Prices checked October 2026 on official vendor pages. No sponsored listings — rankings on merit. How we review: https://smartrisehq.com/how-we-review-ai-tools/
60-second pick: Meetings only? Otter for live notes, Fireflies for team and CRM workflows. Meetings plus editing? Descript.
Research-based: no hands-on testing is claimed for these tools.
You do not need a suite, a subscription bundle, or a “meeting productivity platform” to get a transcript of a meeting. You need one of three things: a bot that joins the call and writes it down, a team workspace that turns calls into searchable notes, or an editor that lets you cut the recording by editing its text. This page picks exactly three tools — one for each job — with the price and the free limit stated up front, so you can stop comparing and start recording.
The 3 best tools for transcribing meetings
| Tool | Entry price | Free limit | Best for | Dealbreaker |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otter.ai | Pro $8.33/user/month billed annually ($16.99 monthly) | 300 minutes/month, 30 minutes per meeting | Live meetings on Zoom, Meet, Teams | The free plan cuts off hour-long meetings |
| Fireflies.ai | Pro $10/seat/month billed annually ($18 monthly) | 400 minutes of team storage, limited AI summaries | Teams, CRM sync, searchable call history | AI features run on a separate credits meter |
| Descript | Hobbyist $16/person/month billed annually ($24 monthly) | 60 media minutes/month, 100 one-time AI credits | Editing the recording after the meeting | Uploads count against media minutes before transcription |
1. Otter.ai — best for live meetings
Otter.ai is a meeting notetaker: its bot joins your scheduled Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams call, transcribes in real time, and follows up with a summary, highlights, and action items. Speaker identification, AI Chat over the transcript, and iOS/Android apps are included on every plan.
Free plan: Basic is free with 300 transcription minutes a month, a 30-minute cap per conversation, and 3 lifetime file imports. That cap is the honest limit — a normal one-hour meeting is twice what the free plan allows in a single conversation, so free Otter fits short calls, not full meetings.
Paid plans: Pro is $16.99/user/month, or $8.33 billed annually, for 1,200 minutes a month and 90 minutes per meeting. Business is $30/user/month, or $19.99 billed annually, for unlimited meetings and 4 hours per meeting. Enterprise is custom.
Pick Otter if your meetings happen live and you want notes without pressing record. Skip it if your meetings run over an hour and you will not pay — the free cap will cut you off mid-call.
Visit Otter.ai’s official site →
2. Fireflies.ai — best for teams and sales workflows
Fireflies.ai records and transcribes meetings, then turns them into something a team can search: summaries with action items, AskFred (an assistant you can question across meetings), and conversation intelligence such as talk-time ratios and sentiment on higher plans. Its integration catalog runs past 100 tools, including HubSpot and Salesforce, so notes land on contact records without manual copying.
Free plan: $0 with unlimited transcription, limited AI summaries, 20 AI credits, and 400 minutes of team storage. Note the meter: AI outputs (summaries, action items, AskFred queries) consume credits, and AI features pause when credits run out until you buy more.
Paid plans: Pro is $18/seat/month, or $10 billed annually, for 8,000 minutes of storage per seat, video recording, and unlimited integrations. Business is $29/seat/month, or $19 billed annually, for unlimited storage, conversation intelligence, and team analytics. Enterprise is $39/seat/month, billed annually only, adding SSO, SCIM, HIPAA, and private storage.
Pick Fireflies if more than one person needs the notes — sales teams, managers coaching calls, anyone searching across months of meetings. Skip it if you only need one transcript at a time and hate metered extras — the credits system is a second bill hiding inside the first.
Visit Fireflies.ai’s official site →
3. Descript — best if you also edit the recording
Descript is not a notetaker; it is an editor that starts from a transcript. Upload or record audio or video, get a transcript, then cut, rearrange, and clean up the media by editing its words like a document. Studio Sound removes background noise, filler-word removal smooths speech, and Overdub patches errors with a cloned voice.
Free plan: $0 with 60 media minutes a month, 100 AI credits (one-time, non-renewing), and watermarked 720p exports. Read the meter carefully: on current plans, transcription itself is not metered — but every minute of media you upload counts against media minutes before it can be transcribed, and AI tools consume credits.
Paid plans: Hobbyist is $24/person/month, or $16 billed annually, for 10 media hours a month and 400 AI credits. Creator is $35/person/month, or $24 billed annually, for 30 media hours, 800 AI credits, full Overdub, and 4K export. Business is $65/person/month, or $50 billed annually, for 40 media hours and 1,500 AI credits. Enterprise is custom.
Pick Descript if the meeting recording becomes content — a podcast, a training video, clips for social. Skip it if you only want notes: you would be paying editor prices for a notetaker’s job.
Visit Descript’s official site →
Our verdict
An honest editorial take — not sponsored, not influenced by affiliate relationships.
Meetings only? Pick by workflow, not by brand. Otter’s bot-and-summary flow is the simplest for live calls; Fireflies’ searchable team workspace and CRM sync win the moment a second person needs the notes. Meetings plus editing? Descript, and nothing else here is close — text-based editing is a different product from a transcript, and buying a notetaker for it wastes money twice.
Choose Otter if your calls happen live on Zoom, Meet, or Teams and you want notes with zero setup. Choose Fireflies if your team shares, searches, and acts on calls — especially sales teams living in a CRM. Choose Descript if the recording itself is the deliverable and you will cut it into something publishable.
The $0 stack: do this before you pay anything
Before spending a dollar, combine the free tiers by job: Fireflies free for capturing meetings (400 minutes of team storage), and Descript free for turning up to an hour of recording a month into edited clips. That covers capture plus editing at $0. The paid step earns its money when you hit a wall that matters — Otter’s 30-minute meeting cap, Fireflies’ credit meter, or Descript’s 60-minute media allowance — not before.
How we compare
All three tools are evaluated against the same criteria — capabilities, ease of use, pricing and value, and limitations — using official documentation and pricing pages. No hands-on testing was performed for any tool; every feature and price claim traces to the vendors’ official pages, verified in October 2026. If we test a tool ourselves in the future, the page will say so and include our screenshots, test tasks, and observations. This verdict is editorial opinion based on publicly available information, not sponsored, and not influenced by affiliate relationships. SmartRiseHQ currently uses no affiliate or referral links.
A note on pricing
Tool pricing, plan names, and limits change frequently. Prices above were verified on the official Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, and Descript pricing pages in October 2026. Fireflies’ free storage figure has appeared as both 400 minutes per team and 800 minutes per seat on different pages — the 400-minute team figure is the one used here, matching the most recent October 2026 reads; confirm the live figure on the official pricing page before signing up. Always confirm current plans on the vendor’s official pricing page before buying.