What Do AI Meeting Notetakers Actually Cost in 2026?
By the end of this article you will know the current list price of the four AI notetakers Hong Kong teams shortlist most often, which one is genuinely free, the one language problem none of them solves well, and which to pick for your specific size of team.
Here are the published prices as of August 2026. Hong Kong dollar figures are converted at roughly 7.8 to the US dollar and are indicative only.
Otter.ai
--- Pro: US$8.33 per user per month billed annually, about HK$65. Billed monthly it is US$16.99, about HK$133.
--- Pro usage limit: 1,200 transcription minutes per month per user.
--- Business: US$19.99 per user per month billed annually, about HK$156. Monthly it is US$30, about HK$234. Meeting volume is unlimited.
Fireflies.ai
--- Pro: listed at US$16.99 per month, about HK$133.
--- Business: US$30 per user per month, about HK$234.
Fathom
--- Free: unlimited recordings, unlimited transcription and unlimited storage. The cap is on advanced AI summaries, limited to five meetings per month.
--- Team Edition: US$19 per user per month billed monthly, about HK$148, or US$15 per user per month billed annually, about HK$117.
--- Team and Business plans require a minimum of two seats.
Granola
--- Basic: free, with limits on how much history you keep.
--- Business: US$14 per user per month, about HK$109, for unlimited use plus team features.
--- Enterprise: US$35 per user per month, about HK$273, adding admin controls.
Prices change frequently and every vendor runs promotions. Confirm the number on the vendor's own pricing page before you sign anything.
Why Do Businesses Switch AI Notetakers?
Teams rarely switch because a rival transcribes better. They switch for four reasons: a free tier that stopped being enough, a bot that embarrassed them in a client call, per-seat pricing that scaled badly, or notes nobody could find two months later.
Reason 1: the free tier hit its real limit
Fathom's free plan looks unlimited because recording, transcription and storage genuinely are. The wall is the five advanced summaries per month. A team doing 20 client calls a month discovers this in week two, not month six.
Reason 2: the bot joined a meeting it should not have
Otter and Fireflies work by sending a visible participant into the call. Clients and candidates see it, and some object. Granola takes the opposite approach and captures audio locally without adding a participant, which is the single most common reason Hong Kong professional-services firms move to it.
Reason 3: per-seat maths at 15 people instead of 5
At five users the gap between the cheapest and dearest option here is a few hundred Hong Kong dollars a month. At 30 users on an enterprise tier it becomes real money. Otter Business at US$19.99 annually across 30 seats is roughly US$7,196 a year, about HK$56,000. Granola Enterprise at US$35 across the same 30 seats is roughly US$12,600, about HK$98,000. Same category, HK$42,000 apart.
Reason 4: the notes were written but never used
This is the failure nobody prices for. If summaries land in an app nobody opens, the subscription buys nothing. Teams that switch successfully usually switch to whichever tool pushes output into the system they already live in.
How Do Otter, Fireflies, Fathom and Granola Differ?
All four record, transcribe and summarise. They differ on four things that actually change the buying decision: whether a bot joins the call, what the free tier really allows, how output reaches your other systems, and the price floor per seat.
Otter.ai
Bot joins the meeting. Strongest on searchable transcript archives and the longest track record of the four. Pro caps you at 1,200 minutes per user per month, which is roughly 20 hours of meetings, enough for most managers and not enough for a full-time salesperson.
Fireflies.ai
Bot joins the meeting. Built for teams that want conversation data flowing into a CRM and reviewed later. Its centre of gravity is sales and revenue teams, and its price reflects that positioning rather than a solo user's budget.
Fathom
Bot joins the meeting. The most generous free tier in the category by a wide margin, which makes it the correct first tool for anyone who has never used one. The five-summary monthly cap is the deliberate upgrade trigger. Team Edition needs two seats minimum, so a genuine one-person business cannot buy it.
Granola
No bot. It listens on your device and blends your own typed notes with the transcript, which produces a shorter and more usable summary for people who take notes anyway. Weakest fit if you need a full verbatim archive for compliance.
The one question that settles it fastest
Ask whether a visible bot in a client call is acceptable to your customers. If the answer is no, the field narrows to one option before price is even discussed.
Which One Handles Cantonese and English in the Same Meeting?
None of these four markets Cantonese as a first-class language, and Cantonese to English code-switching within a single sentence remains the hardest case in the category. For Hong Kong meetings that genuinely mix languages, the specialist tools currently do better than the famous ones.
This is the point where an honest comparison has to hand the win to somebody else.
--- Sonix publishes accuracy of 85% to 99% for Cantonese transcription, with the range depending heavily on audio quality.
--- HappyScribe positions itself as one of the few notetakers supporting Cantonese end to end, covering automatic detection, transcription, summarisation and export.
--- TicNote Cloud is operated by Mobvoi, a company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and is built with Hong Kong users in mind.
--- Parami's Lucy is marketed specifically as a Hong Kong meeting assistant for Cantonese and English.
The practical test takes 20 minutes. Record one real meeting where your team code-switches naturally, run it through two candidates, and read the section where somebody switched language mid-sentence. That single paragraph tells you more than any vendor benchmark.
What Will Stop You Being Happy With Any of Them?
Four limitations apply across the whole category, and none of them are fixed by paying more. Knowing them before you buy prevents the usual pattern of cancelling in month three and blaming the tool.
Limitation 1: a summary is not a decision record
Every tool in this list produces a competent recap. None of them reliably knows which of the 40 things discussed actually mattered. Someone still has to decide what the meeting concluded.
Limitation 2: accuracy collapses on bad audio
Speakerphone in a restaurant, three people on one handset, a building site in the background. These are normal Hong Kong conditions and they degrade every engine here, not just the cheap ones.
Limitation 3: consent and data residency are your problem, not the vendor's
Recording a meeting means processing personal data. Hong Kong's Privacy Commissioner has published guidance for organisations using AI tools, and the obligation to tell participants and to know where recordings are stored sits with you. This article is not legal advice.
Limitation 4: the tool cannot chase the follow-up
A notetaker records that you promised a quote by Friday. It does not draft the quote, send it, or notice that you did not. That gap is a different category of product entirely.
Which Notetaker Should You Choose?
The right answer depends on team size, whether a bot in client calls is acceptable, and whether your meetings mix Cantonese and English. Here is a direct verdict for each buyer, including the cases where you should buy nothing.
You have never used one: start with Fathom's free plan.
Unlimited recording and transcription at zero cost, and the five-summary cap will tell you within a month whether you have a real use case. Paying before you know that is the most common mistake in this category.
You are a 1-person or 2-person business with English-mostly calls: stay free.
Fathom Free or Granola Basic covers you. Note that Fathom Team requires two seats minimum, so a sole trader cannot upgrade there anyway.
You run client calls where a visible bot is awkward: Granola.
No participant joins the call. Business is US$14 per user per month, about HK$109, which is the lowest paid entry point of the four for unlimited use.
You need a searchable archive of everything said: Otter Business.
US$19.99 per user per month billed annually, about HK$156, with unlimited meetings. Choose Pro only if 1,200 minutes a month per person is genuinely enough.
Your sales team needs conversation data in a CRM: Fireflies.
Business at US$30 per user per month, about HK$234. Worth it only if someone is actually reviewing the data. If nobody is, you are paying enterprise pricing for note-taking.
Your meetings genuinely mix Cantonese and English: test a specialist first.
Trial HappyScribe, TicNote Cloud or Parami's Lucy against one real code-switched recording before you commit to any of the big four.
Where our own product is the wrong answer
UD's AI Staff Solution is not a notetaker and should not be compared to one on price. It is a scoped deployment for repetitive operational work such as invoice handling, enquiry response and admin routing, quoted per project rather than per seat. If all you need is meeting notes, buy one of the tools above and spend nothing with us. The conversation only makes sense when the problem is what happens after the meeting: the quotes, the follow-ups and the data entry that a transcript cannot do. That threshold is usually a few hundred repetitive tasks a month, not five.
What Is the Right Next Step?
Do this in one week. Install Fathom's free plan today, record three real meetings including one where languages mix, then compare the summaries against what you actually remember happening. That comparison, not a feature table, tells you whether to pay and whom to pay.
--- Day 1: install one free option and record a genuine internal meeting.
--- Day 2: record one client call and note whether the visible bot caused any reaction.
--- Day 3: record one Cantonese and English mixed discussion and read the switched sentences closely.
--- Day 4: check whether anyone on the team opened the notes without being asked.
--- Day 5: decide, and buy the cheapest option that passed all four tests.
Meeting notes are the easiest AI purchase a Hong Kong business will ever make, which is exactly why it is worth getting right before moving on to the harder ones. If the tool you need turns out to be the one that does the work after the meeting rather than during it, that is a different conversation, and a longer one. We understand AI. UD stands with you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a genuinely free AI notetaker?
Yes. Fathom's free plan includes unlimited recordings, unlimited transcription and unlimited storage, with advanced AI summaries capped at five meetings per month. Granola also offers a free Basic tier with limits on retained history.
Which AI notetaker does not put a bot in the meeting?
Granola captures audio on your own device rather than joining the call as a visible participant. Otter, Fireflies and Fathom all add a participant to the meeting.
How much does an AI notetaker cost for a team of five?
On annual billing at the cheapest paid tier, five seats of Otter Pro is roughly US$500 a year, about HK$3,900. Five seats of Granola Business is roughly US$840, about HK$6,552. Five seats of Fathom Team is roughly US$900, about HK$7,020.
Do these tools work in Cantonese?
Partially. None of the four main options markets Cantonese as a first-class language, and Cantonese to English code-switching mid-sentence is the weakest point. Specialists including Sonix, HappyScribe, TicNote Cloud and Parami's Lucy currently handle Hong Kong mixed-language meetings better.
When the Real Problem Starts After the Meeting
If your notes are fine but the follow-up work is drowning you, a notetaker is not the fix. Talk to UD about which repetitive tasks in your business are worth handing to an AI worker and which are not. We will walk you through it step by step, from mapping the tasks to a measured 60-day pilot, and we will tell you plainly if the answer is to buy nothing.
Reviewed by the UD AI team. Prices are vendor list prices published as of August 2026 and were compiled from publicly available pricing pages and comparison reporting. Currency conversions use roughly HK$7.8 to US$1. Confirm current pricing with each vendor before purchase. This article is not legal advice.
