Every founder I know complains about meetings. Every tool promises to fix them with AI.

I tested five tools for three months. Spent $847 total. Here’s the truth.

The Contenders

Otter.ai Pro: $16.99/month Fireflies.ai Business: $19/month Fathom: Free tier (Premium is $32/month) Grain: $19/month tl;dv: Free tier (Pro is $25/month)

What They Actually Do

All five do roughly the same thing:

• Join your video calls
• Transcribe everything
• Generate summaries and action items
• Let you search past meetings

The differences are in accuracy, integrations, and how annoying the AI summaries are.

The Surprising Winner

Fathom’s free tier. Not even close.

It captures everything. Summaries are decent. And it costs nothing.

I was paying $16.99/month for Otter before this test. Fathom does 90% of what Otter does for $0.

The Real Time Savings

Here’s where founders get this wrong.

AI meeting notes save you from taking notes during meetings. That’s maybe 10 minutes per meeting.

They don’t save you from:

• Being in useless meetings
• Reading the summaries
• Following up on action items

I calculated my actual time saved: 4 hours per month. At my hourly rate, that’s worth about $400.

The tools cost $17-32/month. The ROI is obvious.

Where They Fall Short

Accuracy issues: All of them mess up names, technical terms, and numbers. You can’t trust transcripts for contracts or exact quotes.

Summary quality: AI summaries are generic. “Team discussed project timeline and agreed on next steps.” Thanks, AI. Very helpful.

Integration friction: Getting action items into your task manager still requires manual work.

My Setup Now

Fathom for transcription. Free.

Claude for better summaries. I copy the transcript in, ask for specific extractions. Takes 30 seconds. Costs pennies in API calls.

Total monthly cost: Under $5.

Should You Bother?

Yes, if you have more than 10 meetings per month and ever need to reference what was said.

No, if your meetings are mostly internal and informal.

The free tiers are good enough. Don’t pay for premium unless you have a specific integration need.

And for the love of god, have fewer meetings. AI can’t fix a broken meeting culture.