Meetings are where the magic happens—decisions are made, ideas are shared, and next steps are set. But let’s face it, keeping track of everything discussed can be challenging. That’s where a free meeting note taker comes in handy. It ensures you capture every important detail, record key decisions, and track action items so nothing slips through the cracks. These tools are essential for businesses looking to stay organized, improve communication, and boost productivity.
The tricky part? Finding a meeting note taker that does the job well without costing a fortune. Many small and medium-sized businesses can’t afford expensive software, but there are fantastic free options available. These tools offer similar functionality without compromising performance, helping your team stay organized, ensure nothing gets missed, and drive better outcomes from your meetings—all without adding extra costs to your budget.
- Krisp for bot-free AI Meeting Notes
- Otter.ai for voice-to-text transcriptions
- OneNote for Microsoft Office suite users
- Laxis for advanced templates
- Doodle for notes with scheduling polls
1. Krisp: Best for Bot-Free AI Meeting Notes
Krisp offers the world’s only bot-free AI meeting notes solution, providing automatic transcription and summarization of online meetings. It’s designed to enhance your virtual meetings by capturing and organizing all key points, ensuring you never miss important details. Krisp’s AI-powered technology generates both long and short summaries, highlights action items, and tracks discussion points, making it easy to share and collaborate with others.
Also, Krisp offers a meeting recording feature, allowing you to listen to the audio recording of your meeting after it ends. By removing background noise and ensuring only the speaker’s voice is captured, Krisp enhances the clarity of recorded conversations, making it easier to transcribe notes or revisit important discussions without distractions.
Key Features:
- Filters out background noise, ensuring clear and focused audio recordings.
- Isolates the speaker’s voice, eliminating unwanted background voices from the recording.
- Removes echoes, delivering crisp and clear audio that is easier to transcribe.
- Works seamlessly with various meeting apps.
- Maintains natural voice quality, crucial for accurate note-taking.
- Automatically generate and share discussion points, meeting summaries, and action items with other participants, ensuring everyone stays informed and aligned
- Easily connect Krisp with your Google or Outlook calendar to automate note-taking and sharing. Calendar access also enables automatic speaker identification, leading to more accurate transcripts and AI meeting summaries.
The free plan of Krisp includes:
- 60 minutes per day of noise cancellation, perfect for short meetings or interviews.
- Automatically transcribe an unlimited number of meetings without any restrictions.
- Compatible with multiple meeting apps, making it versatile for different note-taking scenarios.
- Automatically identify and highlight action items and key discussion points, available after the meeting is completed.
- Connect Krisp with your calendar to automate note-taking and sharing for scheduled meetings.
Best For:
Ideal for individuals and small teams, Krisp helps you focus on what truly matters by automating the note-taking process, improving team collaboration, and supporting informed decision-making. With a bot-free, non-intrusive experience, Krisp is trusted by some of the world’s largest global brands.
2. Otter.ai: Best for Voice-to-Text Transcription
Otter.ai is one of the most powerful free meeting transcription tools, designed to provide accurate, real-time transcription and summary of spoken conversations. Leveraging advanced AI technology, Otter.ai turns spoken words into searchable, editable text, making it an essential tool for professionals who need to capture and organize information during meetings, lectures, and interviews.
Key Features:
- Converts speech into text instantly, allowing users to follow along with the conversation and make edits in real-time.
- Automatically identifies and labels different speakers, making it easy to follow discussions.
- Users can add industry-specific terms to improve transcription accuracy.
- Share notes with teammates, add comments, and collaborate in real-time.
- All transcriptions are searchable, allowing users to quickly find specific parts of a conversation.
- Seamlessly integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, and other popular meeting platforms.
Best For:
Otter.ai is ideal for professionals who frequently attend meetings, lectures, or interviews and need a reliable way to capture spoken content. It’s particularly useful for journalists, researchers, and students who need to document and organize large amounts of information efficiently.
The free plan of Otter.ai includes:
- Up to 300 minutes per month.
- Automatic labeling included
- Add up to three terms for custom vocabulary
- Searchable Notes
- Zoom Integration
- Share and collaborate on notes, with some limitations.
3. OneNote: Best for Microsoft Office suite users
OneNote is a versatile online meeting note taker designed to help users capture, organize, and manage information across various formats, including text, images, documents, and audio recordings. As part of the Microsoft Office suite, OneNote integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products, making it a powerful tool for both personal and professional use, especially in online meetings.
Key Features:
- Organize notes, documents, images, and audio recordings in a structured and easily accessible manner.
- Access your notes anytime, anywhere, with automatic synchronization across all your devices.
- Easily link OneNote with other Microsoft Office tools, streamlining workflow and enhancing productivity.
- Share your notes with others and collaborate in real-time, making it easy to work together on projects.
The free plan of Microsoft OneNote includes:
- Full Access to Basic OneNote Functionalities
- Keep your notes up-to-date across all your devices
- While OneNote doesn’t offer built-in transcription, users can manually input notes or integrate with external transcription services like Otter.ai for enhanced functionality
Best For:
Microsoft OneNote is particularly well-suited for users already embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem, as its integration with Office 365 and Outlook allows for a streamlined and efficient workflow. Whether you’re taking lecture notes, managing projects, or compiling research, OneNote provides the flexibility and organization needed to stay on top of your tasks.
4. Laxis: Best for advanced templates
Laxis is an AI-powered meeting assistant designed to enhance the productivity of virtual meetings by providing real-time transcription, note-taking, and meeting management features. Laxis not only transcribes your meetings but also organizes and analyzes the content, helping you extract key insights and action items. This tool is particularly valuable for professionals who need to capture and manage information from meetings efficiently.
Key Features:
- Laxis provides accurate, real-time transcription during meetings, allowing you to follow the conversation and make notes simultaneously.
- Create and use personalized templates for note-taking, which can help you organize meeting content according to your specific needs.
- Automatically identify and highlight important points, action items, and decisions made during meetings.
- Easily search through meeting transcripts to find specific information or revisit key points.
- Works seamlessly with Zoom, Google Meet, and other major meeting platforms.
The free plan of Laxis includes:
- The free plan offers 300-minute transcription minutes per month
- Access basic post-meeting summaries and highlights.
- Use and customize basic note-taking templates to organize your meeting notes.
Best For:
Laxis is ideal for professionals who frequently participate in virtual meetings and need an efficient way to capture, organize, and analyze the content of those meetings. It’s particularly useful for project managers, consultants, and team leaders who need to create templates to streamline their meeting documentation process.
5. Doodle: Best for notes with scheduling polls
Doodle is a popular scheduling tool designed to simplify the process of finding mutually convenient meeting times for groups of people. Whether you’re organizing a business meeting, planning an event, or just trying to find the best time for a casual gathering, Doodle makes scheduling easy by allowing participants to indicate their availability. With its intuitive interface and powerful features, Doodle eliminates the back-and-forth communication often involved in coordinating schedules.
Key Features:
- Create polls where participants can select their availability from a range of proposed dates and times.
- Syncs with Google Calendar, Outlook, and other calendar applications to automatically update and avoid conflicts.
- Ensures that meeting times are correctly adjusted for participants in different time zones.
- Add custom questions, options, and descriptions to your polls, tailoring them to your specific needs.
- Send automatic reminders to participants to ensure everyone responds and attends on time.
- Participants can respond to Doodle polls without needing to create an account, making it easy for anyone to join.
The free plan of Doodle includes:
- Create and share scheduling polls to find the best time for meetings or events.
- Sync Doodle with your calendar to avoid scheduling conflicts.
- Access basic scheduling features without any cost, though some advanced options are reserved for premium users.
Best For:
Doodle is ideal for anyone who needs to coordinate schedules among a group of people, whether for business meetings, social gatherings, or events. It’s particularly useful for teams, event planners, and project managers who regularly need to organize meetings with participants across different time zones or with varying availability.
Interesting to know: Choosing the best
When choosing a free meeting note taker, the first step is to clearly identify your needs to ensure the tool aligns with your specific requirements. Start by considering:
Usage Frequency: How often will you be using the tool to take notes? If you’re taking notes daily or in multiple meetings each week, you’ll need a tool that’s reliable, easy to access, and efficient to use under tight schedules. For more infrequent use, a simpler tool with basic features might suffice.
Collaboration: In many work environments, especially remote or hybrid setups, collaboration is key. If you need to share notes with colleagues or collaborate in real time during meetings, choose a tool that supports multiple users editing simultaneously and offers seamless sharing capabilities. This can greatly enhance teamwork and ensure everyone stays on the same page.
Integration: Does your free meeting note taker tool need to sync with calendars, project management tools, or cloud storage services? If you rely heavily on software like Google Calendar, Trello, Slack, or Dropbox, finding a tool that integrates smoothly with these platforms can save time and reduce the hassle of switching between applications.
Device Compatibility: You might need to take notes across various devices—whether on a desktop at your office, a tablet during meetings, or a smartphone while on the go. A free meeting note taker tool that works across multiple platforms ensures that your notes are always accessible and that you can update them from anywhere.
Audio Recording: Some meetings might benefit from recording and transcribing audio, particularly when detailed minutes or verbatim records are necessary. If this is important to you, look for tools that offer high-quality audio recording with accurate transcription services, which can significantly reduce the time spent on manual note-taking.
By carefully considering these factors—usage frequency, collaboration, integration, device compatibility, and audio recording—you can select a free meeting note taker tool that best fits your workflow, enhances productivity, and meets your specific needs.
