A bot-free meeting recorder you can check: playback and cited chat answers

Recording a meeting without a bot is no longer rare. Several tools now capture the call from your own computer, so the question has moved on: once the meeting is over, what can you actually check? A transcript is a model’s reading of the audio, and an AI summary is a model’s reading of the transcript. When a deadline, a price or a "yes" rides on one sentence, you want to hear that sentence. Reline is built for that step. It keeps the recording with the note, so you can press play on any transcript line, and when you ask chat a question, the answer can cite the note or the exact moment it came from, with a clip you can play right there.

• No bot: Reline records your mic and the call audio on your computer, so nothing joins the call.
• A kept recording: the audio stays with the note, and every transcript line has a play button.
• Cited chat answers: ask across your notes and folders, and the answer can cite the note or the exact moment, which plays as a clip in place.
• Speaker separation (Me vs Other: your microphone vs the call audio), not speaker names.

For a while, bot-free capture was the entire pitch. Today Granola and Reline record from the desktop, Supernormal moved to a bot-free desktop app in April 2026, and Otter and Fireflies send a bot by default, with a botless desktop mode. Having no bot in the call is now the starting line. What separates tools is what is left after the call: is there a recording you can go back to, and can you trace an answer to the words it came from?

A transcript on its own asks you to trust the model that wrote it. Did the client say "March works" or "March could maybe work"? Did a number come through right? Reline keeps the recording attached to the note, and every transcript line has a play button that starts the audio at that moment. You read the transcript, find the line that matters and hear it in context, without exporting a file or dragging a scrubber through an hour of audio.

The AI summary sits next to the transcript and the recording, and it is best read as a draft. When a point in it matters, find the passage in the transcript and press play on the line. That takes seconds, and it only works because the audio is still there.

Chat in Reline works on a note, a folder or a whole workspace. Ask "what did the client say about the rollout date?" and the answer can cite the note it drew on, or the exact moment in a meeting. A note chip opens that note; a time chip plays the passage as a clip, right in the chat, so you hear the words before you repeat them in an email or a forecast.

Sources show up only when a real passage reached the answer. If the search finds nothing relevant, you get an answer without a source instead of an invented one, and that absence is useful too: it tells you to go and check. A citation here points to something that was actually said, and one press of play confirms it.

Reline records two sources, your microphone and the call audio, and keeps them apart in the transcript: speaker separation (Me vs Other: your microphone vs the call audio). On a one-to-one call, that tells you which side said a line. On a group call, everyone on the other end shares the Other label. Reline does not name individual speakers today, so when it matters exactly who spoke, press play and listen.

Only the capture happens on your computer. After that, the audio goes to the cloud for transcription in 60+ languages with automatic language detection; the recording, transcript and notes are stored in the cloud; and the AI that writes summaries and answers chat questions runs in the cloud too. Reline does not do on-device AI, and it does not claim your audio never leaves your machine.

Reline runs on macOS 12+ (system audio on macOS 13+), Windows 10+, the web, and Linux (beta). There is no mobile app yet.

The honest comparison is about the recording. A tool that does not keep the audio cannot offer playback, however good its notes are. Here is Reline next to Granola, a well-regarded bot-free notepad, based on what Granola publishes about itself.

Otter and Fireflies take a different route: a bot by default, with a botless desktop mode. Fireflies says its desktop system-audio mode saves no separate audio file, so check whether the mode you would actually use keeps something to play back. And to be fair to Granola: if you need a phone app, Granola has one and Reline does not. If what you need is to go back and hear the words, you need the recording.

The Free plan is $0: 1 hour per note, 10 hours of transcription a month, 2 GB of storage, unlimited notes and no credit card, with chat included. Professional is $15 per user a month ($140 a year, about $12 a month) and Enterprise is $32 per user a month (about $26 on the annual plan).

Or run the test straight away: record a real call, press play on a line you would quote, then ask chat a question about it and play the moment the answer cites.