Best AI Note Taking Apps 2024 (Otter vs EVERYTHING!)

As a YouTube creator and online business owner, I’m always on the lookout for tools that can help me work smarter, not harder. And because I’m a total nerd, I wanted to figure out which one is actually the best. So I decided to test out six different AI note taking apps in a head-to-head competition in one Zoom call. In this article, I’ll share my findings and insights with you.

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What Do I Use AI Note Taking For?

Before we dive into the review, let me explain why I use AI note taking tools. As a content creator, I do several group Zoom calls a month with my membership, Thriving Creators Society, and I also do 1-on-1 Zoom calls with my clients. But one of my favorite sort of “secret weapon” ways to use AI note taking tools is just for my own brainstorming sessions. But I also need my AI note takers to be shareable so I can share them with my team or clients so that they’re not having to feverishly take notes while we’re talking, and the AI notetaker is doing it for them.

The Six AI Note Taking Apps

The six AI note taking apps I tested are Otter, Fathom, Fireflies, Notta, Rewatch, and Bubbles. My community manager and I had a fun, sort of random conversation during the Zoom call to test out each app’s note taking abilities. We did give the robots a little bit of an easier task because at the end, we discussed specifically what our action items are for our next Zoom call. So for this particular Zoom session, we were just kind of shooting the breeze. We weren’t really having an official meeting. Let’s take a look at each one of them and see how they performed during my test.

Otter

Otter is the one I’m the most familiar with, having been a paying customer for a couple of years now. Right off the bat, we have our summary, action items, and an outline. And then, of course, we have the word-for-word transcript as well. I love the way Otter does summaries. It also has a chatbot feature that can answer questions about the transcript. When I asked it if anything was said about snow, it provided some word-for-word answers from a story about snow during our conversation.

Fireflies

Next we looked at Fireflies. It gave me a similar kind of overview, action items, outline, and a list of notes compared to Otter. It also has a transcript. What I found really neat over here is some actual data about the call. Apparently, I spoke 59% of the time and I have a 147 words per minute. I don’t know that I necessarily need that information about talk time, but it is interesting. I asked it the same question about snow, and it said snow was mentioned several times but didn’t have as clear word-for-word answers as Otter did. Fireflies is a good option if you’re looking for a detailed analysis of your calls.

Fathom

Fathom is an actual software program on your computer. It gives a summary, meeting purpose, test AI note taking assistance, key takeaways, topics. It has a highlight feature and a bookmark feature, which is especially handy for group Zoom calls. I just don’t see any way for me to interact with the transcript or ask it a question. Fathom only works in Zoom happening in the moment, and you can’t upload a video, which is kind of a bummer.

Notta

Notta has a transcript, but it only gives us the first three minutes of the transcript in the trial version. You have to upgrade to get more than three minutes. But it looks like instead of automatically giving a summary and action items and an outline, it waits for you to tell it what you want. You could probably create your own template. So I kind of like that idea, if that’s what’s happening.

Rewatch

Rewatch didn’t have a chatbot and didn’t provide much of a recap. It did have a transcript and a video, but not much else.

Bubbles

Bubbles has a chatbot, but it didn’t detect any action items from the meeting even though we specifically said the words, “action items” before we talked about them. It did provide a summary and a transcript, but the chatbot didn’t chat back with me.

Conclusion

If you’re in the market for an AI note taking app, there are plenty of options out there. After testing six different apps, my top pick is Otter. Now I might be slightly biased since I’ve been using Otter for a long time. And I do already know how to use it, but they’re always creating new features. It provides a summary, action items, an outline, and word-for-word transcript, and also has a chatbot feature. However, each app has its own unique features and may work better for different types of calls and meetings. So, it’s worth testing out different options to see which one works best for you.