Best Meeting Minutes Software 2026: Top 7 Tools Compared

Last updated: October 20, 2026. Prices checked on each vendor's own site that day, except where noted.

The short answer: if you take official minutes for a board, council, HOA or school district, pick a tool that drafts minutes from the recording and follows your agenda: BoardBreeze (from $29.99/month) or ClerkMinutes (from $99/month billed yearly). If you run a large corporate board and need a full board portal, look at Diligent. If you only need notes from internal team meetings, Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, Microsoft Copilot or Notion AI will do, but none of them produces formal minutes.

The right tool depends on which of these two jobs you have:

• Board governance minutes: the official record for a governing body (school boards, nonprofits, HOAs, city councils, community colleges, corporate boards)
• Business meeting notes: action items and summaries for internal teams

This guide covers both.

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Quick Comparison

Tool	Best For	Starting Price	What It Produces	Drafts From
BoardBreeze	Board governance	$29.99/month	Formatted board minutes	Recording, pasted meeting link, or live browser recording
ClerkMinutes	Local government	$99/month billed yearly ($129 monthly)	Agendas and minutes	Imported meetings
Diligent	Enterprise governance	Quote only	Board portal suite with AI minutes drafts	Agendas, notes, board materials, transcripts
Otter.ai	General business meetings	Free / $16.99/month	Transcript and notes	Live calls and uploads
Fireflies.ai	Sales and team meetings	Free plan; paid prices not published	Meeting notes	Live calls and uploads
Microsoft Copilot	Microsoft 365 teams	Per-user add-on (see below)	AI meeting recap	Teams meetings
Notion AI	Teams that work in Notion	Included in Business, $20/member/month	Notes and summaries	Notion AI Meeting Notes

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1. BoardBreeze: Best for Board Governance

Price: $29.99/month (Essential) | $99/month (Pro) | $499/month (Enterprise). Annual billing is 25% off, and organizations can pay by invoice, Net 30. Free trial: 15 days and 3 hours of meetings, no credit card required Best for: School boards, nonprofits, HOAs, community colleges, city councils, townships, hospitals

BoardBreeze is built for one job: turning a board meeting into draft minutes. Upload a recording, paste a link to the meeting video, or record live in your browser, and BoardBreeze transcribes it, picks out motions, seconds and votes, and produces a minutes document organized by agenda item. It is a draft of the minutes themselves, not a transcript or a summary.

What sets it apart from general tools:

• Upload your agenda (PDF or TXT) and the minutes follow its numbering and section titles, keeping recommended-action language word for word
• Labels parliamentary actions: motions, movers, seconders, votes, abstentions
• Paste a link instead of uploading: Granicus, Swagit and Legistar meeting videos, Dropbox or Google Drive share links, or a YouTube video of your own organization's public meeting
• Meetings up to 3 hours on Essential and up to 12 hours on Pro and Enterprise
• Minutes Assistant, a chat that answers questions about the meeting ("What did the board decide about the budget?")
• Export to Word (.docx), a tagged PDF, plain text, Google Drive, or email
• Recordings are deleted automatically after 4 days, so you are not left storing audio (see how BoardBreeze handles your data)
• Pro covers up to 5 people sharing 40 hours a month; Enterprise covers up to 20 people sharing 240 hours a month

Limitations:

• Built for board governance, not for sales or team meetings
• English only for now
• The AI draft needs a human read against the recording before it goes to the board, and the clerk stays responsible for accuracy

Who it's for: Any organization that needs official minutes for a governing body.

Try BoardBreeze free

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2. ClerkMinutes: Built for Local Government

Price: Starter $99/month billed yearly ($1,188/year) or $129/month billed monthly, for 5 meetings a month, 3 boards and 3 team members. Growth $249/month billed yearly or $299/month billed monthly, for 10 meetings, 10 boards and 10 team members. Custom plans are quoted. Free trial: 14 days, no credit card required Best for: City, county and town clerks

ClerkMinutes is built around the local government clerk's workflow, with an agenda builder, minutes generation, and publishing of agendas and minutes to your website. Its site says it imports meetings and integrates with YouTube and Zoom, and it exports to .DOC or .PDF.

What stands out:

• Agenda builder alongside minutes
• Publishing agendas and minutes to your website on every plan
• A focus on municipal government terminology and templates

Things to check for your board:

• Plans are sized by meetings per month and number of boards, so count your committees and commissions before choosing a tier
• Publishing meeting video and uploads over 5GB are listed on the Custom plan only
• No in-browser recording is advertised

Who it's for: Municipal clerks who want an agenda builder and website publishing in the same tool. For a side-by-side, see BoardBreeze vs ClerkMinutes.

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3. Diligent: Best for Enterprise Governance

Price: Not published; pricing is by request through Diligent's sales team Free trial: No; requires a sales process Best for: Large public companies, enterprise governance teams, organizations that need a full board portal

Diligent is the dominant enterprise board governance platform. It is a broad suite covering board portals, board materials, entity management, risk and compliance, not mainly a minutes tool.

AI minutes: Diligent now offers AI help with minutes. Its board minutes page says the AI produces a first draft "from your agendas, typed notes, board materials and meeting transcripts," which then moves into review and approval. For public bodies, Diligent Community added AI-Supported Minutes in February 2026, in its Livestream Manager Pro and Plus packages, which uses closed-caption transcripts and agenda timestamps from the livestream to help draft minutes for each agenda item. Neither page says it drafts directly from an audio file you upload, so ask about that in a demo if your board records meetings outside a livestream.

Who it's for: Large organizations with complex governance needs and enterprise budgets that want minutes inside the same platform as their board portal. If your main need is turning a recording into minutes on a small-board budget, a purpose-built tool will cost far less.

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4. Otter.ai: Best for General Business Meetings

Price: Basic free | Pro $16.99/month, or $8.33/month billed annually | Business $30/month, or $19.99/month billed annually (per user) Free plan: 300 transcription minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation, 3 lifetime file imports Best for: Business meetings, lectures, one-on-ones, team stand-ups

Otter.ai joins Zoom, Teams or Google Meet calls and produces transcripts with speaker labels, summaries and action items.

What stands out:

• A free plan with real utility
• Live transcription during video calls
• Speaker identification
• AI chat about past conversations
• Calendar and CRM integrations

For meeting minutes specifically: Otter produces transcripts and summaries, not a formatted minutes document. If you need official board minutes, plan on rewriting its output into minutes form. For informal team meetings where notes and action items are enough, Otter works well.

Who it's for: Professionals who want affordable transcription for everyday meetings.

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5. Fireflies.ai: Best for Sales and Customer Teams

Price: Free plan available. Paid plans (Pro, Business, Enterprise) are billed per seat; Fireflies' pricing page did not show prices in its text when we checked in October 2026, so confirm current prices on its site. Best for: Sales teams, customer success, team collaboration

Fireflies.ai focuses on business meeting intelligence: recording, notes, action items, analytics, and pushing meeting data into CRM and project tools.

What stands out:

• CRM and app integrations on paid plans
• Team analytics and cross-meeting search
• Video recording and team features on Business

For meeting minutes: like Otter, Fireflies produces meeting notes, not formatted minutes. It is a strong fit for a sales team that wants meeting data in its CRM. It is not built for the motions-and-votes record a board needs.

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6. Microsoft Copilot: Best for Microsoft 365 Teams

Price: A per-user add-on on top of a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan, about $30/user/month for enterprise, with a lower small-business price. Microsoft's pricing page did not load when we checked on October 20, 2026; these figures come from our July 2026 review, so confirm current pricing with Microsoft. More detail in Purpose-Built AI for Boards vs. Microsoft Copilot. Best for: Organizations that already hold their meetings in Microsoft Teams

Copilot works inside Teams meetings, producing recaps, action items and suggested follow-ups.

What stands out:

• Built into Teams, no extra software
• AI recaps and suggested follow-ups
• Works across Outlook, SharePoint and the rest of Microsoft 365

For meeting minutes: Copilot produces meeting recaps, not formatted governance minutes, and it only helps with meetings held in Teams. Licensing is per person, so the cost grows with the size of the board.

Who it's for: Microsoft-heavy organizations that want AI help inside their existing workflow.

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7. Notion AI: Best for Teams That Work in Notion

Price: Notion AI is included in the Business plan ($20/member/month); Free and Plus include a limited trial Best for: Teams that already keep their documentation and projects in Notion

Notion AI summarizes and organizes notes inside a Notion workspace. On Business and above, Notion's AI Meeting Notes transcribes meetings and writes a summary, with no bot joining the call.

What stands out:

• Lives inside the workspace your team already uses
• Summaries and action items linked to projects and tasks

For meeting minutes: Notion produces notes and summaries. It has no concept of motions, seconds and votes, and no minutes format for a governing body.

Who it's for: Teams that already run on Notion and want organized meeting notes.

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How to Choose the Right Tool

If you need official board governance minutes:

• BoardBreeze for school boards, nonprofits, HOAs, community colleges, townships and cities, especially if you want flat pricing, agenda-aligned drafts, or to paste a link to your meeting video
• ClerkMinutes for municipal clerks who want an agenda builder and website publishing in the same tool
• Diligent for enterprise boards that need a full board portal and have an enterprise budget

If you need business meeting notes and action items:

• Otter.ai for general transcription with a strong free plan
• Fireflies.ai for CRM integrations
• Microsoft Copilot if your meetings happen in Teams
• Notion AI if your team already works in Notion

By budget:

• Free: Otter.ai or Fireflies.ai (general meetings; expect to rewrite the output into minutes)
• $29.99/month: BoardBreeze Essential (meetings up to 3 hours, 3 hours a month)
• $99/month: BoardBreeze Pro (40 hours a month, up to 5 people, meetings up to 12 hours) or ClerkMinutes Starter billed yearly (5 meetings a month, 3 boards)
• Quote only: Diligent

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The Key Distinction: Notes vs. Minutes

This is the most important thing to understand when you compare tools.

Meeting notes (what most tools produce): informal summaries of discussion, action items and decisions. Useful for internal teams.

Meeting minutes (what governing bodies need): the official record of a board's proceedings, with attendance and quorum, motion language, movers and seconders, and vote results. Once approved, minutes are subject to public records laws, discovery in litigation and audit.

Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, Copilot and Notion AI are good at the first. They are not designed for the second.

If you are a board clerk, executive assistant or board secretary responsible for official records, you want a tool built for minutes.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best meeting minutes software in 2026?

It depends on what kind of minutes you produce. For official board minutes, purpose-built tools draft from the recording: BoardBreeze ($29.99/month Essential, $99/month Pro) and ClerkMinutes ($99/month billed yearly or $129/month billed monthly for Starter). For large enterprise boards that need a full board portal, Diligent leads, and it now drafts minutes with AI from agendas, notes and transcripts. For internal business meetings, Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, Microsoft Copilot and Notion AI produce notes and summaries rather than formal minutes.

Is there free meeting minutes software?

Otter.ai has a free Basic plan (300 transcription minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation) and Fireflies.ai has a free plan. Both produce transcripts and notes, not formatted board minutes. For purpose-built board minutes, BoardBreeze offers a 15-day free trial with 3 hours of meetings and no credit card, and ClerkMinutes offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card.

What's the difference between meeting notes and meeting minutes?

Meeting notes are informal summaries for a team. Meeting minutes are the official record of a governing body's actions: attendance and quorum, motions with mover and seconder, vote results, and actions directed. Once the board approves them, minutes become the authoritative record.

Do you need AI for meeting minutes?

You do not need it, but it changes the job from writing to reviewing. The clerk reads an AI draft that already follows the agenda and lists motions and votes, then corrects and approves it. Always read the draft against the recording before it goes to the board, because AI can miss or mis-attribute things, especially with poor audio.

Can meeting minutes software work from a YouTube or Granicus video?

Some can. BoardBreeze accepts a pasted link to a Granicus, Swagit or Legistar meeting video, a Dropbox or Google Drive share link, or a YouTube video of your own organization's public meeting, so there is nothing to download or upload. ClerkMinutes says it imports meetings and integrates with YouTube and Zoom. General notetakers like Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai are built mainly to join live calls or take file uploads.

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Further Reading

• Board-specific comparison: Board Meeting Minutes Software: 6 Best Tools Compared (2026)
• Getting started: The Complete Guide to Board Meeting Minutes | How to Write Board Meeting Minutes
• Compliance: Open Meeting Laws by State: 2026 Guide
• Industry guides: HOA Meeting Minutes Software | School Board Meeting Minutes Software | Nonprofit Board Meeting Software
• Detailed comparisons: BoardBreeze vs ClerkMinutes | BoardBreeze vs Otter.ai | BoardBreeze vs Fireflies.ai | BoardBreeze vs Diligent

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Have questions about which tool is right for your organization? Email me at help@appboardbreeze.com. I personally respond to every message.