Jamie earned its reputation the old-fashioned way. Berlin-based, privacy-first, in-person capable, no visible bot joining the call. For a lot of professionals, it was the first meeting note-taker that did not feel like surveillance software pointed at their own clients.
Then users started running the math. Jamie's paid plans start at €25 per month for Plus and climb to €47 per month for Pro, with Enterprise higher still. The free plan caps at 10 meetings per month. For that price there is no real-time transcription, no SOC 2 certification, no HIPAA, no API, no mobile app, and notes can take up to five minutes to appear after a call ends. Good product, expensive stack, narrow footprint.
Four alternatives stand out as serious Jamie replacements in 2026. Each one wins on a different axis. The right pick depends less on marketing copy than on whether your meetings happen on Zoom, on a laptop, in a regulated environment, or in the physical world.
Quick Verdict
- Fathom wins on free unlimited video recording.
- Granola wins on desktop polish and new enterprise features after a $125M raise.
- Fellow wins on compliance certifications and CRM integrations.
- AmyNote wins on mobile-first in-person capture, 120+ languages, and a no-math pricing model.
Pick the one that matches where and how your meetings actually happen, not the one with the loudest homepage.
What We Compared
Every tool here gives you transcripts, AI summaries, and action items. The differences show up in four places that actually matter once the trial ends:
- Capture surface. Bot-based or bot-free. Desktop audio or mobile mic. Video call only or in-person too.
- Durable storage. Cloud, local, or both. Encrypted at rest. Retention and export controls.
- Model training policy. Whether your customer conversations can end up in a training set.
- Price at the tier you actually need. Not the marketing page. The tier where your real meeting volume lives.
All pricing and feature claims were verified across vendor pages, G2 reviews, and independent comparison sites in April 2026.
Fathom: The Free-Tier Heavyweight
Strengths. Fathom is genuinely free at scale. Unlimited recording and storage with no time limit, and the free plan keeps working as your volume grows. Premium adds the full AI summary library at $16/month billed annually. Team plans start at $15/user/month and Business at $25/user/month. The 30-second summary generation is the fastest in the category, and the UI is refreshingly uncluttered for a product that grew this fast.
Weaknesses. The free plan caps AI summaries at 5 per month. Past that cap you get a chronological template, not a structured summary. Language support covers 28 languages, which is light if your meetings are multilingual. Accent accuracy is inconsistent. CRM sync lives behind the Business tier. Bot-based by default, so the same objection that sent people to Jamie still applies.
Pick it if you run mostly English-language video calls as a solo operator or small team, you want unlimited recording without a subscription, and you rarely need more than five AI-structured summaries in a month.
Granola: Desktop Polish With New Enterprise Muscle
Strengths. Granola captures system audio on Mac and Windows, now with proper Business and Enterprise tiers after a $125M raise in March 2026 pushed the valuation to $1.5B. Business at $14/user/month unlocks unlimited meeting history and integrations with Notion, HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, Slack, and Zapier. Enterprise at $35/user/month adds SSO, security controls, and opt-out of model training. The distraction-free interface and customizable note templates are some of the best in the category.
Weaknesses. Desktop only. No mobile app, no web app. You have to run the client on the machine where the meeting audio plays, which is a problem the second you leave your desk. The free Basic plan limits meeting history visibility to 14 days. No in-person mobile capture. Training opt-out only lives on the Enterprise tier, which is a real consideration for privacy-sensitive buyers.
Pick it if you are a desktop-native individual or team on Mac or Windows, do most of your meetings at a laptop, and want a polished, focused note-taker that now ships with Notion or CRM sync at the Business tier.
Fellow: The Compliance and CRM Choice
Strengths. The strongest compliance stack in the category. SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, HIPAA, SSO/SCIM, and transcript redaction. The free plan covers teams up to 10 users. Team at $7/user/month billed annually is the cheapest paid tier in this list. Business at $15/user/month adds unlimited AI notes, CRM integrations, and sales recap templates. Enterprise at $25/user/month adds Salesforce and HubSpot sync, custom recording avatars, and legal review. Works with Zoom, Meet, Teams, Slack Huddles, and in-person via the desktop app.
Weaknesses. The free plan is limited to 5 recordings before upgrade prompts kick in. Bot-free recording is desktop-only. Key integrations sit behind paid plans. Product breadth can feel heavy for a solo user who just wants clean notes.
Pick it if you are a mid-market or enterprise team that needs real compliance certifications, CRM sync, and governance controls, especially in regulated industries where "we have an AI note-taker" is not an acceptable answer to a security review.
AmyNote: Pure App, No Bot, No Hardware
Strengths. AmyNote takes a different bet from every tool on this list: the phone you already carry is the capture device, and the meetings that matter most often happen in rooms, not on Zoom. Bot-free, hardware-free, desktop-free. Works for in-person meetings, hallway conversations, client visits, and any video platform the phone can hear.
Transcription runs through OpenAI's latest Speech API. Analysis runs through Anthropic's Claude Opus. Both providers contractually guarantee zero training on user data. Audio is encrypted in transit and not retained after processing. Transcripts are stored locally on the device with end-to-end encryption. 120+ languages with real-time translation, broader than Fathom's 28 and comparable to Jamie's 100+. Cross-session speaker identification remembers who said what across meetings, so the same client stays the same client instead of resetting to "Speaker 2" each time. Simpler pricing: 3-day free trial, no credit card, no per-minute caps or seat math.
Weaknesses. Mobile-first, no desktop app. If you live in a laptop-first workflow, Granola or Fellow will feel more native. No built-in CRM integrations, while Fellow, Fireflies, and Fathom all ship direct Salesforce and HubSpot sync. No video recording for calls that need visual replay. Smaller brand recognition than the incumbents, and no team or enterprise admin console yet.
Pick it if you are a solo professional, field operator, consultant, clinician, or anyone whose meetings happen in rooms as often as on video, and you care more about privacy architecture, in-person capture, and language breadth than about CRM plumbing.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Criteria | Jamie | Fathom | Granola | Fellow | AmyNote |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recording model | Desktop, bot-free | Bot-based | Desktop, system audio | Bot-free desktop | Mobile-first, bot-free |
| Cheapest paid plan | €25/mo Plus | $16/mo Premium | $14/user/mo Business | $7/user/mo Team | 3-day trial, no card |
| Free tier | 10 meetings/mo | Unlimited recordings, 5 AI/mo | 14-day history | 5 recordings | 3-day trial |
| Language support | 100+ | ~28 | English focus | 99+ | 120+ |
| Real-time transcription | No | No | Partial | Partial | Yes |
| In-person meetings | Near laptop mic | Not supported | Laptop at table | Desktop app | Native mobile capture |
| Compliance | GDPR only | SOC 2 | Enterprise opt-out | SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR | Zero-training, local storage, E2E |
| CRM sync | Limited | Business tier | Business tier | Native | None |
| Desktop vs mobile | Desktop only | Both | Desktop only | Desktop-first | Mobile-first |
Choosing the Right Tool
The Jamie replacement question usually comes down to a different follow-up: what is actually making me shop?
- Price. If €25-€47 per month is the main irritation, Fellow Team at $7/user/month is the cheapest credible option. Fathom at $16/month for a single seat with unlimited recording is a close second.
- Compliance review. If legal or security is asking for SOC 2, HIPAA, or SSO, Fellow is the only clean answer on this list. Granola Enterprise and AmyNote's privacy posture are credible, but Fellow ships the certifications most review processes actually ask for.
- Desktop polish. If you live in a laptop all day and want a note-taker that feels native, Granola's new Business tier is the upgrade. Jamie was good at this lane; Granola is arguably better at it in 2026.
- In-person and multilingual. If your week includes client visits, site walks, medical rounds, depositions, or meetings in languages Jamie's latency cannot keep up with in real time, AmyNote is built for that exact shape of work.
- Unlimited video recording on the cheap. Fathom, full stop.
The mistake most buyers make is treating Jamie, Granola, Fathom, Fellow, and AmyNote as interchangeable. They are not. They are four different products aimed at four different workflows. The comparison only works once you name your workflow first.
The Bottom Line
Jamie is a genuinely solid product and one of the most thoughtful privacy stories in the category. But paying €25 to €47 per month for a tool that still lacks real-time transcription, SOC 2, HIPAA, and a mobile app is a hard sell once you see the alternatives side by side.
If unlimited free recording on Zoom is the goal, go with Fathom. If you run a compliance-sensitive team, Fellow is the cleanest fit. If you work on a laptop all day and love polished desktop software, Granola just got a serious upgrade after its $125M raise.
If your meetings happen in rooms with clients, in the field, across languages, and you want zero-training privacy without per-minute math, AmyNote is worth a serious look. The 3-day free trial runs without a credit card. You will know within a week whether the mobile-first, bot-free workflow fits how you actually work. Try amynote.app.
No note-taker is perfect. The right one captures the meetings you actually have, at a price that makes sense for the volume you actually run.
Originally published as an X Article.
