You opened a comparison roundup looking for "bot-free AI notes," and every guide jumbles three very different products into the same bullet list. Tactiq lives in a Chrome tab. Granola lives on your laptop. AmyNote lives on your phone. The "bot-free" label is the same. The reach is not even close.
This guide pulls each of the three back onto its actual surface, then asks the only useful question: where does each one stop working?
Quick Verdict
Pick Tactiq if every meeting that matters runs in Google Meet, Zoom, or Teams inside a Chrome tab and you mostly want clean captions plus a GPT-4 summary delivered to Notion or HubSpot.
Pick Granola if you take notes from a Mac or Windows laptop, you want a bot-free desktop notepad that listens to system audio, and you are comfortable with cloud-stored transcripts and the default opt-in to AI training.
Pick AmyNote if your meetings are not always in a browser tab and not always at a desk: clinic visits, client lunches, courthouse hallways, factory floors, phone calls. Mobile-first, in-person friendly, transcripts on the device.
What We Compared
We focused on the four things buyers actually argue about: where the tool can capture audio, what pricing tier unlocks the real product, what happens to recordings and AI training, and what the tool literally cannot do regardless of plan. No screenshots of slick UIs, no synthetic benchmarks. Every pricing claim was verified against the vendor's public pricing page in June 2026.
What separates these three is not their feature lists. The feature lists are roughly the same shape: transcription, summaries, action items, search. What separates them is where the tool sits while the meeting is happening, and where it goes dark when the meeting moves.
Tactiq — Browser Captions, Done Well
Strengths. Tactiq is the lightest install in the category: a Chrome or Edge extension that activates inside Google Meet, Zoom Web, and Teams Web. It reads the meeting's built-in captions, layers GPT-4 summaries and action items on top, and auto-saves to Google Drive, Notion, HubSpot, Pipedrive, or Linear. Pro is $8 per seat per month on annual, putting it among the cheapest paid tiers in the space. 60-plus language support covers most multilingual teams. The Business plan adds SAML SSO, advanced retention, and a beta Tactiq MCP / Claude Connector that lets users query their transcript library from inside Claude Desktop or Claude.ai — one of the first real MCP paths shipped by a meeting-notes vendor.
Weaknesses. The extension is the product. If your team uses the Zoom desktop client instead of Zoom Web, Tactiq does not capture. In-person meeting, phone call, voice memo, walking conversation with a contractor: nothing to read. The Free plan caps you at 5 AI credits per month, where one credit equals one summary or one Ask-Tactiq question; Pro raises that to 10 credits, and only Team-and-above gives unlimited credits. For heavy users, the credit ceiling shapes behavior more than the seat price.
Granola — Desktop Notepad That Hears Your Laptop
Strengths. Granola sits on macOS or Windows, listens to whatever audio your system plays, and writes structured notes against a template you choose. There is no visible bot in the call, which is genuinely useful for sensitive 1:1s or external candidate interviews. Pricing is straightforward: Free with limited note history, Business at $14 per seat per month for unlimited history plus Notion, HubSpot, Slack, and Zapier integrations, Enterprise at $35 per seat for SSO, API access, and team-wide opt-out of model training. The 4.9-star ratings track the focused, distraction-free interface. Granola earned SOC 2 Type 2 certification in July 2025, and the iOS app now records phone calls and in-person meetings, extending the desktop story a bit further.
Weaknesses. The capture surface is the laptop. No Android app, and the iOS sidecar is not the focus of the product. If you step away from the laptop, Granola hears nothing. The Free plan's history cap pushes most active users to Business within a few weeks, and transcripts plus AI notes live on Granola's cloud, not on the device. Training opt-out is gated to the $35 Enterprise tier, which matters when the entire pitch is "private notes." A privacy team has to actively flip a setting before the tool is safe to use on confidential calls.
AmyNote — Mobile-First, Bot-Free Anywhere
Strengths. AmyNote runs as a pure mobile app on iOS and Android. That is the entire architectural bet. No browser tab required, no laptop required, no hardware required, no bot ever visible to the other side. Transcription is OpenAI's latest Speech API; analysis runs on Anthropic's Claude Opus; both providers contractually guarantee zero training on user data; audio is not retained on provider servers after processing; transcripts and recordings stay on the device with end-to-end encryption. Cross-session speaker memory remembers voices across meetings. 120-plus languages with real-time translation. Flat subscription, no AI credit metering, no minute caps, 3-day free trial with no credit card.
Weaknesses. Be honest about the gaps. No desktop app: if you live entirely on a laptop in browser meetings, AmyNote will feel like a sidecar. No CRM integrations like Fellow, Fireflies, and Otter offer. No video recording the way Fathom or tl;dv do. Smaller brand recognition. No formal team or enterprise tier yet — the product is built for individual professionals who own their meeting capture.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Tactiq | Granola | AmyNote | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where it captures | Chrome or Edge tab only | Mac or Windows desktop only | iOS and Android, in-person and on calls |
| Bot visibility | None (reads captions) | None (system audio) | None (microphone) |
| What it records | Meeting captions, no raw audio | System audio on the laptop | Microphone audio anywhere a phone goes |
| AI credit caps | 5 free, 10 Pro, unlimited Team | Limited history Free, unlimited Business | No credit metering on any tier |
| Where transcripts live | Tactiq cloud + integrations | Granola cloud | On the device, E2E encrypted |
| Training opt-out | Depends on tier | Enterprise-only at $35/seat | Contractual zero-training every tier |
| Languages | 60+ | Multilingual via templates | 120+ with real-time translation |
| Entry price | $8/seat Pro | $14/seat Business | Flat individual, 3-day free trial |
Where Each One Breaks
Tactiq breaks the moment the meeting moves off the browser. A Zoom desktop client call, a phone call with a vendor, a coffee meeting at a real coffee shop — Tactiq sees none of it. The 5-credit Free cap also bites fast for anyone using AskTactiq questions across past meetings. The captions-only architecture means a host who disables captions silently breaks the transcript with no fallback.
Granola breaks the moment the meeting leaves the laptop. A consultant flies to a client site, takes the in-person meeting, and the desktop notepad never had a chance to listen. The iOS app helps but is not the focus of the product. The history cap on Free is a hard wall most active users hit inside a month, and the default opt-in to AI training means a privacy team has to actively flip a setting before the tool is safe to use on confidential calls. For Android-first teams, Granola is not in the running.
AmyNote breaks on desktop-first workflows. If your day is 90 percent of Zoom calls on a laptop with HubSpot sync, this is the wrong tool. There is no desktop binary, no Chrome extension, and the CRM-sync gap is real. The mobile-first bet cuts both ways.
The Bottom Line
These three products are not really competitors. They are three different bets about where work happens.
Tactiq bets that your meetings live inside a browser tab. If they do, Tactiq is the cheapest, lightest way to get a GPT-4 summary delivered to your CRM. The day a meeting moves to the Zoom desktop client, a phone call, or a coffee shop, Tactiq goes dark.
Granola bets that your meetings live on a laptop. If they do, Granola is one of the most polished bot-free notepads on the market. The day you step away from the laptop — a clinic, a courtroom, a job site — Granola goes dark.
AmyNote bets that your meetings travel. Phone calls, in-person consults, hallway conversations, multilingual sessions, anywhere a phone fits in a pocket. Mobile-first, bot-free, with contractual zero-training and on-device storage on every tier. The trade is the absence of CRM integrations and a desktop app — real gaps if your day is browser-bound, irrelevant if it is not. Start the 3-day free trial — no credit card — at amynote.app.
Pick the surface that matches your actual workday. The "bot-free" label is identical. The reach is not.
Originally published as an X Article.
