We’ve all been there. You walk out of a meeting, and five minutes later, you can’t remember the specifics of what was decided. Taking notes is a pain. You’re either frantically typing to catch every word and missing the actual conversation, or you’re tuned in and just hoping you’ll remember the important stuff later. It feels like a losing battle, and key decisions or action items often vanish into thin air.
This guide is meant to fix that. I’ve spent the last few weeks in the trenches, personally testing all the popular options to find the best meeting notes apps out there. I focused on tools that are actually easy to use, have smart AI features that work, and don’t require you to change your entire workflow.
Stick around to the end, and I’ll share a little secret on how to turn all those meeting notes into a brain for your entire team that they can actually search.
What is a meeting notes app?
A meeting notes app is way more than a digital notepad. It’s a tool built specifically to handle everything that happens before, during, and after a meeting. Think of it as an assistant that takes care of the tedious stuff so you can focus on the actual discussion.
Most of these apps have features designed to make meetings less of a drag, like:
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Shared agendas: So everyone can add their points and show up prepared.
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Live transcription: To capture the conversation as it’s happening, word for word.
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AI summaries: These automatically pull out the key decisions and to-do items.
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Integrations: They connect right to your calendar and tools like Zoom or Google Meet.
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One central spot for notes: Keeping everything in one searchable place.
The goal is simple: create an accurate, useful record of every meeting without you having to do all the heavy lifting.
How to pick the best meeting notes app
To put this list together, I did more than just read marketing slogans. I signed up for each tool and used them in my own meetings to see how they held up in the real world. I was looking for apps that genuinely make work easier, not just another piece of software to manage.
Here’s the checklist I used:
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Ease of Use: How fast can a normal person get started? I leaned towards apps with simple interfaces that don’t need a week-long training course.
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AI & Automation Features: A modern meeting app needs good AI. I looked for accurate transcriptions, summaries that actually made sense, and the ability to automatically spot action items.
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Collaboration & Sharing: How easy is it to loop in your team? The best apps let you share notes, build agendas together, and assign tasks without a fuss.
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Integrations: Does it play nice with your other tools? I checked for smooth connections with the essentials: Zoom, Google Meet, Slack, and your project management software.
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Value for Money: I weighed the free plans against the paid ones. The idea was to find tools that give you a lot of bang for your buck.
The best meeting notes app options for 2025 at a glance
| App | Best For | Standout Feature | Free Plan | Starting Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otter.ai | Real-time transcription & summaries | Otter AI Chat for Q&A on past meetings | Yes, with limits | $16.99/month |
| Fellow | Collaborative agendas & team alignment | AI-generated meeting briefs and summaries | Yes, for up to 10 users | $7/user/month |
| Fathom | Free AI summaries & meeting clips | Unlimited recordings & summaries on the free plan | Yes, generous free plan | $15/user/month |
| Notion | All-in-one knowledge management | Highly customizable databases and templates | Yes, with limits | $8/user/month |
| Evernote | Organizing detailed personal & team notes | AI-powered search across text, images & PDFs | Yes, with limits | $14.99/month |
| ClickUp | Integrated project & task management | ClickUp Brain AI for summarizing project updates | Yes, with limits | $7/user/month |
| Microsoft OneNote | Microsoft 365 users & digital notebooks | Deep integration with the Microsoft ecosystem | Free with Microsoft account | Included with M35 |
Our list of the top 7 meeting notes app tools
After all the testing, here’s the detailed breakdown of the tools that made the final cut. Each one shines in a different area, so the "best" one really depends on how your team likes to work.
1. Otter.ai: The best meeting notes app for live transcription and AI summaries
Otter.ai is one of the biggest names in real-time transcription, and it lives up to the hype. Its AI assistant can join your Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams calls and type out the conversation as it happens. This is amazing for just being present in the meeting without stressing about missing something. The best part is the Otter AI Chat, which lets you ask questions about your past meetings ("What did we decide about the new marketing slogan?") and get instant answers. It’s like having a perfect memory. The summaries are solid, too, giving you a quick rundown of the important bits.
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Pros: The transcription is scarily accurate, it connects easily with all the major video conferencing tools, and the AI chat is genuinely useful.
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Cons: The free plan is pretty stingy with transcription minutes. Also, some people find having an AI bot "sitting" in the meeting can feel a bit formal and stifle a more casual chat.
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Pricing: Free plan with limited minutes. Paid plans start at $16.99/month for Pro and go up to $20/user/month for Business.
2. Fellow: The best meeting notes app for collaborative agendas and team alignment
Fellow is for teams who want to run a tighter ship. Its main focus is on preparation and follow-through. Before a meeting, your team can build a shared agenda where everyone adds talking points, which helps keep the discussion from going off the rails. Afterwards, Fellow’s AI Meeting Copilot whips up a summary and tracks action items, which you can send straight to tools like Asana or Jira. It’s especially great for regular meetings like one-on-ones or weekly syncs, because it helps you build good habits over time.
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Pros: Fantastic for bringing structure to meetings, has a huge library of handy templates, and encourages good pre- and post-meeting routines.
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Cons: Most of the really cool AI features are only on the paid plans. For a quick, informal brainstorm, all the structure can sometimes feel like overkill.
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Pricing: Free for teams up to 10. Paid plans start at $7/user/month for Team and $15/user/month for Business.
3. Fathom: The best meeting notes app for free AI summaries and highlights
If you’re looking for the most powerful free option, Fathom is the hands-down winner. It’s almost hard to believe what it gives you for free: Fathom joins your meetings, records everything, transcribes the whole chat, and spits out a detailed AI summary. It takes minutes to set up and just works. One of my favorite features is the ability to create and share short video clips of key moments. It’s perfect for sharing a quick decision with a colleague who couldn’t make it. It also connects with CRMs like Salesforce to automatically log your call notes.
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Pros: The free plan is incredibly generous, it’s dead simple to use, and the video highlight feature is brilliant for sharing takeaways.
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Cons: It’s missing some of the deeper team collaboration features you’d get from paid competitors, and you can’t really customize the format of the AI summaries.
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Pricing: A very capable free plan is available. Paid plans start at $15/user/month for Premium.
4. Notion: The best meeting notes app for all-in-one knowledge management
Notion is more than just a meeting notes app; it’s a blank canvas where your meeting minutes can live right next to project plans, team wikis, and to-do lists. Its real power is its flexibility. You can use its databases and templates to build a meeting system that’s perfectly suited to your team. Imagine a central dashboard tracking all your meetings, tagged by project, with action items linked directly to your task boards. With the addition of Notion AI, you can also generate summaries and pull out action items right inside your notes. For teams already using Notion, it’s a no-brainer.
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Pros: It’s endlessly customizable, and it’s great for keeping your notes and project tasks all in one place.
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Cons: Because it’s not a dedicated meeting tool, it doesn’t do live transcription. The learning curve can also be a bit steep if you’re new to it.
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Pricing: Free plan with some limits. Paid plans start at $8/user/month for Plus and $15/user/month for Business.
5. Evernote: The best meeting notes app for organizing personal and team notes
Evernote is a true veteran in the note-taking world, and it’s done a good job of keeping up. It’s a rock-solid tool for capturing and organizing pretty much any kind of information, and it handles meeting notes really well. The AI-Powered Search is a killer feature, letting you find text inside images, handwritten scribbles, and even PDFs. You can also create tasks inside your notes to track action items and use the Web Clipper to save articles or research alongside your agenda. It’s a reliable workhorse that syncs perfectly across all your devices.
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Pros: First-class organization with notebooks and tags, syncs flawlessly everywhere, and offers a stable, polished experience.
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Cons: The free plan has gotten very limited over the years. If you just need to take simple notes, its huge feature set might feel a bit bloated.
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Pricing: Free plan for up to 50 notes. Paid plans are $14.99/month for Personal and $17.99/month for Professional.
6. ClickUp: The best meeting notes app for integrated project management
ClickUp is mainly a project management beast, but it also handles meeting notes surprisingly well. The biggest win here is keeping your conversations and your actual work in the same ecosystem. You can use ClickUp Docs for agendas and minutes, then create and assign tasks right from your notes. That direct link means decisions made in a meeting are instantly turned into to-do items on your project board. Its AI assistant, ClickUp Brain, can also help summarize long documents, which is a nice time-saver. It’s the perfect fit for teams that need their meeting outcomes tied directly to their project workflows.
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Pros: Puts your meeting notes and project tasks under one roof, is super customizable for any workflow, and is great for managing complex projects.
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Cons: With so many features packed in, it can be a bit much for newcomers. It’s a project tool first, not a dedicated meeting app.
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Pricing: A Free Forever plan is available. Paid plans start at $7/user/month for Unlimited and $12/user/month for Business.
7. Microsoft OneNote: The best meeting notes app for Microsoft 365 users
If your team lives and breathes Microsoft 365, OneNote is a natural and surprisingly powerful choice. It’s set up like a digital binder, with notebooks and sections that feel pretty intuitive. Its best feature is the freeform canvas; you can type, draw, or paste images anywhere on the page, which is perfect for messy brainstorming sessions. It connects smoothly with Outlook and Teams, letting you pull meeting details right into your notes. While it doesn’t have the flashy AI summaries of newer tools, its solid organization and familiarity make it a staple for millions.
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Pros: It’s free, and most people who use Microsoft products already know how to use it. The flexible canvas is great for unstructured notes.
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Cons: It’s missing the automatic AI summaries and action item detection that dedicated meeting apps have. The interface can also feel a bit dated compared to the sleeker options.
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Pricing: OneNote is free. Premium features come with a Microsoft 365 subscription.
Pro tip: use your meeting notes app to build a searchable team brain
Picking the right app is a huge step, but it doesn’t solve one common problem: all that great knowledge gets trapped. Your meeting minutes end up in Google Docs, your project plans are in Notion, and your company policies are buried in Confluence. The info exists, but it’s scattered everywhere.
Instead of letting that knowledge gather dust, you can connect it all. A tool like eesel AI plugs into all the apps your team already uses, including wherever you decide to keep your meeting minutes.
With an AI Internal Chat, eesel turns all that scattered information into a single Q&A bot that lives right inside Slack or MS Teams. Instead of bugging a coworker to ask, "What did we decide about the Q4 budget?" anyone can just ask the eesel bot. It will find the answer in seconds by reading through the actual meeting notes.
This saves a massive amount of time, stops people from asking the same questions over and over, and makes sure the good ideas from your meetings actually get used. The best part is that eesel AI works with your current setup. No need to move everything to a new platform. You just connect your apps and it’s ready to go.
Choosing the right meeting notes app for you
The best meeting notes app is simply the one that slots neatly into your team’s existing habits. If you need top-tier live transcription, go with Otter.ai. If you want to build a culture of more organized meetings, Fellow is your best bet. And if you’re looking for a do-it-all workspace, Notion is tough to beat.
The real goal is to go from just writing things down to making that knowledge useful. Once you’ve picked an app and started capturing those decisions, the next step is making sure everyone can find them. It’s worth checking out how eesel AI can help you build a central brain for your team. Start a free trial or book a demo today.
Frequently asked questions
It’s usually very simple. Most modern apps are designed for quick setup and offer one-click integrations with Google Calendar, Outlook, Zoom, and Google Meet, often getting you up and running in just a few minutes.
While not essential for every single chat, AI features are huge time-savers for important meetings where details matter. For quick, informal syncs, a simpler tool like OneNote or a Notion template might be all you need.
Start with a tool that has a great free plan, like Fathom, so the team can try it without pressure. Focus on benefits that help them directly, like automatic action item tracking, to show that the app reduces work instead of creating it.
Opt for a dedicated app like Otter.ai when your top priority is high-quality live transcription and automated AI summaries. Stick with an all-in-one tool if your main goal is keeping minutes tightly integrated with existing project boards and wikis.
Reputable providers use encryption and have clear privacy policies to protect your data. For sensitive conversations, look for apps that offer enterprise-grade security features and are compliant with standards like GDPR and SOC 2.
Yes, for one-on-ones, an app like Fellow is perfect because its templates encourage structured conversations and follow-up on goals. It helps maintain a running record of your discussions over time, which is ideal for tracking progress.
