Ranked: AI Meeting Assistants

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Video conferencing platforms have skyrocketed in popularity since the pandemic and have been firmly integrated into our lives, whether in business, social interaction, or, in my case, education. As a student, I saw how our school used these platforms to hold our classes online. Admittedly, I needed a bit of an adjusting period to get acquainted with this new setup. Like many others, I had trouble keeping up with our meetings and often failed to take discussion notes. That is why I was shocked to learn about the existence of AI meeting assistants and how they do precisely those things I've mentioned with ease.

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While most of the well-known video conference platforms such as Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex currently offer their own AI assistants, there’s a chance you might not get satisfied with their performance much like I did, as some of them lacked in aspects such as accuracy, and cross-platform integration. With all that being said, let's look at 4 of the best AI meeting assistants I've tested, and compare their strengths and weaknesses.

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What I looked for

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The best AI meeting assistants

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1. Fathom

Best for meeting highlights and note taking

Take a look at the transcript it generated

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Fathom is a tool that I consider an underdog. Why? Even though it's less recognized than others, with around a million monthly visitors, it could still go toe-to-toe with other more renowned tools on this list concerning its reliability and ease of use.

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With the time I spent with this tool, Fathom's biggest strength lies in its features focused on helping users create meeting highlights and take essential meeting notes with relative ease with the help of a floating widget that can be easily accessed during a meeting. This widget features functional buttons for highlighting certain parts of your meetings or creating notes. This feature distinguishes Fathom from other tools, as they don’t offer anything quite similar.

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My only gripe with this tool is that the transcription needs some improvement, as it showed occasional inaccuracies compared to the original script. The recorded meetings' audio quality might have affected the accuracy, but as we found with our tests, Read.ai's transcription came closer to the script than Fathom's. Nevertheless, Fathom's transcription was reasonably accurate and I was still satisfied with its output.

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I also found Fathom to be the easiest tool to set up, and it requires no card details for you to be able to use its free version. Its basic pricing plan is generous, offering unlimited meeting recordings and basic summary and transcription, making it excellent value for money. Its premium plan also offers solid additional features and integrations, allowing for better transcription services at a relatively low price.

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We think Fathom is an excellent choice for most users, particularly small businesses, students, and budget-conscious users.

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Check out Fathom through their website.

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2. Otter.ai

If you want every customization option possible

Take a look at the transcript it generated

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As the most established tool for note-taking in video meetings, with over 5 million monthly users, Otter.ai was a must-include on our list. We put it to the test to see if it lives up to its hype.

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Otter.ai is packed with features – more features than you might ever need. It also integrates well with multiple platforms that can improve users' workflow by not having to configure different settings for different online meeting platforms. Its robust collaborative features allow for easy sharing of meeting summaries and post-meeting transcripts to participants with just a click of a button. Now, the amount of features also comes with certain disadvantages; in my case, I found it too overwhelming, and it gave me a hard time understanding how to navigate the tool. The site's UI design also did not help; it looked cluttered, so I ranked it lower than Fathom in terms of ease of use.

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Its transcription is also reliable and similar to our top pick on this list (Fathom); it came close to the original script while still having some inaccuracies due to certain factors such as audio quality or pronunciation. Still, we found Read.ai better in terms of accuracy.

Even for its basic plan, Otter.ai still offers great value as it offers most of the essential features for note-taking, both for professionals and students. Its paid versions also offer solid value as they provide better transcription and access to features such as removing transcription limits, making it ideal for bigger groups of people, from small to even bigger businesses.

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You can try Otter.ai by visiting their website.

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3. Read.ai

Best for accurate transcriptions and meeting metrics

Take a look at the transcript it generated

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When I was first testing out Read.ai, I was not expecting much of it due to the simplicity of its user interface. But behind its somewhat lackluster and minimalistic website design lies a formidable tool that can easily become a valuable assistant to your meetings.

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Setting up Read.ai was pretty straightforward and nearly as user-friendly for new users as our top pick, Fathom. The capabilities of this tool are no joke either, as it has the most accurate transcription out of all the tools.

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Read.ai also gives you meeting metrics that can help you communicate better. You can see the level of engagement in the meeting, sentiment, words per minute, and more. The idea is to help you steer meetings more effectively. This feature helped identify our meetings' effectiveness and pinpoint areas we should improve.

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The free version is an excellent way to get around the tool before committing to a paid plan. Its free version has almost everything a student or a working professional needs for their personal use. Its paid or premium plans allow you to unlock Read.ai's potential, allowing for more collaborations among individuals and access to great tools and features, allowing businesses more integration options.

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If Read.ai has your desired features, check them out through their website.

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4. Fireflies.ai

Best for multiple integrations with different platforms

Take a look at the transcript it generated

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Fireflies.ai is an excellent tool with enough features to satisfy most users. However, my time with it was not as pleasant as other tools on this list due to certain flaws.

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Starting off, Fireflies.ai's free version is quite limiting, and you can only access or use certain features if you sign up for the trial version of their "business" pricing plan. They're clearly targeting businesses and want you to upgrade, which put us off a bit since other tools are easy to get started with for free and allow you to use most of their features without upgrading. 

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The trial version gives you a 7-day fully fledged trial, which is great if you're looking for a paid tool but short-lived if you primarily aim for a free tool.

Fireflies.ai is still a solid tool, and much like others on this list, it is relatively easy to use and understand. If you're mainly looking for a free option, I recommend saving yourself the pain of setting up this tool and opting for other tools mentioned on this list.

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You can try out Fireflies.ai and have a feel for yourself. Check them out through their website.

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How we picked these tools

To choose tools for review, we scour the internet for well-established tools with a large user base or frequent mentions in business and student forums. We seek tools that are credible, with a consistent user base and positive feedback, and functional, with relevant and reliable features for their intended purpose. If a tool features these characteristics, it's very likely to make our list.

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After shortlisting the most promising tools, we conduct initial testing to see if they maintain a good impression. For this review, we originally had six tools on our list, which we narrowed down to four as some did not make the cut during our initial tests. We considered including Fellow and tl;dv, but ultimately decided against it.

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I discovered Fellow through several written reviews online and frequent mentions across Reddit. However, it has a lower number of users compared to other tools on our shortlist. Additionally, during initial testing, I found Fellow to be difficult to operate, even more so than Otter.ai (which I found to be great but a bit difficult to navigate). While tl;dv has a decent user base (measure by monthly traffic to their site), during our initial testing I found it did not really excel at anything in particular compared to the other options we've chosen to include; in most cases its features felt somewhat inferior. For example, its transcription quality was not on the level of our recommended tools.

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How these tools work

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How I tested these tools