Best AI Note Taker for Zoom: 4 Apps Tested

Zoom already takes meeting notes. Adding another app means another place to manage your meetings and potentially another subscription, so I want a clear reason to do it.

Of the four apps I tested, Fellow is my pick for the best AI note taker for Zoom. It keeps the meeting audio alongside readable notes, turns suggested action items into assigned tasks, and lets me use my meeting history inside ChatGPT. Those are features I can put to work after the call.

Zoom is the simplest place to start, Notion makes sense if that's already where your notes live, and Granola has a clean, readable approach that I like. I recorded the same sample Zoom meeting in all four to compare the results and what I could do with them afterward.

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Best AI note takers for Zoom at a glance

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How I tested these Zoom AI note takers

I started a Zoom call and recorded the same scripted sample meeting in Zoom, Notion, Granola, and Fellow. All four captured it without adding a bot to the participant list. I didn't add my own written notes during the test, including in Granola, where those notes can help shape the summary.

After stopping the recordings and generating the summaries, I looked at:

• The notes: how readable each summary was, whether it captured useful details, and how easily I could refer back to the transcript.
• The action items: whether the next steps stayed as text or became tasks I could assign, give due dates, and manage across meetings.
• The follow-up: what I could do with the recording and notes, including playback, AI questions, sharing, and bringing meeting context into ChatGPT.

These are my results from that setup, rather than a claim that one app will produce the best summary of every conversation. If you're considering more options beyond these four, see my broader comparison of the best AI meeting note takers.

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Zoom AI notes: best for keeping things built in

Zoom gave me a transcript at the top, followed by sections for key outcomes, decisions, risks and blockers, and action items. It was easy to see what had been discussed and what needed to happen next.

The summary wasn't the most impressive of the four, but it got useful details such as dates right. In fact, I thought Zoom was a little clearer than Notion about the next actions, even though I preferred the detail in Notion's summary.

I could hover over a source reference to see where a note came from. There were also options to share the notes, change templates, and choose a short or long summary. The interface let me drag sections around, and there was an option to ask AI questions with a premium plan.

The limitation for me was the follow-up. The action items were bullet points inside the summary, rather than tasks I could assign and manage from that view.

If all you need is a record of the conversation and a list of next steps, that may be enough. I'd start with Zoom before adding another app purely to get a summary that looks a little different.

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Notion AI Meeting Notes: best for an existing Notion workspace

Notion organized the meeting into a generated summary, space for my own notes, and the transcript. I liked having those together in a familiar document format.

Its summary had more detail that looked useful to me than Zoom's version. The timestamps linked notes back to the conversation, and I could add custom template instructions to change how future summaries were written.

Notion also gave me checkboxes for the action items. That's a step up from plain bullet points when you want to mark something complete, but those particular checkboxes weren't tasks in a separate task system. I wasn't getting the same assigned, cross-meeting task view that I used in Fellow.

The AI editing was useful. I could ask Notion AI to change the notes, or open a chat with the meeting already attached and ask questions about it. You don't have to move the transcript somewhere else just to work with it.

I see the appeal if you're already a Notion person. Your meeting notes can stay in the same workspace as the rest of your work, and you have more control over the document than in a minimalist notepad.

My hesitation is about adding Notion just for meetings. If you don't already enjoy its ecosystem, the document format alone wouldn't be enough reason for me to choose it over a dedicated meeting app.

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Granola: best for a minimalist AI notepad

Granola is a minimalist AI notepad. Its basic idea is that you take rough notes while you're meeting, then it uses those notes alongside the conversation to produce a more useful summary.

I didn't type notes during this sample, so I was looking at what it could produce from the conversation alone. I liked the length of the result. It was readable and easy to work with, without feeling like I had another long document to get through.

I could open the full transcript, ask questions through the chat at the bottom, and change the summary template. Granola also had recipes, which are prompts for processing the notes depending on what you're trying to accomplish.

The disappointing part was the next steps. In this meeting, they came through as a chunk of text with several things on one line. Names and dates weren't pulled out in a way I could quickly use to manage the work.

I'd have to organize those details manually or hand the notes to another AI. I also didn't have the same drag-and-reorder control I had in the other note interfaces.

There was no meeting audio to replay in Granola. In the Notion and Zoom notes I reviewed, I was also working from text rather than an audio player alongside the summary. For some people, keeping only the written record is fine. I prefer being able to hear the conversation again.

Granola is appealing if you want a light notepad and readable summaries. I wanted more help turning those summaries into follow-up work. My bot-free meeting note taker comparison covers other apps built around recording without an extra participant.

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Fellow: why I'd add it when Zoom already takes notes

Fellow gave me more to work with after the meeting without making the app feel busy or overwhelming. The recording, summary, and action items were together, and it was clear how to use them.

Keep the original meeting audio

At the top of the meeting, I had an audio recording I could play back, divided into sections. Underneath was a readable summary with timestamps.

This matters to me because a transcript can lose someone's tone. Sometimes I want to go back and hear how someone communicated something, not just read the words. That can help when I'm trying to understand how people felt about an idea or what they meant by a particular comment.

Having the audio beside the notes makes that much easier.

Turn suggestions into actual tasks

Fellow's generated action items started as suggestions inside the meeting. When I accepted them, they became tasks in the app's Action Items area.

That meant they didn't stay buried inside one meeting note. I could see them alongside tasks from other meetings, add due dates, and assign an item to someone on the team. That person could then see it in their own app and complete it.

This was a much more useful workflow for me than a bullet list or a set of document checkboxes. I could review what the AI suggested and decide which items belonged in the to-do list.

Ask questions and draft follow-up emails

Ask Fellow works inside an individual meeting and across the meeting library. In the meeting, I used a shortcut to generate a follow-up email, opened the full draft, and had the option to open it in Gmail to send.

The library-wide chat is useful when I remember discussing something but can't remember which meeting it was in. Instead of opening old notes one by one, I can ask Fellow to find the relevant conversation and pull up the information.

I often want earlier meeting context while I'm working on something now. Being able to search across transcripts makes that history easier to use.

Share the relevant part as a clip

I could select a few sentences from the recording, give the clip a name, and save it. Fellow then gave me a link to share or the option to send it by email.

I opened the link in an incognito window while logged out and could play the selected part. That's useful when someone needs to hear one moment rather than sit through the entire call.

For meeting sharing, Fellow also has password protection and access logging. It supports sensitive-information redaction and an enterprise compliance portal. Fellow says it is SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA compliant, and that neither it nor its AI providers use meeting data to train AI models.

Try Fellow if keeping the recording and managing the follow-up are the reasons you're looking beyond Zoom's notes. I also compared its workflow with another dedicated option in my Fellow vs Fireflies comparison.

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How I use Zoom meeting notes in ChatGPT with Fellow

The MCP connection is another reason Fellow is useful in my workflow. MCP lets an AI assistant access information from another app, so I can work with my meeting transcripts and action items inside ChatGPT or Claude.

I use ChatGPT and Hermes a lot. Having meeting context available alongside the other information I'm working with is more useful to me than keeping every conversation inside a separate notes app.

In my ChatGPT setup, I added Fellow as a plugin using https://fellow.app/mcp as the server URL and OAuth for authentication. I authorized the connection through Fellow, then selected the plugin in ChatGPT and asked it to retrieve my meeting information. It pulled in the sample meeting's content.

Claude's connection was simpler: find Fellow in the connectors directory, add it, and authorize the account. In either case, the benefit is being able to bring meeting context into the AI app where I'm already working.

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Which AI note taker should you use for Zoom?

For my workflow, I'd choose Fellow. Audio playback, tasks across meetings, shareable clips, and the ChatGPT connection give me enough practical value to justify another app. It does what I need without feeling overwhelming.

Choose Zoom if a basic summary does the job and you want to keep everything in the app you already use for calls.

Choose Notion if your work already lives there and you want meeting notes in the same editable workspace. Choose Granola if you prefer a minimalist notepad and readable summaries, and don't mind organizing follow-up elsewhere.

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Frequently asked questions

Does Zoom have a built-in AI note taker?

Yes. I used Zoom's own note taker for the same meeting as the other three apps. It produced a transcript, summary, and next steps. I could also change the summary template and refer back to the source of a note. If that's all you need, you may not need another app.

Can I take Zoom meeting notes without a bot joining?

Yes. I used all four in botless mode for the comparison. Fellow also has a bot mode, but the desktop botless option still gave me an audio recording, transcript, and AI notes.

Can I use ChatGPT with my Zoom meeting notes?

Yes. In my workflow, Fellow recorded the Zoom meeting, and I connected Fellow to ChatGPT through MCP. I then asked ChatGPT to retrieve the meeting information. That gave me the meeting context inside ChatGPT; I wasn't using ChatGPT itself to record the Zoom call.

Which app made action items easiest to use?

Fellow. I could accept suggested items as tasks, assign them to teammates, set due dates, and see tasks across meetings. Zoom gave me bullets, Notion gave me checkboxes, and Granola's next steps needed more organizing in this sample.