Every "free" transcription plan in this category has a meter somewhere. The caps come in three disguises: a minutes quota (Otter's 300), a storage ceiling (Fireflies' 400), or a clock that deletes your history (Granola's 30 days). They exist for an honest reason — cloud minutes cost the vendor money — and they fail for the same honest reason: a real meeting load blows through a demo allowance in a week. Unlimited free transcription exists, but only from tools with no per-minute costs. Here's the field, verified against vendor pages this month.
The free tiers, side by side
| Tool | Free tier | Where it bites |
|---|---|---|
| Otter.ai | 300 min/month, 30-min cap per conversation | 25 most recent conversations kept; history evaporates |
| Fireflies.ai | Unlimited transcription | 400 min storage per team — a hard stop; no downloads on free |
| tl;dv | Unlimited transcripts | 10 AI-note meetings, 5 uploads, ~3-month retention |
| Fathom | Unlimited recordings + transcriptions | 5 AI summaries/month; recordings live in their US cloud |
| Granola | Full feature set, no recording cap | 30-day history; notes require an account + calendar |
| Tactiq | Live tab transcription | 10 transcripts/month, 5 AI credits |
| Krisp | — | 7-day trial only; no permanent free tier |
| QuickSpeak | Unlimited recording & transcription | No meter: full history, .txt + audio export included |
Per each vendor's pricing page, October 2026. We make QuickSpeak; every competitor figure links to their own page in our full comparison.
Why the caps exist — and why one tool doesn't need them
A cloud notetaker pays for every minute you record twice: once for storage, once for the compute that transcribes it. The free tier is a customer-acquisition cost, so it's sized like one — big enough to hook you, small enough that a real workload hurts. Otter's 300 minutes sounds fine until you meet your actual calendar: five one-hour calls a week is 1,200 minutes a month, four times the allowance. Fireflies lets you transcribe unlimited minutes but stores only 400 of them per team, and the stop is hard — you can't view new meetings until you delete old ones. The caps don't just limit you; they curate you toward the paid plan.
QuickSpeak's free tier has no meter because there's nothing to meter. Transcription runs in WebAssembly on your machine, your browser stores your history, and your disk holds your exports. When the compute bill is yours anyway — and your laptop has the capacity — "free" stops being a demo budget and becomes just how the tool works. The business model charges for the Pro layer on top: live captions, cross-meeting search, persistent speaker profiles, on-device AI briefs, richer exports. Every install starts with 14 days of that full Pro, no card, so you can decide from the whole product.
What "free" should include — a buyer's checklist
Compare free tiers on four questions, not one:
- Is there a minutes or transcript quota? Count your last month's meetings and multiply by their average length before believing any allowance is enough.
- Does history expire? A 25-conversation window or a 30-day clock means the free plan forgets — and meeting history is the asset you're building.
- Can you get your data out? Export behind a paywall means your transcripts are hostage until you upgrade. Fireflies' free plan downloads nothing; QuickSpeak's exports .txt and audio from day one.
- Where does the data live? Free cloud storage of your meetings is the actual product being sold. Local storage means the free tier costs the vendor nothing and you everything-not-much.
The honest trade
Cloud free tiers buy you frontier-model AI summaries and team polish with your data and your upgrade path. The local trade gives up the frontier model (a small on-device LLM writes plainer briefs) and the team features, and in exchange the free tier never runs out, the history never expires, and the export button is never grayed out. If your meeting load is real rather than hypothetical, that trade tends to settle itself.
FAQ
Is there truly free unlimited meeting transcription?
Yes — QuickSpeak's free tier has no minutes meter because transcription runs on your machine. Unlimited recording and transcription, full history, .txt and audio export, no card required.
Why do cloud tools cap the free plan?
Every recorded minute costs them storage and compute. Local tools have no per-minute cost, so there's nothing to ration.
Which cloud free tier is least restrictive?
Fathom's — unlimited recordings and transcriptions with five AI summaries monthly. Its limits are custody (US cloud, account + calendar required) rather than quantity.
What does QuickSpeak Pro add, then?
Live captions during calls, search across all meetings, persistent cross-meeting speaker profiles, on-device AI briefs and transcript chat, and Markdown/JSON/WAV export — $12/month or $99/year, 14 days free on every install.