Paid partnership | This content was produced by Anymorph as part of a paid partnership with Tiro.
Best free meeting minutes for a small team: Match each ongoing plan’s boundaries to your meetings, AI use, archive, and sharing needs.
- Fathom suits recurring call review when individual free access matches the team’s needs; team-seat rules differ.
- Fireflies.ai suits searchable transcripts and shared access within a bounded archive.
- Otter.ai suits teams that value live transcription and keep calls within its monthly and per-conversation limits.
- tl;dv fits teams that review themes across meetings; Granola fits teams that want device-audio capture and shared folders.
- Tiro is a trial, not a continuing free plan: consider it for a multilingual workflow the team may later fund.
For an engineering team that needs recurring meeting minutes at $0, start with Fathom or tl;dv for repeated recordings and transcripts, Fireflies.ai when searchable transcripts and access for colleagues matter, Otter.ai for short calls, and Granola when device-audio capture and shared folders fit the workflow. Tiro belongs in a separate decision: its three-week trial is designed to test live multilingual meetings, after which the team needs a paid plan for continued use.
An ongoing free plan remains available after an initial evaluation, with its own usage boundaries. A trial provides temporary access for a set period or recording allowance. This comparison uses vendor pricing and help pages checked October 12, 2026.
The plan comparison uses the linked official guides, checked on October 13, 2026. For a bootstrapped team, the useful next step is to compare its expected call length and note-sharing needs with each published allowance.
Which free-plan limits affect a small team most?
A cap shapes whether the team can complete its expected weekly meeting-record workflow. For a weekly engineering workflow, compare monthly capture, the longest meeting, access to AI summaries and chat, how far back decisions stay searchable, and whether teammates can share notes.
A monthly transcription allowance can cover a regular standup but run out during incident reviews. A per-meeting cap can leave a long design review with only a partial transcript. Finite storage can require deleting older recordings to make room for new meetings, while caps on advanced summaries can limit the detail available from some tools.
Use the team's calendar to estimate its monthly load. For example, four 30-minute meetings each week for four weeks add up to 480 minutes. That estimate lets the lead compare the team’s expected schedule with each plan’s stated allowance; check the longest individual call separately.
- Minutes: Add the expected meeting durations for a typical month.
- Longest call: Compare the maximum length of one conversation with design reviews, planning, or incident retrospectives.
- AI allowance: Separate transcript access from AI summaries, meeting chat, and automated action items.
- Retention and sharing: Decide how long the team needs old decisions to remain searchable and whether shared folders or workspaces support handoffs.
Fathom: ongoing free access for recurring call records
Fathom’s pricing page lists an ongoing free option alongside tools for reviewing calls, summaries, clips, and searchable meeting records. That set suits a small team that wants to record a recurring schedule and look back for a decision or customer detail without counting each captured minute.
For an engineering group, call search and clips can help a developer find the part of a design discussion where a trade-off was agreed, then share that moment with a teammate who missed the meeting. The free option is worth evaluating when the team values its searchable call record and summary workflow more than a specific per-meeting allowance.
Fathom’s pricing page lists bot-based capture and a bot-free option marked as beta. Fathom’s help documentation on team seats says its new Team and Business plans use paid seats, while legacy Team Edition plans have separate free-seat rules. A small group that needs every engineer to share recordings should check its seat setup before standardizing on Fathom; an individual note-taker can use the free option for personal call review.
Fireflies.ai: searchable transcripts within a small archive
The Fireflies Free-plan guide describes keyword retrieval and sharing with teammates or guests. Its feature guide explains the starter transcription allowance and Auto Join for eligible meetings. Check that capture setup against the calls your team needs to record.
Free storage is 400 minutes per seat, pooled across the workspace according to the storage guide; teams reclaim capacity by removing older meetings. The Free-plan guide includes sharing with teammates or external guests and up to three additional public channels; unlimited private channels require Business. Transcript downloads require a paid plan.
The Fireflies comparison covers meeting transcription, ordinary keyword search, sharing, and stored meeting minutes. Advanced AI assistants, AI-generated highlights, and custom AI skills are outside this comparison. Assess whether colleagues can locate and open the meeting record using the capture, search, and access conditions described here.
Otter.ai: live transcripts for short, bounded calls
Otter’s pricing page includes live transcription as a product feature. Its Basic-plan help page describes monthly and per-conversation transcript limits, alongside boundaries for audio and video imports and conversation history.
When a conversation exceeds its per-call transcription boundary, recording continues while the accessible transcript covers only material within that boundary. After the monthly transcript allowance is reached, the Basic plan pauses recording and importing until the next monthly cycle. Basic also limits audio and video imports per account and keeps only recent conversations in the active history, so it suits current meeting notes better than importing a backlog or serving as a lasting engineering decision log.
Otter fits a team whose usual calls stay within its per-conversation boundary and whose monthly usage fits the plan allowance. A team with 45-minute sprint planning or incident calls should choose a plan that can provide the whole transcript, or use another continuing-free option for those longer sessions.
tl;dv: recurring capture when meeting volume is the priority
tl;dv's official Free-plan limits separate ongoing capture from finite AI allowances. The Free plan permits unlimited numbers of recordings, transcripts, and manually timestamped notes, with a three-hour ceiling per recorded or uploaded meeting. The first 10 meetings receive full-meeting automatic AI notes; later meetings receive automatic notes for their first 10 minutes. The account also receives 10 AI prompts and 10 AI reports. These allowances apply over the account's lifetime rather than resetting each month.
Video storage has two stages: after three days, recordings move to archived storage, while transcripts and notes stay accessible. Watching an archived video requires restoring it, which can take up to 90 minutes. Free recordings are retained for three months before deletion; users receive four weeks' notice and can download recordings during that window. Pro or Business unlocks features such as unlimited single-meeting AI summaries and instant access to older storage. For a free workflow, plan around the first 10 full-meeting summaries and export the records your team needs before the retention deadline.
Granola: bot-free capture and shared folders, with 30-day history
Granola’s official pricing page lists ongoing Basic access with AI meeting notes, device-audio capture, shared folders, AI chat, and a limited meeting-history window. The capture method suits a developer who wants notes without adding a bot participant to a video call, while shared folders give a small team a common place for meeting records.
For an engineering decision log, the key boundary is limited meeting-history access: older context eventually falls outside the active window. Move decisions that must last into the issue tracker or engineering handbook while the project context is current. Granola suits short-horizon collaboration when the team already has a durable home for decisions.
For a design review where adding a bot participant would disrupt the call, device-audio capture is a reason to shortlist Granola. AI chat across meetings can help connect recent discussions before the team moves a lasting decision into its own documentation.
Tiro: a three-week multilingual trial, not recurring free access
Tiro's free-trial guide gives a new eligible account 100 minutes at signup. Within the three-week trial, four onboarding tasks each add 50 minutes: create a first note, connect a calendar, install the desktop app, and install the mobile app. Completing all four raises the total to 300 minutes. The allowance is shared across live recording, offline recording, and audio uploads, is granted once per account, and ends after three weeks or when a paid plan starts.
The trial limits viewing to the first 50 minutes of each note and allows recording up to 120 minutes per note, subject to the remaining trial balance. Recording continues past minute 50; text beyond that point stays blurred until a paid upgrade. Recording stops at minute 120, so later audio is not captured. A paid upgrade unlocks the recorded text beyond minute 50.
For cross-language meetings, the live-recording guide explains how to select Multilingual for Listen In, choose a supported Write In language, and enable the live Translation display. Use representative meetings to assess translated decisions, specialist terms, and action owners before deciding on a paid plan.
Choose by the limit your team can live with
TABLE / Scroll horizontally for all columns →
| Tool | Access | Capture and AI allowance | History, search, sharing, and paid-plan conditions | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fathom | Free individual; Team/Business paid | Unlimited recording, storage, and transcription; five advanced summaries each month, then General/Enhanced summaries | Personal call search and clips on Free; Premium for Ask Fathom and advanced action/follow-up features; Team for shared team search and collaboration; Team/Business have paid seats | Personal call review with searchable records, summaries, and clips |
| Fireflies.ai | Free; paid tiers for specified features | Three initial meeting transcriptions; Auto Join enables ongoing transcription of eligible meetings; 400 stored minutes per seat, pooled by workspace; advanced AI allowances are outside this comparison | Transcript keyword search and recap sharing on Free; up to three additional public channels; unlimited private channels require Business; transcript downloads require a paid plan | Engineering teams retrieving past discussions from a bounded archive |
| Otter.ai | Basic free; paid tiers expand access | 300 transcription minutes per month; 30 viewable transcript minutes per conversation/import; three imports per account for its lifetime; latest 25 conversations visible, older ones archived | Basic supports shared transcripts and TXT export; full older history and DOCX/PDF/SRT exports require a paid plan | Live transcripts for calls within the plan’s limits |
| tl;dv | Free; Pro/Business expand AI and archive access | Unlimited number of recordings/transcripts, each up to three hours; first 10 meetings get full AI notes, then first 10 minutes only; 10 AI prompts and 10 AI reports for the account lifetime | After three days videos are archived, but transcripts/notes stay accessible; restore archived videos to watch; videos retained for three months before deletion; Pro/Business add unlimited single-meeting AI summaries and instant older-storage access | Recurring calls where cross-meeting review matters |
| Granola | Basic free; Business/Enterprise paid | No meeting-count limit; Basic history visible for 30 days; older notes remain stored | Basic includes shared folders and cross-meeting AI chat; Business adds full history and advanced integrations; Enterprise adds workspace-wide sharing controls | Device-audio capture, shared folders, and recent notes |
| Tiro | Three-week trial; paid plan for continued creation | 100 signup minutes + four onboarding tasks at 50 minutes each = up to 300 within three weeks; per note: first 50 minutes viewable, up to 120 minutes recorded within the available balance | Trial notes can still be viewed, edited, and shared afterwards; text beyond minute 50 unlocks on paid upgrade; Team is the plan for workspace-folder collaboration | Teams evaluating live multilingual capture before choosing a paid plan |
Tiro stays outside the continuing-free comparison: evaluate its trial when real-time multilingual records address a recurring need and the team can budget for continued access.
For a strict $0 workflow, choose the tool whose capture, AI, and history limits match the team's actual calendar. A multilingual team that can consider a paid tool after evaluation should assess Tiro separately, because its three-week trial tests a different decision from an ongoing free plan.