AI meeting notes without a subscription: what a meeting actually costs

Most AI notetakers sell a seat: a monthly fee per person, whether you had twenty calls that month or two. That works if you live in meetings. It feels wrong if your calendar comes in bursts, like a heavy week of client calls followed by a quiet one.

With per-minute pricing you pay for talking time, not for having a seat. Vokalu charges 3¢ per minute of talking, notes included, so a 30-minute call costs at most 90¢. A seat plan costs less once you meet more than its break-even hours, which for the plans below is roughly 5 to 10 hours a month.

What a meeting costs at 3¢ a minute

Meeting	Cost
15-minute standup	45¢
30-minute client call	90¢
45-minute interview	$1.35
60-minute review	$1.80

Those are upper bounds. Vokalu bills minutes of talking and silence is free, so a 60-minute call with long pauses costs less than $1.80. Questions about the meeting and rewrites with another template are included for 7 days afterwards.

Over a month, four one-hour calls cost $7.20. Ten hours of meetings cost $18. Twenty hours cost $36.

Where a seat plan costs less

Divide the seat price by $1.80, the cost of an hour of talking, to get the break-even point. Below it, per-minute costs less on price alone. Above it, the seat does.

Plan, as listed on October 15, 2026	Price per user per month	Break-even hours of talking
Otter Pro, monthly	$16.99	about 9½
Otter Pro, billed annually	$8.33	about 4½
Fireflies Pro, monthly	$18	10
Fireflies Pro, billed annually	$10	about 5½
Granola Business	$14	about 7¾

Free plans change the math. Otter’s free plan includes 300 transcription minutes a month, up to 30 minutes per conversation. Fireflies has a free plan, and Granola’s free plan keeps 30 days of meeting history. If one of those covers your calls, it costs nothing.

What you’re paying for besides minutes

Price is only one row. Check these before choosing:

• Does a bot join? Otter’s notetaker joins Zoom, Teams and Google Meet, and Fireflies sends a bot by default; both also have desktop apps that record without one. Granola and Vokalu record your computer’s audio and never join the call.
• Is a recording kept? Otter keeps recordings for playback, and Fireflies stores them, with storage limits on its lower plans. Vokalu never saves the audio; the transcript and notes stay on your computer.
• Phone or computer? Otter, Fireflies and Granola have phone apps. Vokalu runs on Windows and Mac only.
• Team features. Seat plans often include shared libraries, CRM integrations and analytics. Vokalu’s business preview uses one shared balance with no seat fees.

Who per-minute pricing suits

• Freelancers and consultants with a few client calls a week, where a seat fee would be paid for an empty calendar half the time.
• Managers and founders whose meetings come in bursts around planning, hiring or launches.
• People who already dictate with Vokalu. Meeting notes come out of the same prepaid balance, so there is no second subscription.

If you spend most of your week in meetings, a seat plan is probably cheaper. That’s fine; pick it.

Try it on one call

The free plan covers a first call: the 75¢ welcome credit is 25 minutes of meeting notes, and the 25¢ weekly allowance adds about 8 minutes a week until your first purchase. Open Notes, choose a template, and press Meeting notes when the call starts.

Tell the people on the call that you’re taking notes. Many places require everyone’s permission to record, and Vokalu gives you a message to paste into the chat. How bot-free meeting notes work.