HumlaThe Best No-Bot Meeting Notetakers (2026)
Full disclosure: I make Humla, so weigh this accordingly. I've tried to be fair about where the others win.
What "no bot" actually means — and the catch
A meeting bot is the little "OtterPilot" or "Fireflies" participant that joins your Zoom/Meet/Teams call to record it. Bot-free tools skip that: they capture the meeting from your own device using system audio instead, so nothing shows up in the participant list.
Here's the catch most "no bot" lists miss: bot-free doesn't mean private. A tool can skip the bot and still upload every recording to its cloud to transcribe and store it. So there are really two questions:
- Does a bot join the call? (social friction, consent optics)
- Where does the audio go? (privacy, compliance)
The tools below all answer #1 the same way — no bot. They split hard on #2.
The short answer
- Bot-free and fully local (nothing leaves your Mac): Humla, anarlog, Meetily.
- Bot-free but cloud (no bot, but the recording still uploads): Granola, Fathom, tl;dv, Fellow, Krisp.
- Still use a bot (avoid if a bot in the call is your dealbreaker): Otter, Fireflies, Read.ai.
How they compare
| Tool | Bot-free? | On-device option? | Open source? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Humla | Yes | Yes — transcription + summaries | Yes (MIT) |
| anarlog | Yes | Yes | Yes (MIT) |
| Meetily | Yes | Yes | Yes (MIT, open-core) |
| Granola | Yes | No — cloud only | No |
| Fathom | Botless mode (Mac) | No — cloud | No |
| tl;dv | Botless desktop app | No — cloud | No |
| Fellow | Botless desktop mode | No — cloud | No |
| Krisp | Yes | Partial (English transcription only) | No |
Checked against each product's site, July 2026 — verify before you commit.
Bot-free and fully local
These skip the bot and can keep the whole meeting on your machine — the strongest privacy position.
- Humla — records your Mac's mic and system audio with no bot, runs transcription and summaries on-device with Whisper, and does offline speaker labels. Free and MIT. Mac-only (Apple Silicon), no mobile app.
- anarlog (formerly Hyprnote) — open-source, macOS-only, on-device, stores notes as Markdown files. Larger community and a plugin system; also Mac-only.
- Meetily — open-source and cross-platform (macOS + Windows), local Whisper/Parakeet transcription. Speaker labels aren't shipped yet, and some features are gated behind a $10/user/month Pro tier. See the full Humla vs Meetily comparison.
Bot-free, but it still goes to the cloud
No bot in the call — but the recording is uploaded and processed on the vendor's servers. Fine for many teams; not if your reason for going bot-free was privacy.
- Granola — a polished no-bot notepad, cloud-only, $14–35/user/month past a capped free tier. Great UX; no on-device mode. Humla vs Granola.
- Fathom — generous free cloud tier and video capture; its bot-free mode is Mac-only and either way the meeting lives in Fathom's US cloud. Humla vs Fathom.
- tl;dv — its desktop app records without a bot, but recordings save to the tl;dv cloud library; strong integration catalog. Humla vs tl;dv.
- Fellow — offers a botless desktop mode, though its own docs say audio is processed and stored in Fellow's cloud, never on-device. Humla vs Fellow.
- Krisp — genuinely bot-free with great noise cancellation; English transcription can run on-device, but summaries go to its cloud. Humla vs Krisp.
Which to choose in one minute
- No bot is enough, you're happy with cloud? Granola (polished) or Fathom (generous free tier).
- No bot and nothing leaves your machine? Humla, anarlog, or Meetily.
- Want who-said-what labels today, on-device? Humla or anarlog (Meetily hasn't shipped diarization).
- On Windows? Meetily.
Try Humla
Download Humla for macOS — free, open source, no bot, and no upload unless you choose it. There's a browser demo on the local page that transcribes in your tab without sending audio anywhere, and more on the approach on no bot in the call.