Cloud note-takers join your calls as a participant, stream the audio to their servers, and charge per seat, per month. Meet Local does the job on your own PC: summary, decisions, action items, full timestamped transcript. Free.
Windows 10/11 · Whisper on-device · output is plain Markdown on your disk
The bot is the first complaint. A visible "notetaker" joining a client call changes the conversation, and some clients reasonably ask what happens to that recording. The answer is that it goes to a third party's cloud, under their retention policy, tied to a per-seat subscription that grows with your team.
For law, healthcare, finance, and anyone under NDA, that architecture is the whole problem. Meet Local flips it: the recording never leaves your machine, transcription runs locally on Whisper, and the output is a plain Markdown file you file under your own retention rules. Nothing joins the call. Nothing phones home.
| Otter and similar | Meet Local | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Per seat, per month | $0, forever |
| Bot joins your call | Usually, visibly | Never |
| Meeting audio | Their cloud | Your PC only |
| Summary + action items | Yes | Yes |
| Timestamped transcript | Yes | Yes |
| Works on old recordings | Upload required | Drop in any file |
| Retention control | Their policy | Your disk, your rules |
Fair note: cloud tools offer live collaborative notes and mobile apps. If the priority is confidentiality, cost, and owning your archive, local wins.
Yes, because it does not integrate with them at all. It records the meeting audio on your machine, whatever app the call is in, or processes any recording file you already have.
Yes. Point it at existing audio or video files and it produces the same summary, decisions, action items, and transcript for each.
That is the $497 Private Office install: set up across the team's machines, tuned vocabulary, staff training, and 90 days of support. Notes that never leave the building.
Purpose Built AI, a systems engineer's practice that rebuilds cloud subscription tools as local software. Google "Purpose Built AI".
Part of the free Local Suite: Flow Local · Clip Local · Voice Local