Free AI notetakers have got a lot better. Fathom will record and transcribe as much as you like without asking for a card, and Fireflies, Granola and Otter all do a usable job at no cost. Our top pick for an accounting firm is Vinyl, and we should say straight away that Vinyl has no free plan at all. There is a 30-day free trial with five hours of meetings included, and after that you pay. If you are a solo practitioner recording the odd call, one of the free plans below will do the job properly and you should use it.
Here is the pattern worth understanding before you pick one. Every free tier on this list is capped on meeting time, capped to a single user, or both. That is not an accident. Free plans are designed as a personal notepad for one person, which is exactly right when you are starting out on your own. It falls apart the moment there are two of you, because the thing a firm needs is not a transcript. It is shared context: every client conversation in one place, visible to whoever picks up the file next, and connected to the system where the work actually gets done.
How we ranked: we looked at how usable each free plan is on its own terms, what it caps, what the first paid tier costs, and how well the tool holds up when a whole firm uses it rather than one person. Disclosure: we build Vinyl, so read its entry with that in mind, and we have been honest about where it is the wrong choice. All prices are in US dollars (US$) and were checked in August 2026.
The comparison at a glance
Tool | Free-plan limits | Paid from (US$, checked Aug 2026) | Key feature | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Vinyl | No free plan. 30-day free trial, 5 hours of meetings included | US$15/mo Pay As You Go (1 user, 2 hrs); US$59/mo Starter, unlimited users | Shared firm-wide record that syncs into Karbon, FYI and XPM | Firms with a team and client follow-ups to chase |
2. Fathom | Single user. Unlimited recordings, transcripts and AI summaries; Ask Fathom limited | US$15/user/mo (Team, annual); Premium US$16, Business US$25 | The most generous free plan here | Solo practitioners who want a solid recap for nothing |
3. Fireflies | 400 minutes of storage per team, 20 AI credits, no video recording (transcription itself uncapped) | US$10/seat/mo (Pro, annual) | Cheapest step up to a paid seat | Solos and tiny teams wanting low-cost transcription |
4. Granola | Limited meeting history, individual-focused; model training opt-out available | US$14/user/mo (Business) | The nicest personal note-taking experience | Individuals who take their own notes and want them tidied |
5. Otter | 300 minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation, 3 lifetime file imports, 1 meeting at a time | US$8.33/user/mo (Pro, annual, 1,200 min) | Long-established, reliable transcription | Light users on short calls |
1. Vinyl
Vinyl is the only tool here built specifically for accounting and bookkeeping firms, and the only one with no free plan. What it has is a 30-day free trial with five hours of meetings included, which is enough to run a few real client calls through it and see what comes out the other end. It records Zoom, Teams and Google Meet, plus in-person meetings through the mobile app, and it reads tax, payroll and compliance language properly rather than guessing at the terminology.
What’s good: it is priced for a firm rather than a person. Starter is one price with unlimited users, so everyone records, and every meeting lands in the same place. That shared record is the part free plans cannot give you: a new manager can read the history on a client they have never met, and you can ask questions across every meeting the firm has had rather than hunting through one colleague’s account. Notes and actions then sync into Karbon, FYI and Xero Practice Manager, and the post-meeting work drafts itself. A follow-up email, a structured file note, a flagged revenue opportunity, a proposal pushed into Ignition or Socket.
Where it falls short: it is built for one industry, so if you are not running a practice most of what makes it good is irrelevant. There is no free tier, and plans carry a monthly hours allowance rather than unlimited recording, so a very heavy meeting load costs more. For a sole trader doing two calls a month, a free plan is the sensible answer and we would rather say so.
Price (US$, Aug 2026): from US$15 a month for Pay As You Go (one user, two hours of meetings), and US$59 a month for Starter with unlimited users and 20 hours. Vinyl is priced by region, so UK firms pay in GBP and Australian firms in AUD via the currency selector on the pricing page.
Best for: firms with staff, client records and follow-ups that currently depend on somebody remembering to write them up.
2. Fathom
Fathom has the best free plan in this comparison by a clear margin. Unlimited recordings, unlimited transcripts and instant AI summaries, with no monthly minute cap to watch. For a sole practitioner who wants a record of client calls without paying anything, it is the obvious starting point.
What’s good: the free tier is genuinely usable rather than a demo, summaries are clean and well structured, and search across your calls works well. You can capture with or without a bot in the meeting.
Where it falls short: the free plan is one person, full stop. Team features start at the paid Team tier, so a second recorder means a second bill. Ask Fathom, the AI question tool, is limited on free. There is no accounting training, no connection to Karbon, FYI or XPM, and no in-person capture, so an office meeting or a client visit goes unrecorded.
Price (US$, Aug 2026): free plan for individuals; Premium US$16, Team US$15 and Business US$25 per user per month on annual billing (US$20, US$19 and US$34 on monthly billing).
Best for: a sole practitioner or a one-person bookkeeping business that wants a reliable free recap.
3. Fireflies
Fireflies gives you unlimited transcription and unlimited AI summaries on the free plan, which sounds unbeatable until you read the storage line. Free accounts get 400 minutes of storage per team, so older recordings drop off, and you get 20 AI credits to spend on its AskFred assistant.
What’s good: cheap all round. The free plan covers a lot of calls, and Pro at US$10 a seat is the lowest paid entry point on this list. Platform coverage is broad.
Where it falls short: no video recording on free, and the storage cap means the archive you thought you were building is not really there. The notes live in Fireflies with no route into a practice-management system, so somebody still copies them across. SOC 2 Type II and GDPR cover every tier, but HIPAA is Enterprise-only. High Rock Accounting left Fireflies for exactly the integration gap, which their COO describes in their case study, and Shapes tried it before deciding the manual steps afterwards were the whole problem.
Price (US$, Aug 2026): free plan; Pro US$10, Business US$19 and Enterprise US$39 per seat per month on annual billing. Monthly billing runs US$18 and US$29 for Pro and Business.
Best for: small teams that want cheap transcription and are happy to action the notes themselves.
4. Granola
Granola is the nicest of these to actually use. It listens through your computer, takes your rough typing during the meeting and turns it into something coherent afterwards, which suits people who like taking their own notes and want them cleaned up rather than replaced.
What’s good: a genuinely pleasant writing experience, AI chat across your meetings, shared folders and custom templates, all on the free Basic plan. Granola lets you opt out of model training on every tier, including free, though an org-wide opt-out you can enforce across a team only comes with Enterprise.
Where it falls short: the free plan limits how much meeting history you can see, and Granola does not publish a hard number, so you find the edge when you go looking for an old note. Losing history is a bigger problem for a firm than it sounds, because the value of a client record is that it goes back years. It is desktop-first and built around an individual, with no accounting intelligence and no practice-management integrations. Model training is on unless you turn it off.
Price (US$, Aug 2026): free Basic plan; Business US$14 per user per month; Enterprise US$35 per user per month.
Best for: individuals who take their own notes and want a tidy version afterwards.
5. Otter
Otter has been doing this longer than most and the transcription is dependable. The free plan is the most restrictive here, so it works best as a way to try the product rather than as a permanent setup.
What’s good: reliable transcription, a familiar interface, and the cheapest paid tier of the general tools at US$8.33 a user on annual billing.
Where it falls short: 300 minutes a month with a 30-minute ceiling on any single conversation rules out most planning or year-end meetings, and you can only record one meeting at a time. Free accounts get three file imports in total, for the life of the account. There is no accounting context, no follow-up drafting and no practice-management link. Otter also trains on de-identified customer data and faced a class action in 2025 over the practice, which is a fair thing to check before you record client conversations.
Price (US$, Aug 2026): free Basic plan with 300 minutes a month; Pro US$8.33 (1,200 minutes) and Business US$19.99 (unlimited minutes) per user per month on annual billing, or US$16.99 and US$30 monthly.
Best for: light users with short calls who mainly need a transcript.
Where free plans run out: one user, one archive
Free is genuinely the right answer for a solo practitioner starting out. You are the only person in the meetings, you are the only person who needs the notes, and a personal notepad is all a personal practice requires.
The trouble starts with your first hire, and it is worth being precise about why, because it is not a feature you are missing. It is a structural limit.
Free plans give one person a private archive. Fathom’s free tier is a single user. Granola is built around an individual and trims your history. Otter gives each person 300 minutes a month. You can get around this by having everyone open their own free account, and firms do try it. What you end up with is four separate silos: four logins, four archives, and no way to see what a colleague discussed with a client last quarter. When someone is off sick or leaves, their client history leaves with them.
That shared context is the actual product a firm is buying. A manager should be able to open a client and read every conversation the firm has had with them, whoever was in the room. You should be able to ask a question across all of it, like which clients raised a funding need this quarter, and get an answer in one go. No free tier does that, because a free tier is a single-seat product by design.
Then there is everything after the meeting:
Meeting time caps push you to ration. Splitting a long planning meeting to stay under 30 minutes, or watching a minute counter during a year-end review, means the tool is shaping the work rather than supporting it.
No integration means the copy-and-paste job just moves. If the firm runs on Karbon, FYI or XPM and the notes sit in a separate app, someone still re-keys them. This is the most common reason firms leave a free tool, and it has nothing to do with transcript quality.
The follow-ups are still manual. A transcript is the easy half. If write-ups still take twenty minutes each and proposals go out three days late, nothing much has changed.
Someone eventually asks about the data. That question usually comes from a partner or a client. Free tiers are where the weaker security controls sit and where the default training settings are least favourable.
None of this means paying is automatically better. It means free plans have a shape, that shape fits one person, and firms grow out of it rather than break it.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a truly free AI notetaker for accountants?
Yes, though none of them is built for accounting and all of them are single-user tools underneath. Fathom’s free plan is the most complete, with unlimited recordings, transcripts and AI summaries for one person. Fireflies and Granola both offer usable free tiers with caps on storage and history, and Otter’s free plan gives you 300 minutes a month. Vinyl has no free plan at all, only a 30-day free trial with five hours of meetings included.
What are the limits on free AI notetaker plans?
They vary a lot. Otter caps you at 300 minutes a month with a 30-minute maximum per conversation and three lifetime file imports. Fireflies allows unlimited transcription but only 400 minutes of storage per team and 20 AI credits, with no video recording. Granola limits how much meeting history you can see. Fathom is the outlier with no recording cap, though its free plan covers one user and limits its AI question tool.
When should an accounting firm upgrade from a free plan?
When a second person starts recording client meetings. Free plans are single-seat products, so a team on free accounts ends up with one private archive each and no shared view of any client. Per-seat pricing on the general tools then means costs rise with every hire, so a five-person firm on Fathom Team at US$15 a seat pays US$75 a month, which is more than Vinyl’s US$59 Starter plan with unlimited users. The other trigger is integration: if someone is still rewriting notes into Karbon or FYI by hand, the free tool is being paid for in labour.
Is a free AI notetaker safe for client data?
It depends on the vendor and the tier, so read the data-processing agreement before you record. Fathom says it may use de-identified meeting content to train its own models depending on your account settings, with an opt-out, and does not authorise third parties to train on your data. Granola has model training on by default with an opt-out on every plan, including free, though org-wide enforcement is Enterprise-only. Otter trains on de-identified data and faced a class action in 2025 over it. Fireflies holds SOC 2 Type II and GDPR on every tier, with HIPAA on Enterprise. Tell clients you are recording, get their agreement, and check where the recordings are stored and for how long.
Free notetakers have closed most of the gap on transcription and none of the gap on what a firm is actually trying to build, which is one shared record of every client conversation that the whole team can use. If you are on your own, take the free plan and get on with it. If you have a team, the question stopped being what a notetaker costs and became where the notes end up.
Co-Founder
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"I've been wary of AI notetakers in the past...but Vinyl just gets it. So easy to set up, and the summaries hone in on all the important items. Everything just happens automatically, reducing all the small tasks that quickly add up."
