Tired of Taking Notes in Meetings? Here’s How AI Can Do It For You

By PlainAI · Updated June 2026 · 6 min read

You’ve just finished a one-hour meeting. You have three bullet points and a vague memory of someone mentioning a deadline. Sound familiar? AI transcription tools can record, transcribe, and summarise your meetings automatically — and most of them are free to start.

Taking notes while trying to actually participate in a meeting is surprisingly hard. You’re either scribbling furiously and missing the conversation, or you’re present and have nothing to show for it afterwards. It’s one of those small but persistent work frustrations that AI has actually solved quite well.

This post explains how AI meeting tools work, which ones are worth trying, and what to realistically expect from them — in plain English.

So what do these tools actually do?

At their core, AI transcription tools join your meeting (or record it), convert the spoken audio into text in real time, and then produce a summary of what was discussed. Some go further and pull out action items, flag who said what, and let you search back through old meetings.

They work with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and most other platforms. You either invite them as a bot participant, or install a browser extension that records locally. Setup takes about five minutes.

The three tools most people end up comparing are Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, and Descript. They all do the core job, but they suit different types of people.

Otter.ai — the easiest one to start with

Otter.ai is probably the most well-known AI note-taking tool, and for good reason — it’s genuinely simple. You connect it to your Google or Microsoft calendar, it joins your meetings automatically, and within minutes of the call ending you have a full transcript and a summary sitting in your inbox.

The free plan covers 300 minutes of transcription per month, which is plenty for most people. The transcript is searchable, you can highlight sections, and it identifies different speakers (though it helps if you label them the first time).

Where Otter.ai shines is in its simplicity. There’s nothing complicated to configure. If you’ve never used an AI meeting tool before, start here.

“I used to spend 20 minutes after every call writing up notes. Now Otter does it while the meeting’s still happening. I just read the summary afterwards.”

The paid plan (around £8–10/month) adds longer recordings, more AI features, and better team sharing. But the free tier is genuinely useful on its own.

Fireflies.ai — better for teams

Fireflies.ai works similarly to Otter but leans more towards team collaboration. It creates a searchable library of all your past meetings, integrates with tools like Slack, HubSpot, and Notion, and gives you a “conversation intelligence” layer that highlights topics, sentiment, and key moments across calls.

If you’re a freelancer or running a small business with regular client calls, Fireflies is worth a look. The ability to search across months of meetings and pull out every time a client mentioned a particular project is genuinely useful.

The free plan is more limited than Otter’s — you get summaries but not full transcripts unless you upgrade. Paid plans start at around $10/month.

Descript — if you also record video or podcasts

Descript is a different beast. It’s primarily a video and audio editing tool that also transcribes — which makes it less convenient as a meeting tool but far more powerful if you’re recording content. You edit the transcript and the audio changes with it. You can remove filler words (“um”, “uh”) in one click. You can overdub your own voice with AI.

For pure meeting note-taking, Descript is overkill. But if you’re a content creator, a trainer who records sessions, or a podcaster, it’s genuinely impressive. The free plan lets you explore it without committing.

A quick comparison

What to expect (and what not to)

These tools are very good, but not perfect. Accuracy on clear audio with one or two speakers is excellent — 95%+ in most cases. Add background noise, strong accents, or five people talking over each other and it degrades. You’ll still want to skim the transcript rather than treating it as gospel.

The summaries are also useful but blunt. They capture the main topics and action items well, but miss nuance and tone. If something important hinges on how something was said, read the full transcript.

That said, even an imperfect transcript is infinitely better than no notes at all — and most people find they stop needing to re-read them after a while. The summary is usually enough.

Which one should you try first?

If you just want to stop scrambling for notes after meetings: start with Otter.ai. It’s free, it’s simple, and it works. Sign up, connect your calendar, and let it run on your next call.

If you manage a team or have lots of client calls and want everything searchable in one place: Fireflies.ai is worth the upgrade.

If you record video content as well as meetings: Descript is in a league of its own for editing, though it’s more of a creative tool than a pure note-taker.

Questions people ask