Just two years ago, manual note-taking was the way to go – and the mere idea of having your notes appear automatically after meetings seemed like science fiction. Then, everything changed with the rise and democratization of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, leading to a proliferation of new consumer platforms and bots that can take notes, generate action items, produce custom summaries and more, to help users keep track of every meeting.

As we enter 2024, the market for note-taking apps is vibrant and filled with options. You may have heard of Big Tech companies like Google and Microsoft providing these services as part of their suite. As a speech-to-text provider powering numerous virtual meeting apps, we can vouch there are many other exciting alternatives out there that are worth exploring.

We have personally tested and compared a bunch of them for you, and here are the results! Dive in and discover the most innovative and useful AI note-taking apps to take your productivity to the next level.

Types of note-taking apps for online meetings

The number and variety of note-taking apps available may seem overwhelming at first. We put together some criteria to help you filter them out based on your needs and preferences:

Recording vs. pure notes

Do you want a tool that records your meetings or just provides notes? Some users prefer to have a one-stop-shop platform that records their meetings and aggregates them all in one place. Others are happy with simply receiving notes at the end of each call.

Pay attention to how the recording occurs: is it a bot that joins the meeting or an extension? Or would you prefer to upload the meetings there manually? From our experience, extensions are generally best for async communication, i.e. when you record a demo for your colleagues or clients, while bots are optimal for transcribing meetings with several participants. Note that some bots join by default, whereas others require an explicit opt-in. Think of a preferred user experience you want for the note-taking app and its recording tools.

Type of notes

Once your meetings are transcribed, the AI does its magic behind the scenes to automatically generate the notes for you. The types and sophistication of such LLM-based notes vary a lot. Features range from summaries and action items generated based on pre-set contextual templates to GPT-like interfaces that produce insights in response to your prompts.

The easiest question to start with is: how long and detailed do I want my notes to be? Do I prefer to have templates for my summaries and action items, or do I want to have more control and prompt myself, or both?

Complimentary AI-powered features

Together with the note-taking functionality comes the ability to store, organize, and categorize your notes. Good semantic search can be vital for quickly finding information within your notes and/or video recordings. Speaker separation is another great feature that visually breaks down who spoke in a meeting and for how long. Some providers allow you to edit the notes manually or automatically, taking out repetitions or silences from the transcript by default.

Integration with other apps

Check if the note-taking app integrates well with other tools and applications you use, such as calendar apps, task management tools, or productivity suites. Compatibility with your go-to meeting platform is an absolute must. Luckily, most providers are, by default, compatible with Zoom, Google Meets, and Microsoft Teams.

Pricing

Consider the pricing structure of the app, whether it’s a one-time purchase, subscription-based, or freemium, where your feature set or storage history is limited. Evaluate if the features provided justify the cost, given your monthly volume of meetings and how extensive your usage will be.

Supported languages

Language support is not something to be taken for granted just yet. We generally recommend testing several apps to see firsthand if they can accurately detect your language (and accent) and support code-switching, i.e. the ability to transcribe meetings where speakers switch between multiple languages. This applies to English, too – while it’s supported by all providers today, the quality of notes is not always the same.

Use case

Last but not least, you’ll notice that some apps are designed and optimized for specific verticals and use cases, like sales, healthcare, web conferencing, and so on.

Best AI note-taking apps to try in 2024

Without further ado, here comes our selection of AI note-taking apps. This is not an exhaustive list – and there’s no order of preferences to it! Just an overview of the projects we tested that exemplify the main categories of note-taking platforms that exist today.

#1: One-stop-shop apps

In this category, you’ll find some examples of apps perfect for users who look for a single HQ to aggregate all their meeting recordings and notes.

Fireflies

One of the earliest players in the space, Fireflies provides an all-in-one solution with a Chrome extension, a bot, and more input options. Fireflies join all the authorized calendar events and send recaps to users of your choice. The meetings are recorded via a bot, with downloadable transcripts, audio, and video available afterward. Past meetings are stored on the platforms and can be accessed via an interactive dashboard.

Key features

• Speaker-based and timestamped transcripts, including messages that participants may share in the chat.
• ‘Soundbites’ function allows you to turn specific phrases of the transcript into downloadable soundbites.
• ‘AI super summaries’ are powered by several versions of GPT, free and paid. That means you can play around with prompts if you wish to make customized summaries. Note that the conversational ‘AskFred’ feature is behind a paywall.
• Smart insights, including sentiment analysis and key info from the meetings like dates, metrics, and action items.

Languages

Fireflies officially supports 60+ different languages.

Pricing

7-day free trial, then $18 and $29 per pro and business accounts, with a 40% discount if billed annually. More info here.

Why we love it 🖤

Fireflies delivers a highly versatile and robust user experience with a rich spectrum of features. Their platform stands out for a super complete UI dashboard — like a spaceship’s control panel! – and tools, including numerous integrations and an API. It’s also the only platform on our list allowing you to pick a GPT model you want for the summaries, with the unique soundbites feature being a great tool for video editing. For users in search of in-depth info about the meeting, Fireflies could be very valuable – just be prepared, it takes some getting used to.

Claap

On a mission to provide a single video platform to aggregate all meetings of your organization, Claap offers a versatile platform to record meetings, get AI-powered insights, and share your meeting history with the rest of the team.

Key features

• Be it async or real-time, you can record your screen and webcam with a Chrome extension and let others comment on it later with video annotation, comment threads, and polls.
• AI summaries are generated based on contextual templates of your choice (e.g., executive summary, meeting minutes, user research, sales discovery, etc.). You can also see who spoke in the meeting and for how long.
• Video wiki enables users to collect all your meetings in one place, group them by categories and/or teams, and search through the entire collection.

Languages

100 languages supported.

Pricing

Freemium model, with the free tier allowing 10 videos per user of 10 minutes each. AI-powered summaries are available under the third tier at $30/month. Yearly discount of -20 % on all plans. Learn more here.

Why we love it 🖤

Claap is a great one-stop-shop tool for people who want to collaborate around meetings – everything you record can be easily accessed by others via a shared workspace. We personally love their UI – it’s intuitive to navigate and use. Their Chrome extension is a good alternative to having a bot join a meeting, enabling you to record meetings asynchronously in a Loom-like way.

Other apps to try in this category

Carv, a versatile AI Workmate for meetings.

#2: Note-taking-first apps

This selection is for users who are less concerned with recording and are mostly interested in compact yet exhaustive summaries and bullet-point notes.

Supernormal

Supernormal is a core player in the space specializing primarily in note-taking. Meetings with Google Meet are recorded with the help of a Chrome extension, with a bot reserved for Zoom and Microsoft Teams. The notes appear right after the meeting window is closed and are all accessible via a centralized dashboard.

Key features

• Meetings notes that are editable with a single click and can be customized, i.e. you can add new thematic sections to the notes and break your library of notes into categories.
• Interactive tasks stored in a dedicated tab can be ticked off as you accomplish them and assigned to other team members.
• Expanded bullets allow you to tap into each bullet to break down further a specific topic identified in a transcript.

Languages

22, including various English and Spanish dialects.

Pricing

Freemium: 10 meetings/month for free with the Starter plan – you need to upgrade if you want your meetings recorded, not just transcribed. The Pro plan unlocks access to advanced sharing controls, a full library of note templates, and Zapier integrations at $10/month (- 44% for annual subs). Bonus: you don’t need to put in your credit card details when signing up! More info here.

Why we love it 🖤

Supernormal is a highly specialized meeting-recoding tool suitable for individuals and teams alike, integrating beautifully with your existing apps. Its user documentation is easy to find and informative. Their notes are generated on the fly and, at least in our case, appeared just a few seconds after the meeting – probably the fastest we’ve seen! We loved their editing interface, too, and found their automatic action items to be the most accurate.

Circleback

Circleback operates similarly to Supernormal but only with bots. It can join any Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or WebEx meeting based on your calendar events (that a bot will join by default) or a link. The meeting notes are sent directly to your mailbox and stored in the user dashboard within minutes.

Key features

• Editable meeting summaries that break the transcript down into topics.
• The summaries are turned automatically into action items, which you can tick off later as you complete the task. Key figures in all notes are highlighted in bold, making locating the key info points nice and easy to spot.
• Meeting assistant, which provides contextualized answers to questions about your meetings in the form of an AI chat.

Pricing

14-day free trial, after $25.00/month. More details here.

Why we love it 🖤

Circleback is among the few players on this list that do not provide video recordings. Instead, they put all their focus and expertise on note-taking – and their default prompts do a superb job, the overall quality of notes is among the finest we’ve seen! This makes Circleback a great option for someone looking to consume high-quality skimmable notes without further need to interact with the app. Great bonus: your notes can be viewed directly from an email – this is not the case for most other apps, which tend to incentivize users to enter the app to view the transcript and/or notes.

#3: Apps for sales notes and CRM automation

Here, we enter the territory of apps that are optimized for sales teams for note-taking, summaries, and an incredibly valuable CRM enrichment function, powered by AI.

Modjo

Beyond generating notes, Modjo positions itself as a ‘conversational platform’ optimized for salespeople in particular. The platform does note-taking in a similar way to other platforms while also automating the recording of key data from customer and prospect calls in your CRM, like Salesforce. That’s why the first step to setting it up is connecting your business tools to their hub.

Key features

• AI notes that break the call transcript into sales-relevant subtopics, like next steps, pains identified, customer insights, and observations.
• Livenotes, which automatically synchronizes all your notes in your business tools. You’ll benefit from an optimized note-taking interface and templates that facilitate the transmission of information in asynchronous mode.
• A wide variety of business integrations, including Salesforce, Aircall, Hubspot, Slack, and Gmail.

Pricing

Cannot tell – one has to request a custom quote on their pricing page.

Why we love it 🖤

Modjo is among the leaders when it comes to call-to-CRM enrichment. Catering to a specific customer vertical, they’re able to provide a highly specialized experience for customer-facing users in their niche.

Spoke

Like Modjo, Spoke is designed first and foremost for sales teams. It records the video meetings and generates notes based on pre-set templates based on the most used sales frameworks like BANT, which you can modify. In fact, their interface is so customizable that you can ask questions about the notes before, during, and after the meeting. The notes are then synced with the CRM of your choice and complimentary apps like Slack.

Key features

• Meeting recordings in video format, which highlights and lets you skip directly to sections that address the key discussion points of the conversation.
• Meeting notes break down the transcript into a Q&A-styled report, which you can modify and interact with via a GPT-like interface by asking specific questions about the meeting.
• Custom vocabulary feature, allowing you to add a list of recurrent names and terms to help the tool transcribe them accurately, e.g. company names, jargon, etc.

Languages

29+ supported languages.

Pricing

Freemium model, with features like custom meeting templates and workplace collaboration behind the paywall of $24/month. More info here.

Why we love it 🖤

Spoke is probably the most customizable tool in the selection, super hands-on, providing highly granular insights into your sales and user research calls. Their ultra-modifiable UI makes it especially suitable for users who like to be in control and want to have the option to ‘dig into’ the transcript rabbit hole. You’ll find a nice library of educational resources inside the app’s Spoke Academy to help you get the hang of it.

Other apps to try in this category

#4 Webinars and online conferences

Finally, we wanted to give a shoutout to platforms that specialize in online meetings and events with a lot of participants.

Livestorm

Livestorm is an EU-based unified meetings and webinar platform, offering all must-have features for hosting dynamic mult-stakeholder discussions in sectors like healthcare, finance, and tech. It is equally suited for external events, such as webinars or online courses, and internal ones, like product demos, employee onboarding, and so on.

Key features

• Custom room experience, meaning that every call window can be customized with nice features like file sharing and custom room design – and can be recorded of course, with an exportable transcript option. You can also determine who has speaking permissions for each event.
• Email cadences, allowing you to send unlimited customized reminders and follow-up emails to all event participants using plain text or custom HTML.
• CRM integrations with platforms like HubSpot, Salesforce, and others.
  

Why we love it 🖤

Livestorm is a browser-based app that conveniently aggregates all the functions that someone who organizes and runs multistakeholder meetings would need and enjoy. Technically, it’s not a note-taking app per se, but rather an even hosting platform with the notes and recordings available as a bonus.

Languages

Currently available in 24 languages.

Pricing

Free plan with up to 20 minutes/session and 30 live attendees. Then, a Pro plan at 79€/month if billed annually, with up to 100 attendees allowed. More here.

Conclusion

Finding the AI meeting companion that’s truly right for you may take a few trials and errors. Our goal was to present you with some alternatives, outline their features, and suggest who these platforms may be more suited for.

Having tried all of the above, our verdict is that you can expect more exciting experiments and innovation in upcoming years when it comes to AI-powered summaries, action items, and other types of notes. And these breakthroughs will not be attributed to the platform builders alone – the end users will have a key role to play in turning these tools into real game-changers for productivity.

Today, we’re witnessign a real customization trend of note-taking tools, which gives users an unprecedented degree of agency to find the perfect combination of techniques to organize their meeting routine in a way that suits them individually and as a team.

As AI continues to augment our collective and individual capabilities, it’s important for all users to assume an active role in adopting and optimizing these tools to make the most of them.

If you’re curious to learn how to make great summarization prompts for online meetings, check out this actionable guide. Taking this one step further, for those of you who like to DIY, you may want to try our open-source code to build your own recording and transcription bot for Google Meet.

About Gladia

Powered by generative AI, Gladia provides a speech-to-text and audio intelligence API that turns any audio into text in near real time with exceptional accuracy.