Zoom AI Companion vs Dedicated AI Note Takers (2026)

The short answer: Zoom AI Companion is enough if nearly all your meetings happen on Zoom and you want short summaries and action items. Choose a dedicated AI note taker if you also meet on Teams, Google Meet or in person, need CRM sync or sales analytics, or want sensitive conversations kept off a vendor’s cloud. For that last case, Hedy can process meetings on your own device; for CRM-heavy sales teams, Fireflies.ai is the strongest cloud option.

Zoom AI Companion has improved a lot since launch. The summaries are concise, it answers questions about the meeting while it’s happening, and because it’s built into Zoom there’s nothing to install and no bot in the call. We tested it against Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, Fathom and Hedy over six weeks, and re-checked Zoom’s plans and features against its documentation on October 14, 2026.

A naming note: in June 2026 Zoom retired the AI Companion brand. The features now sit inside Zoom Workplace, and a paid tier called ZoomMate ($16.67 per month billed annually, $20 monthly) carries the more advanced agentic tools. We use “AI Companion” here because that’s still what most people call it.

Zoom AI Companion vs dedicated note takers at a glance

What Zoom AI Companion does well

No friction. It lives inside Zoom, so there’s no separate app, no bot, and no switching tools to read your notes. Summaries and action items appear where you already work.

Solid transcription for clear calls. On standard English meetings with good audio we measured 88–91% accuracy. Speaker labels are reliable because Zoom already knows who’s in the call.

Useful in-meeting help. Join late and ask what you missed, or ask questions about the discussion while it’s still going. ZoomMate adds live audio translation.

A sensible data stance. Zoom’s terms say it does not use your audio, video or chat content to train AI, and it offers a HIPAA BAA.

Where it falls short

It’s centred on Zoom. My Notes now reaches Teams, Google Meet and in-person conversations, but the in-meeting features work best inside Zoom. If your week is split across platforms, your notes still end up in more than one place.

Shallow analysis for sales and management. You get a short summary and action items, not talk ratios, objection tracking or coaching scorecards. Sales teams outgrow it quickly.

Limited sharing and integrations. Getting notes into a CRM, a project tool or a shared clip library takes more work than in dedicated tools.

Cloud only. All processing runs in Zoom’s cloud. For most meetings that’s fine. For conversations you’d rather never leave the room, it isn’t.

Investor and board calls

This is the question we hear most. For routine investor updates on Zoom, AI Companion is usually adequate, and its no-training terms help. The case for a dedicated tool rests on three things:

1. Not every board conversation is on Zoom. Board meetings are often in person, and investor calls happen on whatever platform the other side uses. A tool that records on your own device covers all of them in one place.
2. One searchable record. “What did we tell the board about runway in March?” is only answerable if every meeting landed in the same archive.
3. Where the recording lives. Deal terms, fundraising plans and personnel issues are exactly what you may not want on any vendor’s servers. Hedy can run transcription and AI locally on supported hardware, so nothing leaves your machine.

Whichever you use, tell everyone in the meeting it’s being recorded. Some jurisdictions require every participant’s consent.

Recruiting interviews

If your interviews are on Zoom and your recruiters already have AI Companion, start there. A separate tool earns its place when interviews also happen on Teams, Meet or in person, or when you want notes to land in your applicant tracking system without copy-pasting. Tell candidates up front that the interview is being recorded and transcribed.

Sales calls

This is where the gap is widest. Sales teams need CRM sync, talk-ratio and objection analytics, and coaching at scale, none of which AI Companion really does. See our best AI note takers for sales teams for the tools that do.

Who should stick with Zoom AI Companion

AI Companion is enough if all of these are true:

• Almost all your meetings are on Zoom
• You want summaries and action items, not analytics
• You don’t need to search across months of meetings on several platforms
• Standard cloud security meets your requirements
• You’d rather not pay for another subscription

If so, don’t add a tool you don’t need.

Who needs a dedicated tool

You meet on several platforms, or in person. Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai cover most platforms with a meeting bot or a desktop app. Hedy captures system audio on your device, so it works with any meeting app, and records in-person meetings from a phone or Apple Watch.

You need conversation intelligence. Fireflies’ talk-ratio analytics and Avoma’s coaching and deal tracking go well beyond AI Companion.

You want meetings processed on your own device. Hedy is the only tool here that can run the whole pipeline locally on supported hardware.

You want a searchable archive across everything. Dedicated tools index all your meetings, wherever they happened.

How to turn off Zoom AI Companion

For a whole account (admins): sign in to the Zoom web portal, open Admin Center, go to Settings, click Zoom AI, and switch off Allow Zoom AI on this account. This universal toggle is available on Pro, Business, Education and Enterprise accounts, with some exclusions.

For your own account: in the web portal go to Settings, open the AI Companion tab, and under Meeting turn off the features you don’t want, such as letting participants ask AI Companion questions during meetings.

If a setting is greyed out, an admin has locked it at the account or group level. Turning off Zoom’s own AI does not stop other people’s third-party note-taker bots from joining your meetings.

Our recommendation

Start with Zoom AI Companion. It’s included with paid Zoom plans, it’s built in, and it’s genuinely useful for basic notes. Use it for a few weeks.

If you find yourself wanting cross-platform coverage, deeper analytics, searchable history, or meetings that stay on your device, move to a dedicated tool. For privacy-sensitive work, Hedy’s on-device processing and system-audio capture address the limits of both AI Companion and cloud note takers. For integrations and sales analytics, Fireflies.ai is the strongest all-round cloud option.

Paying for a dedicated tool you don’t need is a waste. So is making do with AI Companion when your work clearly needs more.