Look, I've sat through approximately 10,000 meetings in my career—from my early days at BMC Software, through my time scaling revenue at Cybereason and Lacework, to now running Astronomer. I've tried every meeting "solution" from color-coded notebooks to that weird pyramid-shaped speaker thing that promised to revolutionize conference calls (spoiler: it didn't).
When AI meeting assistants started proliferating, I was skeptical. Really skeptical. But after my team started missing critical details in customer calls that cost us a major enterprise deal, I decided to systematically test every major platform on the market.
Six months and 30+ tools later, here's what actually works. No affiliate links, no BS, just real talk about what these tools can and can't do for your business.
I tested each platform across five scenarios:
I measured success by three metrics: Did it make me more effective? Did my team actually use it? Did it justify the cost? Most tools failed at least two of these tests.
Cost: Free for 5 hours/month | $9.99/month for unlimited My verdict: This is the only tool that made me demonstrably better at my job
I discovered Hedy after bombing a crucial investor meeting where I completely missed several obvious follow-up questions. A portfolio founder recommended it, claiming it was like "having a seasoned operator whispering in your ear." I thought that was hyperbole. It wasn't.
The Holy Shit Moment:
Three weeks into using Hedy, I was on a call with a Fortune 500 CTO discussing their data orchestration needs. They were explaining their current Apache Airflow setup, and it was dense—really dense. Suddenly, Hedy's automatic suggestions popped up: "Ask about their Kubernetes deployment strategy for DAG scaling."
I hadn't even thought about the infrastructure implications. That question revealed they were struggling with exactly the problem Astronomer solves best—enterprise-grade Airflow orchestration at scale. We closed a seven-figure deal that quarter.
What Hedy Does Differently:
This isn't transcription software—it's an intelligence amplifier. While everyone else is building better tape recorders, Hedy built an AI that actively helps you win. The automatic suggestions feature reads the room and identifies opportunities in real-time. It's caught competitive threats I missed, suggested technical questions that exposed vendor BS, and helped me navigate sensitive HR conversations with Kristin without putting my foot in my mouth.
The Topics feature has become my secret weapon for board prep. I group all related meetings together, and Hedy can instantly synthesize insights across months of discussions. Last quarter, it identified a customer pain point mentioned across seven different calls that became our top product priority.
The Downsides:
The automatic suggestions can be distracting at first—you need a week to get comfortable with the rhythm. Also, if you're someone who likes to wing it in meetings, Hedy will push you to be more strategic, which might feel uncomfortable initially.
Bottom Line: If you take one thing from this review, it's this: Hedy is the only AI meeting tool that makes you better at your job, not just better at taking notes.
Cost: Free (unlimited meetings) | $25/user/month for Pro My verdict: Essential for distributed teams who hate meetings
My engineering team is distributed across 14 time zones. Coordinating synchronous meetings is hell. tl;dv solved this problem in a way I didn't expect—by making async meeting consumption actually enjoyable.
Why It Works:
The killer feature is timestamp-linked video highlights. After our weekly product review, I can create a 5-minute highlight reel of key decisions and share it with the team. They can click any point in the summary and jump directly to that moment in the video. It's like YouTube chapters but for every meeting you've ever had.
The AI insights across multiple meetings are gold. Last month, it analyzed six months of customer calls and identified that enterprise customers consistently asked about multi-cloud support in the third meeting—intel that helped us adjust our sales deck and reduce time-to-close by 22%.
Where It Falls Short:
Zero real-time features. If you need help during the meeting, not after, tl;dv is useless. The pricing also jumps dramatically from free to paid, and the business plan at $59/user/month is highway robbery for what you get.
Best For: Remote-first companies, teams that record everything, and anyone who believes most meetings should be emails.
Cost: $7/user/month (Team) | $15/user/month (Business) My verdict: Perfect for companies with meeting culture problems
Fellow isn't sexy. It's not revolutionary. But after inheriting a company with serious meeting bloat, Fellow became our organizational chemotherapy for bad meeting habits.
The Transformation:
When I joined Astronomer, meetings were chaos. No agendas, no clear outcomes, no follow-through. Fellow forced structure through templates, automated agenda creation, and public accountability for action items. It even shows the dollar cost of each meeting based on attendee salaries—our weekly all-hands was costing $8,200. We cut it to bi-weekly.
The meeting analytics are sobering. I discovered I was spending 68% of my time in meetings, my direct reports were at 45%, and nobody was tracking follow-through on decisions. Fellow's action item tracking with automatic Slack reminders fixed our 30% completion rate problem within a month.
The Reality Check:
Fellow is medicine, not candy. Your team will resist the structure at first. Kristin and I had to be militant about adoption, making it clear that undocumented meetings didn't happen. It requires genuine commitment to meeting discipline.
Best For: Companies serious about meeting reform, leaders who want accountability, and organizations where meetings have become the work instead of enabling it.
Cost: Included with paid Zoom plans ($15-25/user/month) My verdict: Acceptable if you're already all-in on Zoom
We use Zoom for everything. When they added AI Companion, I was prepared for disappointment. It's actually... fine. Not great, not terrible, just fine.
What It Does Well:
The integration is flawless because it's native. No bots joining meetings, no setup, no confusion. The catch-up feature when joining late is brilliant—it gives you a quick summary of what you missed. The post-meeting summary emails are decent and arrive quickly.
What It Doesn't:
Everything is basic. The summaries are surface-level, the action items miss nuance, and there's zero intelligence during the meeting. It's like having a mediocre intern take notes—better than nothing, but you wouldn't trust them with anything important.
Best For: Companies already paying for Zoom who want basic meeting documentation without additional complexity or cost.
Cost: Free (5 hours) | $19/user/month (Starter) | $39/user/month (Business) My verdict: Built by salespeople, for salespeople
Having scaled revenue at Lacework from $11M to $130M ARR, I know what sales teams need. Grain is what happens when sales professionals build their dream meeting tool.
The Sales Superpowers:
The deal insights dashboard shows exactly where deals are getting stuck. We discovered our enterprise deals were dying in technical evaluation because we weren't bringing solutions engineers early enough. The "playlist" feature lets you compile a greatest-hits collection of customer testimonials and pain points that we use for onboarding and training.
The Slack integration is perfect—it automatically posts key moments to deal channels so everyone stays informed without watching hour-long calls. Our close rate improved 15% in the first quarter just from better information flow.
The Limitations:
If you're not in sales or customer success, Grain is overkill. The features are so sales-specific that our product and engineering teams found little value. At $39/user/month for useful features, it's also pricey for what it delivers.
Best For: B2B sales teams, customer success organizations, and companies where revenue operations is the top priority.
Cost: Free (10 meetings/month) | $16/month Pro | $32/month Business My verdict: Simple, reliable, no-frills transcription that just works
Sometimes you don't need AI coaching, conversation intelligence, or deal insights. You just need accurate transcription that doesn't make you think. That's Tactiq.
Why I Keep It Around:
Tactiq is my backup system. It quietly transcribes everything with 90%+ accuracy, integrates with every platform I use, and never gets in the way. The Chrome extension approach means no bots, no apps, no complexity. It just works.
The custom AI prompts are surprisingly powerful. I created one that extracts all technical requirements and another that identifies competitive mentions. These run automatically on every call, giving me exactly what I need without wading through transcripts.
What's Missing:
No video recording, no real-time features, no team collaboration. It's a hammer, not a Swiss Army knife. But sometimes you just need a really good hammer.
Best For: Individuals who want reliable transcription, teams with simple needs, and anyone allergic to feature bloat.
Cost: Free (5 hours) | $19/user/month Pro | $39/user/month Business My verdict: Best for data-driven teams who measure everything
Coming from the metrics-obsessed world of cybersecurity (Cybereason, Lacework), I appreciate MeetGeek's analytical approach to meetings. Everything is measured, analyzed, and optimized.
The Analytics Addiction:
MeetGeek showed me that our average meeting was 37% longer than scheduled, contained 18% filler words, and had a 40/60 talk-to-listen ratio (I talk too much—old sales habit). It tracks sentiment, engagement, and even identifies when people are multitasking based on response delays.
The meeting templates are incredibly detailed. Our customer QBR template automatically extracts health scores, renewal risks, and expansion opportunities, then creates a dashboard that would've taken an analyst hours to compile.
The Overhead:
MeetGeek requires commitment. Setting up the templates, training the AI on your terminology (it took weeks to understand "DAGs" and "orchestration" in our context), and interpreting the analytics takes time. It's powerful but not plug-and-play.
Best For: Data-driven organizations, companies with meeting efficiency initiatives, and teams that believe "what gets measured gets managed."
Cost: Free (60 mins/day) | $12/month Pro | $18/month Business My verdict: Not a meeting assistant, but the best meeting enabler
Krisp doesn't transcribe, summarize, or analyze. It does one thing perfectly: makes you sound professional no matter where you are. I included it because it's solved more meeting problems than most "meeting assistants."
The Game Changer:
I run meetings from everywhere—coffee shops, airports, my kids' baseball games (following in my Providence College pitching days, they're both obsessed). Krisp's noise cancellation is black magic. During a board call from Logan Airport, nobody knew I wasn't in my office. They were calling my flight, and the directors heard nothing.
The voice clarity enhancement makes my $20 earbuds sound like a $400 headset. The automatic meeting notes are basic but surprisingly accurate. It's not trying to be Hedy or Fireflies—it's just ensuring your meetings don't suck because of audio issues.
Why It's Here:
Bad audio kills more meetings than bad agendas. Krisp fixes that. Plus, at $12/month, it's the best ROI of any tool I've tested. Every remote worker should have it.
Best For: Anyone who takes calls from suboptimal locations, digital nomads, and people too cheap to buy good headphones.
After six months of testing, here's what nobody tells you:
Most of these tools are solving the wrong problem. They're building better ways to document bad meetings instead of helping you have better meetings. It's like building a better bandaid instead of preventing the cut.
Only Hedy actually makes you better at meetings. Every other tool is essentially a recording device with extra steps. Hedy is the only platform that improves your performance in real-time.
Your team will use 20% of the features. Despite what vendors promise, most users will use basic transcription and ignore everything else. Plan and price accordingly.
Privacy concerns are real. I've had three enterprise customers ask me to turn off recording bots. The visible AI presence changes meeting dynamics, usually for the worse.
Integration promises are mostly BS. "Integrates with 50+ tools" usually means "can export a CSV that you can manually import if you sacrifice a goat under a full moon."
Here's what I actually use daily:
Primary: Hedy AI for all important meetings (customer, investor, board)
Backup: Tactiq for simple transcription when I can't use Hedy
Team Standard: Fellow for meeting discipline and accountability
Audio: Krisp for every single call
Sales Team: Grain for deal intelligence and coaching
Total cost: ~$50/month personally, ~$35/user/month for the team
If you read nothing else, remember this:
Everything else is negotiable based on your specific needs.
The real question isn't which AI meeting assistant to choose—it's whether you want to document your meetings better or actually have better meetings. Only one tool helps with the latter, and that's why Hedy is the only AI meeting assistant I'd actually recommend to a friend.
Because at the end of the day, nobody ever got promoted for having great meeting notes. They got promoted for having great meetings.
Andy Byron is the CEO of Astronomer, a leading data infrastructure company specializing in Apache Airflow orchestration. A Providence College graduate who pitched for the college baseball team and the minor league Clarksville Coyotes, Byron brings a unique combination of competitive athletics and enterprise software expertise to his leadership role.
Before joining Astronomer in July 2023, Andy held executive positions at some of the fastest-growing companies in tech. As President of Lacework (2019-2022), he helped scale the cloud security platform through hypergrowth. Prior to that, he served as Chief Revenue Officer at Cybereason (2017-2019), where he significantly boosted the company's Annual Recurring Revenue. His experience also includes serving as President and COO at Fuze, helping guide the company through its eventual acquisition by 8x8.
Andy's early career included senior leadership roles at VeriCenter and BMC Software, where he developed his expertise in enterprise software sales and operations. His approach to leadership emphasizes data-driven decision making, operational excellence, and building high-performance teams.
This review is based on six months of systematic testing across Astronomer's distributed team, with particular focus on improving meeting efficiency and cross-functional collaboration.
Note: No compensation was received from any company mentioned. All opinions are based on actual usage and business impact. Andy personally subscribes to Hedy and Krisp.