Read AI Alternatives (2026): Free, Open Source, for Teams

The best Read AI alternative depends on why you are leaving. No bot in your calls: Reline (we make it), Granola or Jamie. Unlimited free recording: Fathom. A team rollout with SSO from 10 users: Fellow. A bot that still joins for you: Otter or Fireflies. Open source on your own computer: Anarlog or Meetily.

Read AI has a real free plan, apps on every major platform, meeting analytics and a search that reaches into email and chat. What pushes people to look elsewhere is documented in its own help center and on its pricing page:

• It joins as a participant by default. Invited from a connected calendar, Read appears in the participant list on Zoom, Teams and Google Meet and may post a chat message naming who invited it. Its desktop and phone apps, and Google Meet’s native recording, capture without a bot.
• Reports travel. Depending on the owner’s settings, Read shares the summary with the people on the invite; anyone who adds Read to the same meeting gets editor access and can widen the sharing, and only the owner can lock a meeting as private. People without a Read account must sign up to open a shared summary unless the owner turned on link access, and its help center explains how Read may then start joining their own meetings, depending on the option picked at sign-up.
• No playback below Enterprise. Free and Pro get transcripts and summaries; audio and video playback starts at Enterprise, $22.50 per user a month billed yearly. On Free, Read deletes recordings 180 days after the meeting.
• A small free plan: 5 meetings a month, up to 1 hour each, and reports other people share with you count toward the 5.
• Controls at the top tier. SAML SSO, SCIM, audit logs, custom retention, HIPAA and EU or Canadian hosting come with Enterprise+, $29.75 per user a month billed yearly with at least 5 licenses. Otherwise your data is stored in AWS us-east-1, in Northern Virginia.
• Scores you may not want. Read’s transcript is “augmented with listener sentiment and engagement”, and its meeting coach rates talking speed, filler words, bias and charisma.
• One language per meeting. Read detects the main language and says meetings that mix languages are not fully supported.

If you only want Read out of your own meetings, you may not need a new tool at all.

Every fact comes from the vendor’s own pages as of November 2026, with Read AI in the first row for reference. Prices are per user per month, shown as monthly / billed yearly. Tools that never send a bot come first, then the tools that send one by default or let you choose, each group sorted by score, ties alphabetically.

How we scored: one point per column from “Paid entry” to “SSO and admin”, half a point for a partial answer, zero when the vendor’s own pages do not say. Paid entry: a point at 10 or less a month billed yearly, half up to 20, in the vendor’s own currency. Free plan: a point for a permanent free plan that transcribes a 30-minute meeting in full, half when it cuts recordings shorter, none for a trial. Bot: a point when nothing joins your calls, half when a bot joins by default or by choice but a desktop mode records without it. Apps: a point for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android, half if any is missing. Languages: a point for 30 or more, half for 10 to 29. Recording kept: a point when the audio or video stays on the usual plans, half when only some modes or plans keep it. Chat: a point when you can ask across your meetings, half for a beta or a small allowance that does not renew. SSO and admin: a point for single sign-on and SCIM on some plan, half for SSO alone or for team workspaces with admin roles.

We make Reline, and it scores 6.5, level with Read AI itself, Granola, Fireflies, Notta and Otter and a point behind Fellow. It loses half a point each for having no phone app, a yearly price of $12 against the $10 line, and no SSO or SCIM yet. A total hides what matters most, so weigh the column that made you leave Read AI.

Reline never joins the call. Its desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux (beta) records your microphone and the call audio on your computer, so it works in Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Slack huddles and in-person meetings without a bot in the participant list. Transcription in 60+ languages, with automatic detection that follows a switch of language mid-meeting, AI notes and storage run in the cloud. The recording stays next to the notes with a play button on every transcript line, and chat answers questions across notes, folders and workspaces. Attendees get nothing unless you choose “Send recap to attendees” in a note’s menu and pick who receives it.

Where it is weaker: no iPhone or Android app, no bot to attend a meeting you skip, speakers show as Me and Others rather than names, no meeting analytics like Read’s engagement scores, no single sign-on or SCIM yet, no SOC 2 report, and the Linux app is in beta.

No bot does not remove the duty to tell people. Read AI’s help center says the same of its own desktop mode: the person recording is responsible for informing the others. Reline plays no consent message, so say you are recording before you start and check the rules where everyone on the call is.

Granola uses your device’s audio, so no bot joins, and runs on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android. It transcribes 31 languages on desktop, its chat works within and across meetings, and Basic is free with 30 days of meeting history; Business is $14 per user a month, and Enterprise, with SSO and SCIM group provisioning, $35. Its pricing page says the audio is deleted after transcription on every plan, so there is nothing to replay later. Pick it for a personal notepad on every device; skip it if you need the recording.

Jamie says no bot joins your calls, audio is streamed and never stored, and storage and processing stay within the EEA, Switzerland and the UK. It runs on Windows, macOS, iOS and the web, lists 99+ languages and lets you chat across all your meetings. Free gives 10 AI notes a month for meetings up to 30 minutes; Pro is €39 a month billed yearly, Plus €21 with no billing period shown, Team €33 per seat billed yearly, and Enterprise, from 10 users, adds SAML SSO and SCIM. Pick it when EU hosting is a hard requirement; skip it if you want the audio kept or an Android app.

Fellow lets you use a bot, record botless through its Mac and Windows app, or capture an in-person meeting, and its download page also links iPhone and Android apps. Its Ask Fellow chat searches across your recordings, transcripts and notes. It lists transcription in 100+ languages and says it never uses your recordings, transcripts or summaries to train AI models, on every plan. Free gives each user 5 AI notes and 5 recordings for the life of the account; Team is $11 a month or $7 billed yearly for up to 20 seats, Business $23 or $15, and Enterprise ($25 billed yearly, from 10 users) adds SSO, SCIM provisioning with Okta and domain control. Pick it if a team rollout with admin controls matters most; skip it if you want a large free plan.

Fireflies’ bot joins Zoom, Google Meet and Teams from your calendar, and its desktop app and Chrome extension record without it; per its help center, the bot-free desktop mode saves no audio or video file and labels speakers Speaker 1 and Speaker 2. Its pricing page lists unlimited transcription on Free, while its help center says free accounts opened since 1 September 2026 get 3 meeting transcriptions unless Auto-join is on. Global AskFred answers across past meetings and spends AI credits, of which Free and Pro get 20, once. Pro is $18 a month or $10 billed yearly; SSO and SCIM come with Enterprise at $39, billed yearly only. Pick it if you want a bot to attend meetings you skip; skip it if the bot is why you are leaving Read AI.

Notta Bot joins Zoom, Google Meet, Teams and Webex calls as a participant, and Notta Desktop for Mac and Windows records without a bot on every plan. Notta transcribes 65 languages per its help center, keeps your recordings until you delete them, and Notta Brain answers across meetings. Pro is $13.49 a month or $8.17 billed yearly with 1,800 transcription minutes a month. The catch is the free plan, which transcribes at most 3 minutes of each recording; Notta also stores data in Tokyo, and SAML SSO needs Enterprise, from 51 seats.

Otter’s notetaker joins Zoom, Teams and Google Meet, and its Mac and Windows desktop app records without a bot in Slack huddles, Zoom, Google Meet and in person. It has iOS and Android apps, keeps the audio for playback, and its AI Chat works within and across meetings, with 20 questions a month on Basic. The limit is language: Otter transcribes English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese. Pro is $16.99 a month or $8.33 billed yearly; Business, $30 or $19.99, adds activity logs and usage analytics, and SSO and SCIM need Enterprise with at least 100 user licenses.

Fathom’s free plan has unlimited recordings and transcriptions, with transcripts in 38 languages and unlimited call storage. It joins as a bot by default; bot-free capture is a beta for Macs, and Fathom says Windows users are next. Premium is $20 a month or $16 billed yearly; Team ($19, or $15 billed yearly, for at least 2 users) adds a shared workspace, team security controls and a standard HIPAA BAA, and Enterprise ($35, billed yearly only) adds SSO and SCIM. Account-wide Ask Fathom is still a beta. Pick it if free recording volume matters most; skip it on Windows if you want no bot.

Read AI’s team product is a Workspace on any paid plan: central licenses and billing, sharing and recap rules, control over which meetings Read joins, and switches that turn off desktop and phone recording or Ask Read. Every member needs a paid license on the same plan (Free users cannot join a Workspace), and SAML SSO, SCIM, audit logs and custom retention wait for Enterprise+. Here is what the alternatives list on their own pages:

Our read: if IT needs SSO and SCIM this quarter, Fellow and Jamie start their Enterprise plans at 10 users, against 5 licenses for Read AI’s Enterprise+, 50 users for Granola’s SSO and 100 for Otter’s. If your team mainly wants shared, private-by-default notes with no bot in client calls, Reline fits, but it has no SSO or SCIM yet.

Where the data sits, per each vendor: Read AI in AWS us-east-1 (Northern Virginia), with EU and Canadian hosting on Enterprise+; Notta in Tokyo; Jamie in the EEA, Switzerland and the UK; tl;dv in data centers in Europe. Reline offers no EU data-residency option yet.

Already paying for Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or Zoom? The assistant built into your meeting platform adds no new vendor, within the plans and host rules each company sets; our guide to the best AI note taker covers them. And if the problem is other people’s notetakers turning up in your meetings, that is a host and admin setting rather than a new tool.

Read AI Free covers 5 meetings a month of up to 1 hour. The other free plans, as of November 2026:

• Fathom: unlimited recordings and transcriptions; a bot by default, with a bot-free beta on Mac.
• tl;dv: unlimited recordings and transcripts; AI notes on your first 10 meetings, then on the first 10 minutes of each, for the life of the account; recordings kept 3 months.
• Reline: 10 hours of transcription and up to 1 hour of recording per note, with no bot and no card.
• Granola: no bot and no meeting cap listed, but 30 days of history.
• Fireflies: its pricing page lists unlimited transcription, while its help center says free accounts opened since 1 September 2026 get 3 meeting transcriptions unless Auto-join is on; 400 minutes of storage per team.
• Otter Basic: 300 minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation.
• Jamie: 10 AI notes a month, meetings up to 30 minutes, no bot.
• Fellow: 5 AI notes and 5 recordings per user, for the life of the account.
• Tactiq: a Chrome extension that transcribes Google Meet, Zoom and Teams with no bot; 10 transcripts a month.
• Notta: 120 minutes a month, but only 3 minutes per recording.

Two open-source meeting note takers had active code when we checked their repositories on 12 November 2026:

• Anarlog (formerly Hyprnote): MIT license for the community app; latest release 29 October 2026, last commit to its main branch 5 November 2026. It records your device audio with no bot, keeps notes and transcripts in a local database, can transcribe on-device on supported Macs, and lets you choose a local model, your own API key or its optional hosted AI. Downloads exist for macOS, Windows and Linux. Its team says it now builds a separate product, Char, and keeps the community app MIT-licensed and maintained.
• Meetily: MIT license; latest release 12 September 2026, with work on version 0.5.0 pushed on 11 November 2026. Its apps for Windows and Apple Silicon Macs (on Linux you build it from source) transcribe on your computer and write summaries with a local model by default; if you pick a cloud AI provider, only the transcript text is sent. Speaker identification is in its paid Pro edition.

With either one you install and update the app yourself, and the results depend on the model you pick and the computer you run it on. Reline is not open source: it captures on your computer, but transcription, AI and storage run in the cloud.

Reline is our product, so here is exactly what using it looks like, to judge against the others.

1. Install the desktop app. On a Mac, the first run asks you to click “Allow microphone”, then “Allow system audio” (call audio needs macOS 13 or later); on Windows and Linux (beta), a short sound check runs instead.
2. Join your Zoom, Teams or Meet call as usual and click “Quick note” in the header or on Home: a note opens and recording starts at once. In a note you already have, click “Start” in the bottom pill. With the desktop app running, a card also offers to take notes when a call app starts using your microphone.
3. Type rough lines while people talk: a number, a name, “pricing?”. The live transcript fills in under Me and Others, and Reline treats your lines as the points the notes must cover.
4. When the call ends, click the stop square in the bottom pill, then “Generate notes”. If you started from the card, Reline stops when the call ends and writes the notes on its own.
5. Type a question in the “Ask anything” box, such as “What did we agree on price?”. The answer quotes the transcript lines with their [m:ss] times; click one to hear that moment.
6. To share, open the note’s menu and choose “Send recap to attendees”, then tick who should get the email. Until you do, nobody outside the note receives anything.

What it costs, as of November 2026: Free includes 10 hours of transcription and up to 1 hour of recording per note, with no card. Professional is $15 per user a month, or $12 a month billed yearly.

Stay if you want an assistant that joins Teams and Google Meet calls for you (on Zoom, Read now joins only when you are in the meeting, signed in to the Zoom account you connected), if Ask Read’s search across meetings, email and chat is the point, if your team uses its engagement scores and coaching, or if you need its paperwork: SOC 2 Type II, a HIPAA BAA on Enterprise+, and EU or Canadian hosting.

Not tied to Read AI at all? Our guide to the best AI note taker picks one tool for each kind of meeting.

1. Download what you want to keep. In each report, Download gives the recap and the transcript as .txt files; video files need an Enterprise plan with playback. On Free, Read keeps report text for up to 2 years and deletes recordings 180 days after each meeting.
2. Stop the assistant: in Read’s Account Settings, under Meeting Recording, turn off Auto-Join Calendar Events, then disconnect your calendar. Our guide above walks through every platform.
3. Delete the account once you are sure: Account Settings, then Advanced, then Delete my account. Reports you own go with it unless you belong to a Workspace, and Read says the deletion cannot be undone.
4. Pick your reason for leaving from the table and try only the tools that fix it.
5. In Reline, bring notes over with “Import Markdown” in a note’s menu, one .md file at a time; there is no bulk import, so keep older reports as files.
6. Tell people how you record now, especially once nothing joins the call to announce it.

• Read AI: read.ai/pricing; Read AI Help Center (support.read.ai), articles edited 22 October to 6 November 2026: “What are the different paid plans that Read offers?”, “How Consent Works on Web Mode vs. Desktop Mode”, “What meeting platforms does Read support?”, “How to Use Read’s Desktop App for Windows and Mac”, “Using Read’s Google Meet Native Recording”, “Upcoming Changes to Zoom Meetings”, “I don’t want Read to join all my meetings, what are my options?”
• Read AI Help Center: “How does report sharing generally work with Read?”, “How do I control meeting report sharing and distribution?”, “How Did Read AI Get on My Account (and How to Remove It)”, “Do all meeting participants need a license to Read?”, “What Does Read AI Do With My Data?”, “What languages does Read support?”, “Using Ask Read to search your meetings and connected apps”, “What advanced Workspace settings come with the Enterprise+ plan?”, “Can I turn off app recording, Ada, or Ask Read for my Workspace?”, “How do I download meeting reports, transcripts, and more?”, “I’m downgrading my plan. Will I still have access to past meeting reports?”, “How do I delete my account?”
• Granola: granola.ai/pricing, docs.granola.ai (multi-language)
• Jamie: meetjamie.ai, meetjamie.ai/pricing
• Fellow: fellow.ai, fellow.ai/pricing, fellow.ai/download, help.fellow.ai/en/articles/9077100 (Ask Fellow) and 5760933 (SCIM with Okta)
• Fireflies: fireflies.ai/pricing; guide.fireflies.ai/articles/6666374717 (recording without a bot), 1512776728 (Global AskFred) and 2114151875 (AI credits); guide.fireflies.ai/hc/en-us/articles/21617190473617 (free transcriptions and Auto-join)
• Notta: notta.ai/en/pricing; Notta Help Center (support.notta.ai): “Understand Notta’s Plans Pricing”, “What languages does Notta support for transcription and translation?”, “Notta Desktop vs. Notta Bot: What’s the Difference?”, “What is Bot-Free Recording?”, “Data security and privacy policy”
• Otter: otter.ai/pricing, otter.ai/desktop
• Fathom: fathom.ai/pricing, fathom.ai/whats-new, help.fathom.video/en/articles/296192
• tl;dv: tldv.io, tldv.io/pricing, tldv.io/features/languages, tldv.io/security-commitment, intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/8919450, 8490450 and 9207514
• Tactiq: tactiq.io/buy
• Anarlog: github.com/fastrepl/anarlog (README; release desktop_v1.4.34 of 29 October 2026; last commit on main 5 November 2026). Meetily: github.com/Zackriya-Solutions/meetily (README; release v0.4.1 of 12 September 2026; push to its release-v0.5.0 branch on 11 November 2026)
• Reline: reline.so/pricing, reline.so/privacy