Most meeting notetakers on the market share the same handful of trade-offs — a subscription, audio uploaded to someone's cloud, sometimes a bot that joins your call. Here's that pattern, one row at a time, with links below to specific, sourced comparisons if you want the detail on any one of them.
$49.99, once.
Usually a subscription — around $10–18 per month, easily $300+ over three years.
A native Swift Mac app, under 5 MB, living in your menu bar.
Often an Electron app that ships its own browser and eats RAM.
On your Mac, with Apple's speech framework. Works offline.
Your audio is usually uploaded to their cloud for transcription.
The transcript appears live, while the meeting runs.
Notes often arrive minutes after the call ends.
Apple Intelligence's Private Cloud Compute — nothing stored, nothing used for training.
Third-party models like ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude in their cloud. An account or API key is usually required.
Recording starts and stops by itself, for any meeting app.
Usually a notification asking you to hit record — or a bot you have to invite.
Nothing joins your call. Participants see no bot.
A bot participant often sits in the meeting.
None. Download and start talking.
Sign-up is usually required — your meetings live in their account.
Spotlight and Siri find your meetings; they are part of what your Mac knows.
Usually searchable only inside their app.