Guide

A side-by-side comparison of 22 AI notetakers

Looking for the best AI notetakers for sales? We tested and compared 22 AI call recording tools to see which ones had the best out-of-the-box notes for sales teams.

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Putting 22 AI notetakers to the test

AI call recorders are everywhere, but not all AI notetakers perform the same.

If you're in sales, your call notes are one of the most important data sources in your sales process.

A great AI notetaker should deliver structured, actionable insights that help you move deals forward instead of cluttering your CRM with unorganized text.

So I put them to the test.

I ran a side-by-side comparison of 22 AI notetakers, each capturing the exact same sales call.

Same input, different results.

Some tools produced concise, structured, and actionable notes—others buried key details in paragraphs of text or left out important action items entirely.

To keep this comparison fair, I only evaluated each tool’s out-of-the-box notes. Most of these tools allow customization for different call types, letting users adjust formatting and the type of insights captured. However, for this test, I used each tool’s default notes template to ensure consistency.

If you're trying to figure out which AI notetaker captures the most useful and structured notes for sales teams, this guide breaks it all down.

What’s inside the guide

→ A detailed review of 22 AI notetakers plus screenshots of the actual notes they generated.
→ How well each tool captures key takeaways, next steps, and deal insights.
→ Which tools create clean, scannable notes—and which ones fall short.

This is phase one of my deep dive.

In future breakdowns, I’ll be covering each tool’s HubSpot integration, UI, ability to clip call transcripts, and other standout features.

But first, let’s look at what matters most: the quality of the notes.

Let’s dive in. 🚀

🏆 The best AI notetakers (based on 22 real tests)

Not all AI notetakers performed equally in this test. Some tools delivered clear, structured insights that made follow-ups effortless, while others were too vague, too long, or missing key details.

Here are the top three that stood out:

🥇 Best overall: Fathom

→ Highly structured, skimmable notes
→ Clear action items and next steps
→ Captures key buyer insights without fluff

🥈 Best for clean, concise notes: Granola

→ Ultra-clean, bullet-pointed summaries
→ Clearly highlights stakeholders, pain points, and next steps
→ Audio-only transcription—no video recording

🥉 Best for actionable next steps: Circleback

→ Prioritizes action items with deadlines
→ Automatically calculates follow-up timelines
→ Calls out key features buyers were most interested in

📌 Want to see how the rest stack up? Keep reading for a full breakdown of all 22 AI notetakers.

Fathom's notes were concise, clearly formatted, and easy to skim—exactly what a sales rep needs when reviewing past calls.

📌 Key highlights

✅ Highly structured notes with key takeaways clearly separated.
✅ Bullet-pointed action items that make follow-ups easy.
✅ Minimal fluff: filters out small talk and irrelevant details.
✅ Accurate identification of key topics and decision-makers.

📝 Notes breakdown

Fathom’s notes are well-organized and designed for quick review. The tool identifies key takeaways, separates action items, and eliminates unnecessary filler, making it easy to reference important details from a call.

What Stood Out: The action items section was well-structured and captured both buyer commitments and sales rep next steps with clear accountability.

🏆 Final verdict

Fathom is one of the best AI notetakers. If you want structured, skimmable notes that help you take action quickly, this tool delivers.

Best For: Sales reps who need clear, no-fluff call summaries with actionable next steps.

📸 Full notes from Fathom

Grain’s out-of-the-box notes are concise and easy to skim, but they lack depth and structure.

While the notes include an action items section, they don’t call out critical details like timeline, key stakeholders, or deal-specific insights.

📌 Key highlights

✅ Concise summaries that avoid unnecessary fluff.
✅ Dedicated section for action items.
✅ Quick to skim.

📝 Notes breakdown

Grain keeps its notes relatively short, which can be helpful for quick reference. However, the lack of detail and structure makes it harder to extract key insights at a glance. The notes could be more specific—right now, they don’t capture enough information to provide meaningful value beyond basic recall.

What Could Be Better: Grain’s notes would be more useful if they highlighted key sales details like timeline, decision-makers, and deal risks. Right now, skimming these notes doesn’t provide much value.

🏆 Final verdict

Grain is a good option for those who prefer brief, minimalistic notes, but it lacks the depth and specificity needed for sales teams that rely on detailed insights.

📸 Full notes from Grain

Avoma provides detailed, AI-driven meeting notes but lacks clear separation between key takeaways, making them harder to scan quickly.

📌 Key highlights

✅ Includes a product demo feedback section, helpful for tracking customer reactions.
✅ Identifies key stakeholders and calls them out by their names and roles.

📝 Notes breakdown

Avoma captures a lot of useful detail, but the notes are dense and harder to skim. The product demo feedback section is a useful addition, and it does a good job identifying key stakeholders. However, timelines and action items are embedded in longer paragraphs rather than broken into clear sections, making them harder to reference quickly.

What Could Be Better: Avoma’s notes would be easier to use if timelines, key stakeholders, and action items were broken out into distinct sections rather than buried in long summaries.


🏆 Final verdict

Avoma is a strong option for teams that want detailed, AI-powered meeting summaries but may not be the best fit for sales reps who need quick, structured insights.


📸 Full notes from Avoma

Otter.ai captures a lot of information but lacks structure, making it harder to extract key insights quickly.


📌 Key highlights

✅ Captures a large amount of information from the conversation.
✅ Provides an AI-generated summary that condenses key themes.


📝 Notes breakdown

Otter.ai produces detailed summaries, but much of the information is vague rather than specific. While it does a good job of recording a lot from the conversation, it takes extra effort to find key details like next steps, deal timelines, and stakeholder roles.

What Could Be Better: Otter.ai’s notes would be more effective if they highlighted specific deal details upfront, rather than requiring users to sift through long summaries to find key takeaways.

🏆 Final verdict

Otter.ai is a solid option for capturing large amounts of information, but sales teams looking for structured, actionable notes may find it lacking.


📸 Full notes from Otter.ai

Sybill’s notes are concise and capture key details well, but the lack of structure makes them harder to skim quickly.

📌 Key highlights

✅ Captures key details without extra fluff.
✅ Strong data for AI tools to analyze.

📝 Notes breakdown

Sybill provides a concise summary that captures a lot of relevant sales information without unnecessary filler. However, the notes lack clear structure, making it harder to quickly find important details. A more bulleted or sectioned format would make them much easier to reference.

It also includes a "conversation starters" section, which wasn’t useful in a sales context.

What Could Be Better: Sybill’s notes would benefit from better organization, with clear sections for timelines, stakeholders, and action items instead of presenting everything in one block of text.

🏆 Final verdict

Sybill captures concise and relevant sales information, but a more structured format would make it easier to skim and use effectively.


📸 Full notes from Sybill

Demodesk provides structured meeting notes with clear next steps, but the summaries can be vague, and some recommendations feel generic.

📌 Key highlights

Includes a structured “next steps” section with deadlines and owners.
Captures key discussion points in an easy-to-read format.
Provides a suggested “next steps” section with deal progression insights.

📝 Notes breakdown

Demodesk’s notes are well-structured, making key takeaways easy to find. The action items section is a strong point, with clear tasks, assigned owners, and deadlines.

However, the meeting summary feels vague, missing specific buyer concerns and objections. While the suggested next steps section is a unique feature, some recommendations feel generic rather than tied to the actual discussion.

What Could Be Better: Demodesk’s notes would be more useful if they captured more specific sales insights—such as deal blockers, buyer reactions, and stakeholder alignment.

🏆 Final verdict

Demodesk provides a strong action items section, but sales reps may need to add more deal-specific details for better follow-ups.


📸 Full notes from Demodesk

Granola delivers concise, well-structured notes that are easy to scan, making it one of the better AI notetakers for sales notes.

📌 Key Highlights

✅ Clean, structured format with clear separation of key details.
✅ Captures important deal information without unnecessary filler.
✅ Easy to skim for quick takeaways.

📝 Notes breakdown

Granola’s notes are well-organized and concise, making them easy to review at a glance. Key information like action items, stakeholder details, and next steps is clearly outlined, rather than buried in a long summary. The notes are brief but still contain enough detail to be useful without requiring extra effort to extract insights.

What stood out: Granola strikes a great balance between concise summaries and meaningful detail. Unlike some tools that overwhelm with too much text or lack key information, these notes prioritize what matters most while keeping everything skimmable.

🏆 Final verdict

Granola is a great choice for sales teams that want concise, structured notes that are easy to reference. It strikes a balance between brevity and useful detail, making it one of the stronger AI notetakers in this test.

📸 Full notes from Granola

tl;dv’s default notes were so short and vague that they weren’t useful for sales.

📝 Notes breakdown

tl;dv produced the shortest and least detailed notes of any tool in this comparison. The summary lacked key takeaways, next steps, and stakeholder details, making it difficult to extract any meaningful insights. The lack of structure or depth meant that skimming the notes didn’t provide any useful information.

What Could Be Better: tl;dv needs to capture significantly more detail to be a viable AI notetaker for sales. Right now, the notes are too minimal to be useful in any meaningful way.

🏆 Final verdict

tl;dv’s out-of-the-box notes were too short and vague to provide any real value for sales teams.

📸 Full notes from tl;dv

Update.ai is designed for customer success teams rather than sales, which makes its default notes less useful for deal tracking and sales follow-ups.


📌 Key Highlights

✅ Captures risk signals and product feedback, which can be valuable for CS teams.
✅ Organizes notes into structured sections.
✅ Provides an overview of customer sentiment.

📝 Notes breakdown

Update.ai’s notes are well-structured but focus more on customer success-related insights rather than sales-specific details. Out-of-the box, the tool captures risk signals, customer sentiment, and product-related feedback—useful for post-sales teams but not as relevant for sales reps tracking deal progression.

What could be better: It's tough to say because I didn't alter the default structure to see more of a sales-specific note summary. It's clearly excellent (the best I've seen) for customer success, but I'd have to do further testing to see how it performs for sales teams.

🏆 Final verdict

Update.ai provides some of the best structured notes for customer success teams, but further testing is needed to evaluate its effectiveness for sales-specific workflows.

Best For: CS teams that need detailed customer insights, risk tracking, and structured account notes.

📸 Full notes from Update.ai

Fellow provides structured meeting summaries but lacks depth in capturing sales-specific details.

📌 Key Highlights

✅ Well-organized notes with clear formatting.
✅ Includes action items and discussion points.
✅ Good for general meeting documentation.


📝 Notes breakdown

Fellow’s notes are cleanly formatted and structured, making them easy to read. However, the summaries feel more like general meeting minutes rather than a tool optimized for sales conversations. While it captures action items and discussion points, it doesn’t emphasize key sales details like deal timelines, stakeholders, or next steps in a way that’s easy to reference.

What could be better: Fellow’s notes would be more useful for sales teams if they prioritized deal-specific information like key decision-makers, next steps, and customer pain points rather than just general meeting takeaways.

🏆 Final verdict

Fellow is a solid tool for general meeting documentation, but sales teams may need to adjust the structure or add manual notes to make it more useful for deal tracking.

Best For: Teams looking for well-structured meeting notes and action items but not necessarily sales-focused insights.

📸 Full notes from Fellow

CustomerIQ provides some of the most detailed notes in this comparison, with strong stakeholder identification and contextual insights, but the length makes them harder to skim.

📌 Key Highlights

✅ Calls out key stakeholders and provides rich context from the call.
✅ Highlights the impact of the prospect’s current solution.

📝 Notes breakdown

CustomerIQ’s notes are highly detailed, making them useful for AI-driven insights. The way it identifies stakeholders and adds relevant context about them stands out as a strong feature. However, the notes also include small talk details that weren’t necessary, adding to the length.

Because these were some of the longest notes in this comparison, AI tools will have a lot to work with, but for a human reader, some sections could be more concise to make key takeaways easier to spot.

What could be better: CustomerIQ’s notes would be more user-friendly if they trimmed down unnecessary details while keeping the strong context on stakeholders and solution impact.

🏆 Final verdict

CustomerIQ is a strong choice for teams that want in-depth notes with rich stakeholder insights, but sales reps looking for quick, scannable summaries may find the length overwhelming.

Best For: Teams that prioritize AI-driven insights and deep context over brevity.

📸 Full notes from CustomerIQ

Fireflies provides structured notes with clear action items and stakeholder details, but the long overview makes it harder to skim.

📌 Key Highlights

✅ Calls out key stakeholders and timelines in dedicated sections.
✅ Clearly outlines next steps and action items.
✅ Highlights the impact of sticking with the prospect’s current solution.

📝 Notes breakdown

Fireflies’ notes are well-structured, making it easy to find stakeholders, timelines, and action items without having to dig through the summary. The next steps are clearly outlined, which is useful for sales follow-ups. However, the overview section is long and not as easy to skim, making it harder to quickly extract key insights.

What could be better: Fireflies’ notes would be easier to use if the overview was more concise, allowing sales reps to quickly get the most important takeaways.

🏆 Final verdict

Fireflies is a good choice for teams that want structured notes with clear next steps and stakeholder insights, but the lengthy overview could be more scannable.

📸 Full notes from Fireflies.ai

Tactiq provides a very brief summary that lacks depth, but the action items are well-structured and clearly broken out for internal and external teams.

📌 Key Highlights

✅ Clear action items, separated for internal and external teams.
✅ Includes a basic summary of the conversation.

📝 Notes breakdown

Tactiq’s summary is extremely brief and lacks specificity, making it difficult to pull meaningful insights from. However, its action items are well-organized, with a clear distinction between what’s needed internally versus what needs to be followed up on externally.

What could be better: Tactiq’s notes would be more effective if the summary included more specific insights, rather than being so brief that key takeaways are unclear.

🏆 Final verdict

Tactiq’s clear action item breakdown is a strong feature, but the lack of detail in the summary makes it less useful for sales teams looking for a comprehensive meeting recap.

📸 Full notes from Tactiq

Circleback delivers well-structured, highly actionable notes with clear next steps, making it one of the stronger AI notetakers for sales.

📌 Key Highlights

✅ Calls out key stakeholders and their roles.
✅ Provides a structured timeline, automatically calculating dates.
✅ Clearly outlines action items at the top for quick reference.
✅ Highlights what stood out most to the buyer during the call.

📝 Notes breakdown

Circleback’s notes are concise, structured, and easy to scan. The action items are listed clearly at the top, making it immediately obvious what needs to happen next. It also does a great job of identifying key stakeholders and outlining their roles in the decision-making process.

A standout feature is how it automatically calculates the timeline for next steps instead of just saying "next quarter" or "in two weeks"—it provides specific dates, which is helpful for keeping deals on track. It also pulls out what the buyer was most interested in during the demo, which is valuable for follow-ups.

What could be better: Circleback prioritizes the most useful sales details—next steps, stakeholders, and buyer interests—while keeping everything concise and easy to skim.

🏆 Final verdict

Circleback is a strong choice for sales teams that need structured, actionable notes. It highlights the most critical information while keeping the format readable and to the point.

Best For: Sales reps who want clear, structured notes with an emphasis on action items and buyer interest.

📸 Full notes from Circleback

Read.ai generates a long meeting summary but lacks the depth and structure needed to make key sales details easy to extract.

📌 Key Highlights

✅ Captures a lot of general meeting information in the summary.

📝 Notes breakdown

Read.ai’s notes are lengthy but often too vague, making it difficult to pull out meaningful insights. While it includes a key questions section, it primarily highlights questions I asked during the demo rather than those from the buyer, which would have been more valuable.

Additionally, the notes don’t provide enough specific details—important information like stakeholder roles, next steps, and deal impact could be clearer. While the summary covers broad topics, it requires extra effort to extract actionable takeaways.

What could be better: Read.ai’s notes would be more useful if they included more specific details and prioritized buyer questions and structured next steps over general meeting recaps.

🏆 Final verdict

Read.ai captures a lot of information, but it lacks the clarity and structure needed for easy reference in a sales process.

📸 Full notes from Read.ai

Krisp requires manual steps to generate notes, and while the action items are strong, the overall structure could be improved for easier readability.

📌 Key Highlights

✅ Clearly outlines action items for both internal and external stakeholders.
✅ Provides a structured breakdown of key discussion points.

📝 Notes breakdown

Unlike other tools that automatically generate notes, Krisp requires you to manually request a summary, which adds an extra step to the workflow. Once generated, the action items are well-organized and broken out clearly, making follow-ups easier. However, the notes themselves are a bit dense, and the structure doesn’t always make key takeaways easy to skim.

What could be better: Krisp’s notes would be more effective if they were automatically generated and structured in a way that made key details—like timelines and stakeholder roles—easier to scan.

🏆 Final verdict

Krisp’s action item clarity is a standout feature, but the extra manual steps and dense format make it less efficient for quick note review.


📸 Full notes from Krisp

MeetGeek captures a lot of detail but lacks structure, making it harder to extract key sales insights quickly.

📌 Key Highlights

✅ AI-generated summary and categorized insights.
✅ Automatically identifies discussion topics, concerns, and next steps.

📝 Notes breakdown

MeetGeek’s notes contain a lot of information, but the format isn’t optimized for quick reference. The meeting summary is overly verbose, making it difficult to skim for key takeaways. While the AI organizes notes into categories like facts, concerns, and decisions, this structure doesn’t provide clear sections for essential sales details like timelines, key stakeholders, and next steps.

Additionally, the next steps are missing clear owners, which makes follow-ups harder to track. Sales reps would need to manually extract and restructure the notes to make them actionable.

What could be better: MeetGeek’s notes would be more useful if they prioritized structured sections for timelines, stakeholders, and assigned next steps, rather than relying on broad categories.

🏆 Final verdict

MeetGeek captures plenty of details, but the lack of structure and overly long summaries make it harder to use for sales teams.

📸 Full notes from MeetGeek

Spiky provides clear action items but lacks depth beyond next steps, and its summary is too wordy to skim efficiently.


📌 Key Highlights

✅ Action items are clearly outlined for each meeting participant.

📝 Notes breakdown

Spiky’s notes include a "brief" summary that is actually quite wordy, making it harder to quickly extract key insights. A bulleted format with clear callouts for important details like stakeholders, timelines, and deal impact would have made the notes easier to use.

The action items section is a strong point, as it clearly separates follow-ups for both the sales rep and the buyer. However, beyond next steps, there isn’t much additional detail, which limits the overall usefulness of the notes.

What could be better: Spiky’s notes would be easier to skim and more useful if the summary was more concise and formatted as a structured bullet-point list.

🏆 Final verdict

Spiky provides solid action items but lacks the depth and structure needed for a fully useful sales meeting summary.

📸 Full notes from Spiky

Supernormal provides a clean summary with well-organized action items, but the notes lack structure for key sales details like stakeholders and timelines.


📌 Key Highlights

✅ Provides a clear, easy-to-read summary.
✅ Action items are listed but focus more on the buyer’s tasks.
✅ Captures some deal-related details but lacks structure for sales insights.

📝 Notes breakdown

Supernormal’s notes are readable and well-formatted, making them easy to skim. However, the structure doesn’t clearly separate key sales details like stakeholders, timelines, and deal impact. The action items are helpful but are more focused on what the buyer needs to do rather than a balanced view of next steps for both sides.

What could be better: Supernormal’s notes would be stronger if they included dedicated sections for stakeholders, timelines, and a more structured breakdown of action items.

🏆 Final verdict

Supernormal provides a clean and readable meeting summary, but sales reps may need to manually pull out key insights for deal tracking.

📸 Full notes from Supernormal

Sembly AI provides structured meeting notes with useful sections, but the sales-specific details could be clearer and more actionable.


📌 Key Highlights

✅ Organized meeting summary with clear formatting.
✅ Includes sections for project objectives, challenges, and decisions.
✅ Captures action items but lacks clarity on ownership.

📝 Notes breakdown

Sembly’s notes are structured and well-organized, breaking the meeting into key sections like objectives, challenges, and next steps. However, while this format is useful, the details are somewhat generic and not always specific enough for sales reps tracking a deal.

The action items are present but don’t always clarify who is responsible, making follow-ups harder to track. Additionally, while the structure is clean, it doesn’t prioritize key sales elements like stakeholders, deal timelines, or buyer interest areas.

What could be better: Sembly’s notes would be more effective for sales teams if they included clearer ownership of action items and more structured sections for stakeholders and deal progression.

🏆 Final verdict

Sembly provides well-structured meeting notes, but it seems more designed for project management, so sales teams may need to manually extract and organize key insights.

📸 Full notes from Sembly AI

SpinachAI provides structured meeting notes with clear action items, but some sections feel unnecessary, and key sales details could be more explicit.


📌 Key Highlights

✅ Identifies key topics from the conversation.
✅ Action items are clearly outlined, making follow-ups easy.
✅ Calls out “blockers” discussed in the meeting.

📝 Notes breakdown

SpinachAI’s notes are well-structured, making it easy to see the main discussion points at a glance. The action items section is a strong feature, clearly outlining next steps.

One standout feature is the "blockers" section, which highlights challenges discussed in the call. While this could be helpful, it feels more suited for internal team meetings rather than sales conversations, where a clearer focus on stakeholder alignment, deal timelines, and buying criteria would be more useful.

What could be better: SpinachAI’s notes would be more effective for sales teams if they trimmed unnecessary sections, provided clearer stakeholder details, and made the format easier to scan for quick takeaways.

🏆 Final verdict

SpinachAI does a good job of structuring meeting summaries and action items, but sales teams may need to adjust or reformat the notes to make them more actionable for deal tracking.

📸 Full notes from SpinachAI

Proshort’s notes are highly structured and concise, with a strong focus on timelines and risk mitigation, but some details are almost too concise.


📌 Key Highlights

✅ Automatically calculates and displays specific dates for next steps.
✅ Calls out key stakeholders with their roles.
✅ Includes a "risks and dependencies" section, adding useful deal context.
✅ Captures key buyer questions from the conversation.

📝 Notes breakdown

Proshort does a great job of structuring notes, making them easy to skim. The timeline section stands out, as it doesn’t just mention a vague “next quarter” timeframe—it actually calculates and displays the specific dates. The stakeholders and their roles are clearly defined, helping sales reps quickly identify decision-makers.

Another useful addition is the “risks and dependencies” section, which highlights potential blockers and includes suggested mitigation strategies. This can be helpful for anticipating objections and keeping deals moving forward.

What could be better: Proshort’s notes would be even stronger if they included slightly more context in key areas while maintaining their structured format.

🏆 Final verdict

Proshort provides one of the most structured and well-organized note formats, with great attention to timelines, risks, and stakeholder details. A little more depth in key areas would make it even better.

📸 Full notes from Proshort

Turn your meeting notes into a personalized page for every prospect

AI notetakers help capture what happens in a sales call, but notes alone won’t close the deal.

The real value comes from how you use those notes.

The best notetakers make it easy to capture next steps and understand what matters to your buyer.

That’s exactly where Arrows sales rooms come in.

With Arrows, your meeting notes power a personalized page for every buyer, making follow-ups effortless and keeping deals on track.

✅ Automatically update sales rooms with the latest context from your calls—so nothing slips through the cracks.
✅ Surface the right next steps, milestones, and value props based on what was actually discussed.
✅ Give buyers everything they need to say yes—without endless email threads or searching for resources on their own.

If you’re ready to turn your meeting notes into real deal movement, check out Arrows sales rooms.