Dedicated AI note-takers cost about $8-$25 per seat a month on annual billing and $17-$34 month to month, at list prices checked in September 2026, and most have free plans with limits. If you already pay for Zoom, Teams or Google Workspace, notes may be included in your plan or cost a $10-$21 add-on.
The price per seat matters less than the number of seats you buy. Most note-takers record any meeting the seat holder runs or joins, and the other people on the call don't need a seat to receive the notes. A small team usually needs seats only for the people who lead client and supplier calls, which can halve the bill before you compare a single price.
Per-seat prices for the main AI note-takers
These are list prices in USD per user per month, taken from each vendor's pricing page. Plans and limits change often, so confirm before you buy. For a feature comparison rather than a price one, see AI meeting note-takers compared for small teams.
| Tool | Free plan | Entry paid plan (annual / monthly billing) | Team or business plan (annual / monthly) | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otter | Yes | Pro: $8.33 / $16.99 | Business: $19.99 / $30 | Cheapest entry price on annual billing |
| Fireflies | Yes: limited AI summaries, 400 minutes of storage per team | Pro: $10 / $18, with 8,000 minutes of storage per seat | Business: $19 / $29, unlimited storage | AI credits included on each plan (20 on Pro, 30 on Business) |
| Fathom | Yes: unlimited recordings and instant summaries for individuals | Premium (individuals): $16 / $20 | Team: $15 / $19; Business: $25 / $34 | Team and Business plans need at least two users |
Enterprise tiers sit above these: Fireflies Enterprise is $39 per seat on annual billing only, and Fathom Enterprise is $35 per user on annual billing only, both adding single sign-on and custom data retention. Few small businesses need them.
Notice that Fathom's Team plan is cheaper per seat than its individual Premium plan on annual billing, but requires two users. A sole trader pays $16 for Premium; two people pay $15 each on Team.
Notes already built into Zoom, Teams and Google Meet
Before buying a separate tool, check what your meeting software includes. The position differs by platform:
- Zoom Workplace. Zoom retired the "AI Companion" brand in June 2026; the features are now named for what they do. The free Basic plan includes meeting summaries for three hosted meetings a month and three uses of AI note-taking. Pro, at $14.16 per user a month billed annually, includes unlimited meeting summaries and unlimited AI note-taking through My Notes, which Zoom says covers Zoom, third-party and in-person conversations. ZoomMate, Zoom's separate agent product, is a $20-a-month add-on and isn't needed for notes.
- Microsoft Teams. Teams' intelligent recap needs either Teams Premium, listed at $10 per user a month paid yearly, or a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. Copilot Business is $21 per user a month on annual commitment ($25.20 billed monthly), with a promotional $18 on annual billing until 31 December 2026. The privacy side of Teams recaps is covered in Copilot in Teams meetings: recaps, actions and privacy settings.
- Google Meet. "Take notes for me" needs Google Workspace Business Standard or above, which costs about $14 per user a month on an annual plan, against about $7 for Business Starter. Business Standard also brings Gemini across Gmail, Docs, Sheets and the other apps, so the upgrade buys more than notes.
If most of your calls happen on one platform and you already pay for the right tier, the cheapest note-taker is the one you have. The separate tools earn their place when calls are spread across platforms, when you meet clients in person, or when you want a searchable library of every conversation. If you're choosing between the two office suites more broadly, Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 for AI sets out the wider trade-off.
Who actually needs a seat
Seat counting is where small teams overspend. Three rules hold for most tools:
- Seats follow the person who records. The note-taker joins meetings its seat holder hosts or attends; guests and colleagues on the call receive the summary without needing a seat.
- Shared recordings reduce seats further. If one planner leads a call and shares the notes with the team, the others don't need their own seats to read them.
- Built-in tools are licensed per person. Teams Premium, Copilot and Workspace tiers are bought for each user who needs the feature, and in Workspace's case usually for everyone on the account.
So the first question isn't which tool, it's who leads calls. In a four-person team where two people run all the client meetings, two seats will usually do. Check each tool's sharing rules during a trial, because what non-paying colleagues can see varies by plan.
Worked example: a wedding planner's four options, costed for a year
A wedding planning business has four people: the owner, two planners and a coordinator. The owner and planners lead about 40 client calls a month between them, split between Google Meet and in-person consultations at venues, plus supplier calls on whatever platform the supplier prefers. The business uses Google Workspace Business Starter. Here are four options, priced at list:
| Option | Seats | Sum | Per year | Covers in-person meetings? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Upgrade Workspace to Business Standard | 4 (whole account) | About $7 extra × 4 × 12 | About $336 extra | No; Meet calls only |
| Otter Pro, annual | 3 | $8.33 × 3 × 12 | About $300 | Check in trial |
| Fireflies Pro, annual | 3 | $10 × 3 × 12 | $360 | Check in trial (has mobile apps and file upload) |
| Fathom Team, annual | 3 | $15 × 3 × 12 | $540 | Online calls only |
On price alone Otter wins narrowly, but two other facts shaped the decision. The Workspace upgrade was attractive because it also gave the whole team Gemini in Gmail and Docs, which the planners wanted for drafting timelines and supplier emails; for about $336 a year they'd get notes for Meet calls and AI across their everyday apps. And a good share of the most important conversations happened in person at venues, which Meet's notes can't capture. The business chose the Workspace upgrade plus a trial of Otter Pro for the owner alone, at about $100 a year, to cover in-person consultations. Total: about $436 a year, instead of paying for four seats of something they'd only half use.
Had the same business run everything on Zoom, the sum would have changed completely: Zoom Pro at $14.16 per user a month includes unlimited AI note-taking, including in-person conversations through My Notes, so three Pro licences at about $510 a year would have covered calls and notes together.
Costs beyond the per-seat price
- Storage and credit caps. Fireflies' free plan stores 400 minutes per team and Pro 8,000 minutes per seat; at 40 hour-long calls a month, a single seat's 8,000 minutes fills in a little over three months. Its AI credits (20 on Pro) limit certain AI features. Decide whether you'll delete old recordings or pay for Business's unlimited storage.
- Minimum seats and annual lock-in. Fathom's team plans need two users. Annual prices are the cheap ones, but they commit you for a year.
- Integrations that sit on higher tiers. Sending notes into your CRM automatically is often what pushes a team up a plan. Fathom lists CRM field sync on its Business plan ($25 per user on annual billing) rather than Team ($15), so for three seats that feature costs an extra $360 a year. Fireflies lists unlimited integrations from its Pro plan. If CRM updates are the point of the exercise, price the tier that includes them, not the entry plan.
- Add-ons you don't need. Agent products such as ZoomMate are sold separately and aren't required for summaries.
- Admin time. Someone has to set auto-join rules, sharing defaults and retention, and check them after staff changes. Budget an hour at set-up and a few minutes a month.
- Accuracy checking. The real ongoing cost is reading summaries before they go anywhere important, which the next section shows.
Monthly or annual billing for a seasonal business
Annual prices look far cheaper per month, but they only win if you use the tool all year. Businesses with busy seasons, such as wedding planners, photographers or anyone whose client calls cluster in a few months, should run this sum before committing. Take six busy months a year:
| Plan, one seat | Six months on monthly billing | Twelve months on annual billing | Cheaper option |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otter Pro | $16.99 × 6 = $101.94 | $8.33 × 12 = $99.96 | Roughly equal |
| Fireflies Pro | $18 × 6 = $108 | $10 × 12 = $120 | Monthly |
| Fathom Team | $19 × 6 = $114 | $15 × 12 = $180 | Monthly |
For a business that genuinely stops recording for half the year, monthly billing matches or beats annual on all three. The catch is discipline: you have to cancel or pause at the end of the season, and check what happens to your stored recordings when you do. If your calls run steadily all year, annual billing is the better deal.
The opposite mistake is common too. In an illustrative case, a five-person photography studio bought five annual seats of a business-tier note-taker, one for everyone including the retoucher and an assistant who never ran calls, at $19 a seat: $1,140 for the year. Its usage report after three months showed two people had recorded almost every meeting. Two seats of an entry plan would have cost about $240 a year. Because the seats were annual, the studio couldn't reduce them until renewal. Start on monthly billing with the fewest seats you think you need, check the usage report after a month, and commit only then.
Checking a summary before it reaches a client
The saving from a note-taker comes from not writing notes by hand, but a summary sent to a client unread can create a promise you never made. Here is an illustrative summary a note-taker produced after a planning call with a couple:
Summary: Planning call with [first name] and [first name]
- Confirmed date: Saturday 14 June, ceremony at 2pm.
- Budget agreed at $38,000 including venue.
- Planner to secure the string quartet by end of month.
- Couple will send final guest list (approx. 120) by 1 March.
- Decision: switch caterer to the second quote.
Next steps: planner to email revised timeline this week.Checked against the recording, three lines were wrong. The couple had said the budget was "around $38,000, but not including the venue", so the summary had silently changed a major number. The planner had agreed to "ask about" the quartet's availability, not to secure it. And the caterer switch was something the couple would "think about", not a decision. Each error was plausible, and each would have caused an awkward conversation later if the summary had gone straight to the couple.
Some plans let you shape the summary itself, which reduces this kind of error at the source. Zoom Pro allows custom meeting summary templates (eight a month on that plan), and Fathom's Business plan offers custom summaries. The planner's template separated what was decided from what was only discussed:
Summarise this client planning call using exactly these headings:
DECIDED (the couple explicitly agreed; quote their words)
DISCUSSED BUT NOT DECIDED
PLANNER ACTIONS (only what the planner said she would do)
COUPLE ACTIONS
NUMBERS MENTIONED (every figure, with what it includes or excludes)
If you're unsure which heading something belongs under, put it
under DISCUSSED BUT NOT DECIDED.With that template, the caterer switch landed under "discussed", the quartet became "ask about availability", and the budget line read "around $38,000, excluding venue". The template can't guarantee accuracy, but it forces the tool to show its working, which makes the human check faster.
The fix is a routine, not a better tool: the planner reads every client summary against her own recollection within a day, corrects it, and only then sends it. That takes about five minutes a call, still far less than writing notes from scratch. Turning checked notes into tasks automatically is covered in turning meeting notes into tasks with AI.
Privacy settings that can decide which plan you need
Some of the differences between plans are about control rather than features, and they matter as soon as you record clients.
- Consent. Tell people at the start of a call that it's being recorded and transcribed, and give them the option to decline. Recording-consent rules vary by where you and your clients are, so check what applies to you.
- Auto-join. Most tools can join every meeting on your calendar automatically. Switch that off for sensitive calls, or you'll record conversations you never meant to.
- Retention. Custom data-retention settings sit on the enterprise tiers of both Fireflies and Fathom. If you need to delete recordings on a schedule, check whether your plan lets you, or whether you'll be deleting by hand.
- Where the data goes. Ask whether recordings are used to train the vendor's models and where they're stored.
The fuller set of questions, including how note-takers behave on client calls, is in are AI meeting note-takers safe for client calls. If you're weighing a note-taker against paying a person to transcribe, AI vs human transcription compares accuracy and cost.
The cheapest set-up that works for one, three and eight people
| Team | If your calls are mostly on... | Cheapest sensible set-up | Rough yearly cost at list |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just you | Any platform | A free plan first (Fathom Free for online calls), then Otter Pro annual if you outgrow it | $0, then about $100 |
| Three people, one or two lead calls | Mixed platforms | Two seats of Otter Pro or Fireflies Pro, annual | About $200-$240 |
| Three people | Zoom | Zoom Pro for the call leaders | About $340 for two licences, with notes included |
| Eight people | Teams | Teams Premium for those who lead meetings, or Copilot if they'd use it across Office | $120 per person with Teams Premium; $252 with Copilot Business |
| Eight people | Google Meet | Business Standard for everyone | About $168 per person |
Start with a month's trial on real calls, count how many summaries you actually used, and only then commit to annual billing. A seat that records meetings nobody reads is the most expensive seat you can buy, whatever its price.
Further reads
- Is Microsoft 365 Copilot Worth It for a Small Business? — If Teams recaps tip you towards a full Copilot licence.
- Can Lawyers Use AI Note Takers in Client Meetings? — How a regulated profession handles note-takers in client meetings.
- AI Note Takers for Financial Advisers: Compliant Meeting Records — Record-keeping standards worth borrowing for any client call.
- How to Update Your CRM Automatically After Every Sales Call — Send call notes straight into your CRM.
- How to Negotiate AI Software Prices and Seat Numbers — Buy the right number of seats and no more.
- Free AI Tools vs Paid Plans: What a Small Business Should Pay For — When the free plans are genuinely enough.
- Are AI Tools Built for Coaches Worth Paying For Over ChatGPT? — What coaching platforms, AI clones and note-takers add over a $20 ChatGPT plan, a year of each costed, and the platform-closure risk to plan for.
- AI Session Notes and Follow-Ups for Coaches: A Weekly Workflow — A week-shaped routine for coaches: capture sessions with consent, turn transcripts into your own notes, send same-day follow-ups and review clients on Friday.
- Best AI Tools for Mortgage Brokers at Each Stage of a Case — Eight stages of a mortgage case, the AI tool worth using at each, what it costs at list price, a real-looking example of it working, and when to skip it.
- How Surveyors Use AI to Turn Site Notes Into Reports — A dictation routine for site visits, transcription options, a report prompt with sample output, a paragraph library and the checks behind your signature.
- Is It Safe to Let AI Listen to Mortgage Advice Calls? — The data on a mortgage advice call, six risks with a control for each, vendor small print to check, consent wording and an accuracy test to run first.
- AI Note-Taking Tools for Therapists: A Confidentiality Checklist — A confidentiality checklist for therapists choosing an AI note-taker, with what SimplePractice, Upheal, Mentalyc and Heidi say they do with session data.
- How to Turn Sales Call Recordings Into Coaching Notes With AI — Write a scorecard first, get speaker-labelled transcripts, then run a fixed prompt that quotes timestamps so managers coach from evidence, not impressions.
- AI Subscription Prices Compared for Small Businesses (2026) — Every major AI subscription a small business is likely to pay for, priced side by side, with three example stacks and the costs pricing pages leave out.
- Is Notion AI Worth It Now It Comes With Paid Plans? — What Notion AI includes since it moved into the Business plan, what it really costs your team, and a 30-day test to decide if it earns its place.
- Zoom AI Companion for Small Teams: Summaries and Privacy Settings — Zoom retired the AI Companion name in June 2026. What meeting summaries use, the four sharing choices, and settings for a small team, with examples.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Fireflies and Fathom pricing pages; Zoom Workplace pricing page; Microsoft Teams Premium page; Otter, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Google Workspace figures from the series fact sheet. All checked September 2026.