Open-source alternatives to Otter.ai and Fireflies
Search for an open-source meeting assistant and you get a list that mixes three different things: projects that really are open source, products with an open-source component around a closed core, and closed products that turn up because someone wrote “open” in a headline. The licence is checkable, so this page checks it — each row below was read from the project’s own repository or terms, not from a directory listing.
There is a second axis that matters more day to day, and it is not about licences at all: whether the tool joins your call as a participant. A bot appears in the attendee list, has to be admitted, and is visible to everyone in the room. That is a different conversation with your colleagues than a recorder that runs in your own browser tab.
What is actually open source
| Tool | Licence | Bot in the call? | Where the audio goes |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenNoteTaker | MIT or Apache-2.0 | No — records the tab | Stays in the browser |
| Meetily (Community Edition) | MIT; the Pro edition is not | No — records the device | Local, with optional cloud models |
Hyprnote (now anarlog) |
MIT since April 2026 — it was GPL-3.0 before, so older articles are out of date | No — records the device | Local |
| whisper.cpp / Whisper | MIT | Not a meeting tool — it is the transcription engine several of these use | Wherever you run it |
| Otter.ai | Closed. The terms forbid attempting to discover the source | Yes | Their servers |
| Fireflies.ai | Closed. Small SDKs exist, the product does not | Yes | Their servers |
| Granola | Closed | No — records the device | Their servers |
Two things worth pulling out of that table. Whisper is not a competitor to any of these — it is the model most of the local ones run, including this one, so “an open-source alternative to Whisper” is a category error. And not sending a bot is not the same as being open source: Granola is closed and still does not join your call, while a tool can be MIT-licensed and still upload every minute of audio to somebody’s server. The two questions are independent, and both are worth asking.
How to check a claim yourself
- Find the licence file in the repository the product actually ships. An SDK or a plugin under an open licence tells you nothing about the product it talks to. Fireflies publishes small client libraries; the service behind them is closed.
- Check the date on whatever you are reading. Hyprnote relicensed from GPL-3.0 to MIT in April 2026 and changed its name. Every article written before that describes a project that no longer exists under that name.
- Open the network panel while the tool runs. This is the only one of the three that cannot be argued with. A tool that transcribes locally makes no request while it transcribes; one that does not, does.
Where OpenNoteTaker sits
It records the tab’s audio and your microphone together, transcribes with Whisper compiled to WebAssembly inside the page, separates speakers on your own machine, and exports SRT, VTT, Markdown, text, JSON, CSV or HTML. Nothing is uploaded to do any of that, and no bot appears in the participant list — the audio is already playing in your browser, so there is nothing to admit.
The parts that cannot run locally are named and priced rather than bundled: AI-written minutes, questions across your whole library, and translating a finished transcript run on a server and are bought as credits. Everything else — recording, transcription in 99 languages, speakers, search, the summary pulled out of the transcript, every export format — is free, and runs on your own machine. Open the page with a connection, let the model download once, and the transcription itself needs no network after that.
Record a meeting · Read the source · What leaves your device
Licences were read on 30 September 2026 from each project’s own repository or terms of service. If one of them has changed since, the correction belongs in this page — it is in the same repository as the product.