Meeting-Transcription Tools
Tools that record, transcribe and summarize meetings (Zoom AI Companion, Fathom, Fireflies, Granola, Wispr Flow's Notetaker, Plaud and others), plus the board-notes agent pattern and when not to record at all.
On this page
The quickest win for a Chabad House office: record the meeting, get a transcript, and ask an AI for decisions, to-dos and follow-ups. This page covers the tools that do the recording. For shiurim and Hebrew or Yiddish audio, see Transcription.
The lineup
Prices and features were checked on vendor pages on 2026-10-21. Comments in the right column are members' experience.
| Tool | What it is | From the group |
|---|---|---|
| Zoom AI Companion (now called ZoomMate on Zoom's site) | Built into Zoom. Summaries and notes are included with paid Zoom Workplace plans; the free plan includes summaries for 3 hosted meetings a month (Zoom). | The default for shluchim already paying for Zoom. Summary templates are in settings. |
| Fathom | Free plan with unlimited recordings and transcripts plus instant summaries. Premium is $20/month ($16 billed yearly). Can record with a bot or, in beta on Mac, without one. | Well liked for Zoom; members said its free limit is higher than Read.ai's (July 2026). |
| Fireflies.ai | Records Zoom, Google Meet, Teams and others; Chrome extension, desktop and phone apps. English first, with Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and 100+ languages in beta. | Joins every meeting on your calendar. Hebrew terms often come out garbled (August 2026). |
| Granola | Records your computer's audio, so no bot joins the call. Free plan keeps 30 days of history; Business is $14/user/month. | Also used for WhatsApp calls on the computer (June 2026). |
| Wispr Flow Notetaker | Wispr Flow's meeting notes, with speaker labels and no bot; Mac and Windows; the free plan has a weekly meeting limit. | A group admin called it the best value if you already pay for Wispr Flow (August 2026). |
| Read.ai | Auto-joins Zoom and Teams meetings on your calendar. | One member's meeting was joined by it unexpectedly; set auto-join yourself. |
| Otter.ai | Meeting and in-person transcription. | Members warned in 2025 that it "very easily tries to spam all your contacts." Check its permissions. |
| Upmeet | Records Meet, Zoom and Teams, desktop app without a bot, phone app for in-person; 30+ languages; data stored in the EU. | Suggested for mixed-language meetings. Hebrew support is not stated on its site; test first. |
| Notion AI meeting notes | Meeting notes inside Notion. | Named with Granola as tools that do not need a bot in the call. |
| Plaud (NotePin, NotePin S, Note) | Small recorders with an app; transcription plans start with a free starter tier. | Used for all in-person meetings by one member: "works well." Others called it expensive. |
| Pocket (heypocket.com) | A wearable recorder. | "You have to remember to tap" (August 2026). |
For an in-person meeting with no gadget, members paste the iPhone Voice Memos transcript into ChatGPT (June 2026). A recorded Zoom meeting usually comes with a VTT transcript file you can paste into any AI.
From transcript to action
- Record with any tool above.
- Paste the transcript into Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini.
- Ask for decisions, to-dos with owners, follow-up emails and calendar items.
- Save a "meeting brief" format in a Claude Project, custom GPT or Gemini Gem so you get the same structure every time.
Fireflies for meetings plus Whisper for voice notes was one campus shliach's setup in August 2026. For pushing the results into a CRM, see CRM Automation.
A board-notes agent in WhatsApp
A pattern discussed in June 2026 for a seven-person student board that runs on a WhatsApp group:
- Add your personal agent to the group with a standing instruction never to post there.
- It keeps a shared Google Doc of board notes, and you trigger "update the board notes" yourself, so nothing is filed mid-conversation.
- Summaries go to your private chat.
- Tell the members first and get their agreement to an AI taking notes.
This needs an agent like GabAI. See Personal AI Agents.
When not to record
- Legal and confidential calls. In May and June 2026 members relayed lawyers' advice that using an AI notetaker on a call with your lawyer may break its confidentiality. Leave it off.
- Consent. Recording without a visible bot may require telling participants, and the rules depend on the state. Ask a lawyer if unsure, and tell people anyway.
- Pastoral conversations. Keep them out of tools that store transcripts on someone else's servers.
Privacy notes
- Anything that auto-joins your calendar sees every meeting. Set it up before you connect it.
- On a Google Workspace or company account, an admin may be able to see transcripts.
- See Privacy & Data.
Related
- Transcription
- Sofer.ai, for Hebrew and Yiddish audio
- Wispr Flow
- NotebookLM, for long recordings
- CRM Automation
- Toolbox