HumlaCompare
Humla vs Fellow
Fellow can skip the bot, but every recording still lands in its cloud. Humla keeps meetings on your Mac — and it's free.
- Free, no account
- Open source, MIT
- Apple Silicon, macOS 13 or later
In short
Which should you pick?
- Pick Humla for privacy, on-device processing, and price.
- Pick Fellow for integrations and enterprise controls.
Side by side
How they compare
An honest look. Humla wins on privacy, price, and openness; Fellow leads on integrations and enterprise controls.
| Humla | Fellow | |
|---|---|---|
| No bot joins the call | Optional (botless) | |
| Runs fully on your device | — | |
| Open source (auditable) | — | |
| Bring your own AI key / model | — | |
| Speaker labels (who said what) | ||
| AI summaries & action items | ||
| App integrations (Slack, CRM…) | — | |
| Mobile app | — | |
| Price | Free | Free / $11–23/user/mo |
Reflects each product's standard plans as of 2026. Check their sites for the latest.
Why Humla
What you get instead
- No bot, and nothing uploaded. Fellow offers a botless desktop mode, but its own docs say audio is processed and stored in Fellow's cloud, never on your device. Humla records your Mac and can keep everything on-device.
- Nothing to train on. Your meetings never reach Humla — it only talks to the providers you choose.
- Free and open source. Fellow's free tier caps you at 5 AI notes for life, then runs $11–23/user/month. Humla is free forever and MIT-licensed, with optional sync at $5/user/month.
- Own your data. Notes live in local SQLite on your disk — no workspace to adopt, no vendor retention.
- Speaks your language. Around 99 languages via Whisper — on-device or with your own key — plus a dedicated Norwegian model and per-language routing.
See it work
One meeting, from agenda to recap
Write the agenda, record the call, press Summarize. Your note stays on the left while the transcript and the recap fill in on the right.
Humla
PersonalAdd team
Search notes⌘K
HomeAll notes5ChatImport audio
Folders
Brightleaf2Fjordline1Internal1
TrashSettings
Brightleaf kickoff
Agenda
Six pages, maybe a new CMS?
Keep the brand palette
Who signs off the budget?
Notes
Hanna approves budget, wants qu
Version history
SummaryTranscriptChat
English3 speakers
Recordingmic 14s · sys 14s · 6 chunks0:01
So the scope is six pages, and we move you off the old CMS while we're in there.
That works. Can we keep the current palette? People know the colours.
We'd only tighten the type. Budget sign off sits with Hanna.
Speakers are identified when you stop.
Being fair
When to pick Fellow instead
Humla isn't for everyone. Choose Fellow if:
- You want notes and action items pushed automatically into Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Jira, or Notion.
- You need Windows, iOS, and Android support with shared team libraries and admin controls.
- You need enterprise compliance out of the box (SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, provisioning).
Learn the terms
Related reading
- What is Meeting bot?A meeting bot is an automated participant that joins a video call to record and transcribe it, appearing in the attendee list like another guest.
- What is On-device transcription?On-device transcription converts speech to text entirely on your own computer, with no audio sent to a cloud service.
- What is Speaker diarization?Speaker diarization is the process of splitting an audio recording into segments by who is speaking, so a transcript can show “who said what.”
- What is AI notetaker vs AI notepad?An AI notetaker records and transcribes a meeting for you; an AI notepad is one you write in yourself while the AI augments your notes with the transcript.
Keep your meetings on your Mac.
Free and open source. Apple Silicon, macOS 13 or later.