The honest comparison
How private is your meeting tool, really?
Most meeting tools answer the same three questions the same way: your audio is processed in their cloud, stored under their terms, and run through a model you don't control. Here's where each one stands on the things that decide whether your meetings stay yours.
| Daisy | Otter | Fireflies | Fathom | Granola | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Botless meeting recording | 1 | ||||
| Processed entirely on your device | |||||
| Your recordings & data stay on your machine | |||||
| Bring your own AI model or key | |||||
| No account required | |||||
| Works fully offline |
Summaries, Q&A, and coaching need a language model — with Daisy you run one locally or bring your own key, so even that step can stay private. Everything else (recording, transcription, speaker identification, search) is on-device.
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Notes & honesty
- Fathom — botless is optional. It joins as a “Fathom Notetaker” bot by default but also offers a bot-free capture mode; the mark reflects that the option exists.
- “Processed entirely on your device” — recording, transcription, and speaker identification run locally; only AI features optionally send text to a model you choose. Granola is botless but captures audio locally and then processes notes in its cloud, which is why it earns the botless mark but not the on-device / data-residence ones.
- Otter and Fireflies join via a bot/companion with no botless option.
- Cells reflect each vendor's publicly documented behavior as of June 2026 and cover structural facts only — processing location, data residence, bring-your-own model, botless capture, account requirement, and offline use. Products change; check the vendor's current docs before relying on any single cell.