Every AI note-taker produces a summary that is mostly right. The interesting question is what happens on the day it is wrong — when someone disputes a number in the recap, or a name comes back mangled, or a commitment you are sure was made is nowhere in the action items.
On that day only one thing matters: whether you can go back and hear what was actually said.
Circleback, Tactiq and AmyNote answer that question differently, and it is not a feature-list detail. Circleback keeps the video and the audio. Tactiq keeps only text, because it never records anything at all. AmyNote keeps the audio on the phone in your pocket. All three skip the meeting bot, so this is not the usual bot versus bot-free argument — it is an argument about what is left over.
The Quick Verdict
Choose Circleback if you want the meeting to finish itself. It writes the notes, assigns the action items, pushes them into a thousand other apps, and keeps a playable recording. You pay for that: no free plan anywhere, and the highest price here.
Choose Tactiq if a transcript is all you need and you live inside Chrome. It has the only free-forever plan here, and at 8 dollars a month billed annually the cheapest paid tier. Accept that when the transcript is wrong, there is no audio to check it against.
Choose AmyNote if your meetings happen away from a laptop and you want one flat price. It records on your iPhone, handles 140 languages, and costs 99 dollars a year for the whole account rather than per seat. iOS only.
What We Compared
Every figure below was read from the vendor’s own pricing page in August 2026, with Circleback’s and Tactiq’s monthly toggles switched in both directions. That detail matters more than it sounds: both pages open on the discounted annual view, so the number most review sites repeat is the yearly one quoted as though it were the month-to-month price.
All three price in US dollars, so the figures here are directly comparable without a currency conversion in the middle — which is not true of every comparison in this category.
The billing unit is not comparable, though. Circleback and Tactiq charge per seat. AmyNote charges once for the account. A per-seat number and a per-account number only become comparable once you decide how many people are involved, which is why the five-person arithmetic further down looks nothing like the headline row.
We did not score transcription accuracy head to head. Accuracy depends far more on microphone quality and room acoustics than on the vendor, and a benchmark produced in a quiet office would not survive contact with your actual meetings.
Circleback: Strengths and Weaknesses
Circleback is the most automated of the three. It joins from your calendar or captures through its desktop app, then writes structured notes, extracts action items and assigns them to specific people rather than leaving a bulleted list for someone to triage.
Strengths. Every paid tier includes AI notes for unlimited meetings, transcription with speaker recognition, and meeting video and audio playback — the differentiator that matters most here. It records in-person meetings and imports past recordings, so an archive of old calls can be brought in rather than stranded.
It supports over 100 languages and connects to more than 1,000 apps, with an API, a CLI, webhooks and an MCP server. It runs on macOS, Windows, iOS, Android and the web, the widest platform coverage in this comparison by a clear margin. Its FAQ is unambiguous: it does not train AI models on customer data.
Weaknesses. There is no free plan, only a trial, which makes Circleback the hardest of the three to evaluate slowly — you cannot leave it running on low-stakes meetings for a month and see whether the habit sticks.
Individual is 20.83 dollars per user per month billed yearly, or 25 month to month. Team is 25 and 30. HIPAA is gated to Enterprise, which means a sales call rather than a checkout page. And because it is per seat, a five-person team pays five times the headline number: 104.15 dollars a month on Individual, billed annually.
Tactiq: Strengths and Weaknesses
Tactiq is a Chrome extension that reads the meeting as it happens. Nothing joins the call, and the transcript is visible only to you unless you tell the room it exists.
Strengths. The free plan is genuinely free forever with no credit card, and includes 10 transcripts and 5 AI credits a month. Pro is 8 dollars per user per month billed annually, or 12 monthly, and lifts transcripts to unlimited. Team is 16.67 annually or 20 monthly for up to 20 users, with unlimited AI credits. Business at 29.17 annually adds SAML SSO plus beta MCP and Claude connectors.
It covers 60 languages and has over a million Chrome installs, which is a fair proxy for how little friction the install carries. Its AI runs through OpenAI’s enterprise API, which is not trained on submitted data.
Weaknesses. Tactiq never records audio or video. It keeps text and only text. When a transcript garbles a figure or drops a qualifier, there is nothing to re-listen to — which is the exact scenario this comparison is organized around.
It also needs a browser. The native Mac app is still beta and transcribes Zoom desktop calls only, with the download page stating plainly that it cannot yet handle Google Meet or Teams. There is no iPhone or Android app, and no in-person capture of any kind.
AI is credit-rationed below Team, so on Pro your eleventh summary of the month waits for the reset even though transcripts are unlimited. And note the asymmetry in file handling: Tactiq can transcribe a recording you upload, but it will never produce one.
AmyNote: Strengths and Weaknesses
AmyNote treats the phone as the recorder. You open the app in a room, a car, or a hallway, and it captures, transcribes and analyzes — no calendar connection and no meeting to join.
Strengths. Pricing is flat and per account rather than per seat: 12.99 dollars a week, 19.99 a month, or 99 a year, about 8.25 a month. There are no minute caps and no meeting counts on any plan.
It transcribes 140 languages and translates into 100, the broadest coverage here by a wide margin, and is tuned for East Asian and Arabic audio. Speaker identification persists across sessions, so a recurring participant stays recognized between meetings rather than being renamed every time. Transcription runs on OpenAI’s speech models and analysis on Anthropic’s Claude Opus. The trial is three days with no credit card.
Weaknesses, stated plainly. It is iOS only. No Android app, no desktop app, no browser extension, which rules it out for anyone whose meetings all happen on a work laptop. Both rivals here run somewhere AmyNote does not.
It has no CRM integrations, so nothing reaches Salesforce or HubSpot on its own. It does not record video. And it has no team administration, so shared workspaces, centralized billing and SSO are not options at any price.
Privacy. Both OpenAI and Anthropic contractually guarantee zero training on user data. Audio is encrypted in transit and not retained after processing. Transcripts are stored locally on the device with end-to-end encryption.
Side by Side
- What survives the meeting. Circleback keeps video, audio and text. Tactiq keeps text only. AmyNote keeps audio and text on the device.
- Cheapest usable plan. Tactiq at zero, capped at 10 transcripts a month. AmyNote at 99 dollars a year flat. Circleback at 20.83 per seat per month, with no free option at all.
- Where it runs. Circleback on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android and web. Tactiq in Chrome, plus a Zoom-only Mac beta. AmyNote on iPhone only.
- In-person meetings. Circleback and AmyNote yes. Tactiq not at all.
- Languages transcribed. AmyNote 140-plus, Circleback over 100, Tactiq 60-plus.
- Scaling to five people. Circleback Individual is 104.15 a month, Tactiq Pro is 40, AmyNote stays at 8.25 because it does not charge per seat.
- Integrations. Circleback over 1,000 apps plus API, CLI, webhooks and MCP. Tactiq workflow integrations, with beta MCP on Business. AmyNote none.
Three Buyers, Three Different Answers
An eight-person agency where every call spawns follow-up work. Circleback is the answer, and the per-seat price is the wrong thing to look at. If a client call should automatically create the task, assign it to the right person and update the project tracker, nothing else here comes close — Tactiq gives you a transcript and no assignment, AmyNote gives you a recording and no integrations. Budget 166.64 a month for eight seats on Individual, billed annually, and note that HIPAA means an Enterprise conversation if the work touches health data.
A solo consultant on Google Meet who wants a searchable archive for almost nothing. Tactiq Free is a real answer, not a demo, provided ten meetings a month covers you. At 8 dollars annually, Pro removes the transcript cap entirely. The trade is permanent and worth naming: you are buying a text record with no fallback. If a client ever disputes what was agreed, you have your transcript’s word for it and nothing behind it.
A two-person practice meeting clients in person, in Mandarin and English. Tactiq is out before price enters the discussion, because there is no browser tab in a face-to-face meeting and no phone app to fall back on. Circleback would work and would cost 41.66 a month for two seats. AmyNote covers the languages more broadly and charges 8.25 for the account regardless of how many meetings happen. The catch is iOS — if either person carries an Android phone, Circleback is the answer instead.
The Bottom Line
These three are not competing for the same buyer, and the pricing pages disguise how differently they are built.
Circleback is right when meetings are the center of your job and you want the follow-up work to happen without you. It is also the only one here that hands you a video to scrub through when someone disputes the recap, which is worth more than it sounds on the one day a quarter you need it.
Tactiq is remarkable value when you take calls in Chrome and want a searchable record for almost nothing. Just go in with clear eyes: text is the only artifact you get, and no tier changes that.
AmyNote is right when your meetings happen in rooms rather than tabs, when the languages in the room are on nobody’s short list, and when one predictable fee beats per-seat arithmetic. It records on the device you already carry and keeps the audio where you can check it.
Just be certain everyone who needs it is on an iPhone, because today that is the only door in. If that fits, the trial at amynote.app runs three days with no limits and no credit card.
Originally published as an X Article by @AmyNoteApp.
