--- title: "Best Free Meeting Recorder for Mac (2026) — Mumr" description: "The best free meeting recorders for Mac in 2026, compared: Mumr, Granola, Otter.ai, Superwhisper, MacWhisper — free tiers, privacy, and which to pick." canonical: "https://mumr.app/best-free-meeting-recorder-mac" language: "en-GB" last-updated: "2026-10-09T17:59:00+01:00" source: "https://mumr.app — Markdown rendition of the HTML page at `canonical`" --- Comparison · 2026 # The best free meeting recorders for Mac Five genuinely useful options, compared honestly — including where each one beats Mumr. They split cleanly into two camps: local-first tools that keep your audio on your Mac, and cloud assistants that upload it for managed AI and team features. Last updated: 5 September 2026 · By Mumr · We make Mumr, so we've tried to be fair about where the others win. **How we picked, and what "free" means here.** Every tool below runs natively on macOS, records or transcribes a meeting, and has a tier you can use indefinitely without paying. "Free" is the part that needs stating plainly, because it means four different things in this category: free with no caps (Mumr), free with a usage cap (Otter's 300 minutes a month), free with the meeting-recording part behind Pro (MacWhisper), and free to run but assembled yourself (the open-source route, below). Each entry says which kind it is. Prices and limits are taken from each vendor's own pricing page rather than from a review, and the date they were last checked is on the table. Quick verdict - **Want it free and 100% on your Mac?** Mumr. - **Want managed AI + cross-platform sync + team features?** Granola. - **Want a bot to auto-join remote calls + real-time transcripts?** Otter.ai. - **Want system-wide dictation?** Superwhisper. **Want a full transcription toolbox?** MacWhisper. ## Free tiers at a glance | Tool | Free tier | Data location | Best for | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Mumr | Fully free, no caps | 100% on your Mac | Free, private, local notes | | Granola | Free (limited history) | Transcript in its cloud | Managed AI, teams, sync | | Otter.ai | 300 min/mo (30 min/meeting) | Audio + transcript in cloud | Remote calls, real-time | | Superwhisper | Free (small local models) | On-device (cloud optional) | Voice dictation | | MacWhisper | Free file transcription | On-device (cloud optional) | Transcription toolbox | Free-tier details come from each vendor's own pages: [Granola pricing](https://www.granola.ai/pricing), [Otter.ai pricing](https://otter.ai/pricing), [superwhisper.com](https://superwhisper.com/) and [MacWhisper on Gumroad](https://goodsnooze.gumroad.com/l/macwhisper). **Granola and Otter.ai were re-checked on 5 September 2026** and both were unchanged — Otter still caps the free tier at 300 minutes a month and 30 minutes per conversation, with Pro at $8.33/user/month billed annually; Granola's free plan still gives limited meeting history, with Business at $14 and Enterprise at $35 per user per month. Superwhisper and MacWhisper were last checked on 28 June 2026. Free tiers move often, and a comparison table that does not say when it was last read is worth very little. ## 1\. Mumr — free, records and transcribes on your Mac, no account Mumr records your mic plus the meeting's system audio, transcribes it on your Mac (Apple Speech, WhisperKit, or FluidAudio Parakeet), and summarises with the AI you choose. Capture and transcription never leave the machine, there's **no account and no Mumr cloud**, and it's **free with no caps**. No bot joins the call. It's a free download on the [Mac App Store](https://apps.apple.com/app/id6773110790) and needs macOS 15 or later. The trade-off: it's Mac-only, post-meeting (no live transcript), and has no built-in team sync. Best if your priority is free, private, local notes you own. ## 2\. Granola — bot-free, managed AI, cross-platform Granola is a polished AI notepad: you jot sparse notes during the call and it fleshes them out from the transcript. It's bot-free and runs on macOS, Windows and iOS with cross-device sync, managed AI (no API key), and team features. The catch for privacy-minded users: transcripts are stored in Granola's cloud and it trains on anonymised data by default, and serious use is a per-seat subscription. [Mumr vs Granola →](https://mumr.app/compare/granola-alternative) ## 3\. Otter.ai — real-time, auto-join bot, cross-platform Otter is a full meeting-workflow product with real-time transcription, an optional bot that auto-joins Zoom/Teams/Meet from your calendar, team collaboration, and CRM integrations. Its free tier is capped at 300 minutes a month and 30 minutes per meeting, and it uploads your audio to its cloud. Best for distributed teams that live in remote calls. [Mumr vs Otter.ai →](https://mumr.app/compare/otter-ai-alternative) ## 4\. Superwhisper — dictation-first, with a meeting mode Superwhisper's main job is system-wide voice dictation — speak into any app — with a meeting-transcription mode added on. It's local-first with optional cloud models, cross-platform, and has a free tier; larger models and file transcription are Pro. Best if you mostly want to dictate. [Mumr vs Superwhisper →](https://mumr.app/compare/superwhisper-alternative) ## 5\. MacWhisper — broad on-device transcription toolbox MacWhisper is a mature, do-everything transcription app: dictation, batch and YouTube transcription, subtitle export, many models. Its free tier handles file transcription, but recording meetings (system audio) and the large models are paid Pro. Best if you want a general transcription workbench, not just a meeting recorder. [Mumr vs MacWhisper →](https://mumr.app/compare/macwhisper-alternative) ## 6\. The open-source route — free, but you assemble it Worth knowing about if "free" is the binding constraint and you do not mind a build step. [Recap](https://github.com/RecapAI/Recap) is MIT-licensed, macOS-native, and runs the whole pipeline locally — WhisperKit for transcription, Ollama for summarisation, with OpenRouter as an optional cloud path. It needs macOS 15 or later and Apple Silicon, and at the time of writing it has around 712 stars on GitHub. There are several projects in this shape; Recap is the most established of them. The honest trade is not the software, it is the assembly. You build from source, install and run a local model server, and keep both updated yourself. That is a real cost and it is the reason this is a separate section rather than a row in the table above — it is not comparable to downloading an app. But if you want a free, local meeting recorder and you would rather read the code than trust anyone's description of it, this is the category that exists for you, and Mumr does not pretend otherwise. ## How to choose - **Privacy and price first** → Mumr (free, on-device, no account). See [local transcription on Mac](https://mumr.app/local-transcription-mac). - **Cross-platform + managed AI + teams** → Granola. - **Remote calls, a bot, and real-time transcripts** → Otter.ai. - **Dictation everywhere** → Superwhisper. **A transcription toolbox** → MacWhisper. - **You would rather read the source than trust a description** → the open-source route above. ## The free, local pick Mumr records, transcribes and summarises your meetings on your Mac — free, no account, no cloud, no bot. [Download for Mac](https://mumr.app/download) Free on the Mac App Store · macOS 15 or later ## FAQ ### What's the best free meeting recorder for Mac? It depends on your priority. For free notes that stay on your Mac with no account, Mumr; for cross-platform sync and managed AI, Granola's free tier; for remote calls with a bot and real-time transcription, Otter.ai's free tier. ### Which is the most private? Mumr — capture and transcription stay on your Mac with no account or backend. MacWhisper and Superwhisper are local-first too but gate meeting recording or large models; Granola and Otter use the cloud. ### Can I record a meeting free without a bot? Yes — Mumr captures your mic plus the call's system audio locally, no bot, nothing uploaded, on any plan. See [how to record a meeting on a Mac](https://mumr.app/record-meeting-mac).