Confirm directly before assuming a free option exists.
- Jamie: bot-free, EU-hosted, 10 meetings/month free. Reviews describe real reliability bugs, lost meetings during app updates, incomplete capture in larger 7-8 person meetings, alongside praise for the no-bot approach.
Where Gemini Notebook fits, and doesn't
None of the above is really comparable to Gemini Notebook, and conflating them is a common mistake. Gemini Notebook doesn't join live meetings, doesn't record audio in real time, and has no bot at all. It works only from sources you explicitly upload, which can include a meeting transcript or audio file you already have. The actual Otter/Fireflies equivalent from Google is a separate feature, Google Meet's "Take notes for me", not Gemini Notebook itself. If your workflow is "record my meeting, get a transcript," you want one of the nine tools above or Meet's built-in feature. If it's "take the transcript I already have and turn it into a study guide, summary, or podcast-style overview," that's Gemini Notebook's job.
Gemini Notebook's own free tier: 100 notebooks, 50 sources per notebook, 50 chat questions and 3 Audio/Video Overviews per day, no meeting-specific cap, since it isn't capturing meetings at all.
The legal question every reader here should actually understand
Roughly a dozen US states, including California, Illinois, Washington, Florida, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, require every participant's consent before a call can be recorded, not just the organizer's. This applies based on where participants are located, not where the host or the company is based, and violations carry real penalties in some states. Critically: a bot simply appearing in the participant list is not legally sufficient notice in any US jurisdiction. Consent requires actually informing people what's being recorded, how it's used, and how long it's kept, not just visibility.
For meetings that include participants in the EU, GDPR raises the bar further: for employer-run meetings specifically, consent generally isn't even a valid legal basis for recording employees, because the power imbalance in an employment relationship means they can't refuse freely. A documented "legitimate interest" assessment, done before the meeting, is the standard basis instead. A calendar-invite notice is a notification. It is not the same thing as consent under either framework.
Is there a genuinely free AI note taker with no catch?
Fathom comes closest for pure recording (truly unlimited), but its useful AI summaries cap at 5 calls a month. Every tool in this comparison gates something on the free tier: minutes, meeting count, storage window, or feature access. Match the specific cap to your actual meeting volume before choosing.
Which AI note takers are involved in lawsuits over recording consent?
Otter.ai is a defendant in a consolidated federal wiretap class action (argued May 2026, decision pending). Granola faces a proposed class action alleging it records meetings, including in-person ones, without disclosing its presence to other participants. Fireflies.ai faces a separate biometric-privacy suit over an Illinois meeting.
Do I need to tell people on a call that an AI note taker is recording?
In roughly a dozen US states, yes, legally required, based on where each participant is located, and a visible bot in the participant list does not count as sufficient notice on its own. For meetings with EU participants, GDPR generally requires a documented legitimate-interest basis rather than relying on consent alone.
Does Gemini Notebook record meetings like Otter or Fireflies?
No. Gemini Notebook has no live meeting-bot feature. It only works from sources you upload afterward, including a transcript or audio file. Google's live meeting-notes feature is a separate product, Google Meet's built-in 'Take notes for me.'