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There are a lot of “AI notetakers” and they mostly blur together. The useful way to tell them apart is three questions: Does it help you during the call, or only write it up after? Does a bot join the meeting? And where does your data live? Raven is the odd one out on all three: it’s the only tool here that is open source, runs local-first (recordings stay in a database on your machine), does live in-call assist, and is free (you bring your own API keys). Below is the honest field — including where other tools genuinely win.
We make one of these tools, so treat this as a competitor’s ranking and verify anything that matters. Prices verified August 2026; every vendor changes pricing — check their page before you buy.

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The field at a glance

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How to choose

  • You want help during the call (“what should I say?”): Raven or Cluely. Raven includes screen-share stealth free and stays local; Cluely gates invisibility behind its $149.99/mo tier and stores meetings in its cloud. See Raven vs Cluely.
  • You just want a clean recap and love bot-free: Granola or Raven. Granola’s notes UX is excellent, but the free plan only shows your last 30 days and there’s no live help. See Raven vs Granola.
  • You want the most generous free recap: Fathom — but the free plan caps advanced AI summaries at 5 calls/month. See Raven vs Fathom.
  • You mostly need cheap transcription: Otter or Fireflies — watch the 300-min/mo (Otter) and storage/AI-credit caps. See Raven vs Otter.
  • You’re a sales manager coaching reps: tl;dv or Circleback shine at scorecards and automations (and cost the most).
  • Your #1 problem is background noise: Krisp leads on noise cancellation, with notes as a bonus.

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What the others do better (honestly)

  • Cluely: a polished mobile app and one bundled subscription.
  • Fathom: calendar auto-join, CRM sync, clips/playlists, mature team features.
  • Granola: arguably the nicest notes UX in the category, plus deep integrations/MCP.
  • Otter / Fireflies: big brands, mobile apps, broad integrations, large cloud archives.
  • tl;dv / Circleback: real sales coaching (MEDDIC/BANT/SPIN) and post-call automations.
  • Krisp: best-in-class noise cancellation.
If your job is a RevOps workflow or a coached sales floor, those paid tools earn their price.

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Where Raven wins

  • Live + after-call in one tool — most of this list only does the after-call half.
  • Free and open source — no per-seat fee; audit exactly what leaves your machine.
  • Local-first — transcripts, notes, and the Ask index live in SQLite on your device, not a vendor cloud.
  • BYOK — you pay Deepgram/AssemblyAI and Anthropic/OpenAI directly for usage (typically a few dollars a month), instead of $8–$150/seat.
  • No bot — nothing joins the call; capture is local on macOS and Windows.

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Try Raven

Download Raven

Free, open source, Mac + Windows. Bring your own keys.

See how it compares

Side-by-side pages vs Cluely, Fathom, Granola, and Otter.
Pricing for all tools verified August 2026 against each vendor’s official pricing page. Figures are the cheapest per-seat annual rate unless noted; monthly billing is higher. Vendors change pricing often — confirm before relying on a number.