# The best AI note takers for job interviews

By [David Wilson](https://testbenchlab.com/authors/david-wilson/). Updated 2026-11-02. US prices checked 2026-10-29.

Notta is the AI note taker we would start with for job interviews: it transcribes in 58 languages, captures meetings with an auto-join bot or locally from its desktop app, and costs $8.17 a month — a fraction of dedicated hiring tools — which makes it the practical choice for solo interviewers and small teams that do not need ATS sync. If your interviews run in two languages, its bilingual add-on keeps both languages in one clean transcript. Choose Metaview ($60 per user a month for unlimited calls, free tier of 25 calls a month) if you need notes mapped to rubrics and written into Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever or another ATS; Fireflies.ai ($10 a seat a month, billed annually) for a cheap general note taker that also syncs to an ATS; and Granola if you want bot-free notes with no audio kept. Candidates should not record an interview without asking.

**How we assessed:** Hands-on checks were run by the author: Metaview (bot and bot-free desktop app, mock interviews), Fireflies (test ATS connection), Granola (bot-free mock interview) and Notta (bilingual English/Spanish session). Prices were re-checked on vendor pages on the publish date. Metaview's billing cadence is not stated on its pricing page and remains unverified.

## Quick list

| # | Award | Product | Score | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Best overall for interviewers | Notta |  | Pro $8.17/month billed annually ($97.99/yr); bilingual add-on $9/seat/month annual-equivalent |
| 2 | Best for ATS-synced interview notes | Metaview |  | Notetaker Free $0 (25 calls/month); Pro $60/user/month (unlimited calls); Enterprise custom |
| 3 | Best if your ATS already has one | Greenhouse Notetaker / Ashby AI Notetaker |  | Greenhouse: included in Core, Plus and Pro tiers. Ashby: paid add-on with 500 interviews to try |
| 4 | Best budget note taker with ATS sync | Fireflies.ai |  | Free $0; Pro $10/seat/month billed annually; Business $19 |
| 5 | Best bot-free option for a solo interviewer | Granola |  | Basic $0 (30-day history); Business $14/user/month; Enterprise $35 |

## 1. Best overall for interviewers: Notta

Notta covers the core of interview note-taking better than anything else at the price: accurate transcription in 58 languages, a choice of auto-join bot or bot-free desktop capture, and searchable transcripts with AI summaries you can turn into interview notes. Its bilingual add-on handles 23 language pairs, keeping an English/Spanish or English/Mandarin conversation in one clean transcript instead of two. At $8.17 a month it costs a fraction of dedicated hiring tools, and it works whether you interview alone or with a small team. It has no documented ATS integration, so notes stay in Notta rather than posting to the candidate record — if you need scorecard mapping into an ATS, look at Metaview below.

**Price:** Pro $8.17/month billed annually ($97.99/yr); bilingual add-on $9/seat/month annual-equivalent

**Choose it if:** You want reliable, affordable interview notes — especially across languages — and do not need them posted to an ATS automatically.

## 2. Best for ATS-synced interview notes: Metaview

Metaview is built for interviews rather than adapted from general meeting notes: it maps notes to rubrics and scorecard questions, syncs to Ashby, Greenhouse, Lever, Gem and SmartRecruiters, and offers a bot, a bot-free desktop app (added 12 October 2026) and a phone switchboard. Candidates get an opt-out. The free tier of 25 calls a month is enough to evaluate it on real interviews before paying.

**Price:** Notetaker Free $0 (25 calls/month); Pro $60/user/month (unlimited calls); Enterprise custom

**Choose it if:** You run interviews regularly and need notes that land on the candidate record in your ATS.

## 3. Best if your ATS already has one: Greenhouse Notetaker / Ashby AI Notetaker

No extra vendor to manage: notes land directly on the scorecard, and consent is handled inside the ATS. Greenhouse Notetaker joins Zoom, Meet and Teams automatically and lets candidates withdraw consent; note its 60-day maximum retention. Ashby AI Notetaker joins as a bot and defaults to one-year retention when enabled.

**Price:** Greenhouse: included in Core, Plus and Pro tiers. Ashby: paid add-on with 500 interviews to try

**Choose it if:** Your team already runs Greenhouse or Ashby and you want interview notes without adding another tool.

## 4. Best budget note taker with ATS sync: Fireflies.ai

Fireflies is a general meeting note taker with Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby integrations listed, plus the AskFred chat for querying past calls. At $10 a seat a month it is the cheapest way to get notes onto a candidate record. Watch the 2-hour meeting cap on the Free and Pro plans if your interview loops run long.

**Price:** Free $0; Pro $10/seat/month billed annually; Business $19

**Choose it if:** You want ATS-synced interview notes at the lowest price per seat.

## 5. Best bot-free option for a solo interviewer: Granola

Granola never joins the call: it records locally from your machine and deletes the audio after transcription, so there is nothing to leak but also nothing to replay. No ATS integration is documented, so it suits a solo interviewer or founder who keeps notes themselves rather than a team feeding an ATS.

**Price:** Basic $0 (30-day history); Business $14/user/month; Enterprise $35

**Choose it if:** You interview alone, want no bot in the room, and do not need ATS sync.

## Also considered

- BrightHire: Best for coaching interview panels, and Zoom-owned since December 2025, but pricing is quote-only. It is compared in depth in our hiring-teams guide.
- Otter.ai: Its Recruiting Agent syncs to Greenhouse via Zapier, but Otter was named in a consent class action that survived a motion to dismiss in August 2026 — a reminder that a visible notetaker is not the same as informed consent.
- AI Interview Companion by Employ (Pillar): Only sensible if you already run Lever or Jobvite. Pricing not published.
- Read AI: General meeting summaries with no scorecard or ATS link; its desktop mode drops speaker names, which matters when you need to know who said what.
- Zoom AI Companion / Teams Copilot: Built-in summaries are convenient but have no scorecard mapping or ATS link.
- HireVue: Scores candidates rather than taking notes — a different job with heavier audit duties. Quote-only pricing.

## How we chose

We researched this guide from vendor pricing and help pages checked on 29 October 2026, competitor research checked 2 September 2026, and hands-on checks. The author signed up for Metaview Free and ran mock interviews through both the bot and the bot-free desktop app, connected Fireflies to a test ATS, ran Granola on a mock interview to confirm audio is not retained, and ran a Notta bilingual session (English/Spanish) to judge whether the two languages stay separate. We favoured tools that state prices publicly, handle candidate consent clearly, and fit the person actually sitting in the interview chair — including small teams with no ATS.

## Which AI note taker should a hiring manager use for interviews?

Notta is the AI note taker we would put in front of a hiring manager first. It delivers accurate interview transcripts in 58 languages, works with or without a bot, and at $8.17 a month costs a fraction of the dedicated hiring tools — so you can run it on every interview without a budget conversation. If your interviews regularly run in two languages, its bilingual mode is something the dedicated hiring tools do not offer at anything close to its price. The main thing Notta does not do is post notes to an ATS: if you need rubric-mapped notes landing on the candidate record in Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever, Gem or SmartRecruiters, Metaview is the alternative if ATS posting is essential, and its free allowance of 25 calls a month lets you test it on real interviews before committing.

| Tool | Price (checked 29 Oct 2026) | ATS sync | Bot or bot-free | Audio kept? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Notta | Pro $8.17/month billed annually | None documented | Bot or desktop capture | Yes |
| Metaview | Free $0 (25 calls/month); Pro $60/user/month | Ashby, Greenhouse, Lever, Gem, SmartRecruiters | Bot, bot-free desktop app (Oct 2026), phone switchboard | Yes |
| Greenhouse Notetaker | Included in Core, Plus, Pro | Greenhouse (native) | Bot | Yes, up to 60 days |
| Ashby AI Notetaker | Paid add-on; 500 interviews to try | Ashby (native) | Bot | Yes, defaults to 1 year |
| Fireflies.ai | Free $0; Pro $10/seat/month billed annually | Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby | Bot | Yes |
| Granola | Basic $0; Business $14/user/month | None documented | Bot-free | No, deleted after transcription |

## Is a general meeting note taker good enough for interviews?

For notes, yes — and for most interviewers that is the whole job. General tools like Notta, Fireflies and Otter transcribe and summarise interviews well: Notta in particular handles 58 languages, keeps bilingual conversations in a single transcript, and produces searchable records you can review and turn into scorecard notes yourself. Where they stop is automation: dedicated hiring tools map notes to scorecard questions and sync them to the ATS, so the note lands on the candidate record instead of in a separate app you have to copy from. Greenhouse's Notetaker page and Metaview's product documentation both describe that scorecard mapping directly. If you are a solo interviewer or small team without an ATS, a general note taker like Notta is often all you need; if a coordinator has to move notes into an ATS by hand at scale, the dedicated tools earn their price.

## Should you use the note taker built into your ATS?

If you already run Greenhouse or Ashby, try the built-in option before buying anything else. Greenhouse Notetaker, launched in August 2026, is included in the Core, Plus and Pro tiers, joins Zoom, Meet and Teams automatically, and handles consent through self-scheduling or availability requests — candidates can withdraw. Note the 60-day maximum retention, which is shorter than most tools. Ashby AI Notetaker is a paid add-on that joins as a bot, comes with 500 interviews to try, and defaults to one-year retention when enabled. The trade-off is lock-in: the notes only exist inside that ATS, and you are choosing a note taker by choosing a platform.

## Does the note taker have to join the call as a bot?

No. Notta offers bot-free desktop capture alongside its auto-join bot, which is useful when a candidate is thrown by an extra participant. Metaview added a bot-free desktop app on 12 October 2026, and Granola has never joined a call — it records locally and deletes the audio after transcription. A bot is not inherently a problem — it makes recording visible — but some candidates act differently when a labelled recorder is in the room. We cover the bot versus bot-free trade-off for recruiters in depth in our guide to recording job interviews.

## How do you tell candidates an interview is recorded?

Tell them before the interview, in writing, and let them opt out. A visible bot is not consent: in August 2026 a federal court declined to dismiss most of a privacy case against Otter.ai on exactly that point — the fact that a notetaker was visible did not show participants knew they were being recorded. Greenhouse Notetaker handles this well, with withdrawable consent built into scheduling. If you use AI to analyse video interviews and you hire in Illinois, the Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act (820 ILCS 42) requires notice, consent and deletion within 30 days on request. Our guide to recording consent laws by state covers the all-party consent rules.

## Can candidates use an AI note taker in their own job interview?

Only if the employer agrees. Robinhood's interview guidance asks candidates not to use AI notetakers in live interviews unless told otherwise, and Ophy's policy tracker (checked 29 September 2026) lists Barclays, Salesforce and Wise with similar rules. Recording without consent can also break all-party consent laws. The practical advice: ask the recruiter before the interview. If you would rather not ask, take short handwritten notes during the call and write them up within the hour — memory for your own answers fades fast, and written-up notes carry none of the consent risk.

## How accurate are AI interview notes?

Good enough to draft from, not good enough to decide on. Treat every AI note as a first draft: check names, numbers and who said what before anything enters a scorecard — our guide to speaker identification explains why attribution errors happen. Reviewers on SocialTalent's Metaview-versus-BrightHire comparison reported weaker accuracy on non-English interviews and on technical jargon for both tools. If your interviews run partly or wholly in another language, that is a concrete reason to prefer a tool built around multilingual transcription: Notta transcribes in 58 languages and its bilingual add-on keeps two languages in one transcript, which reduces the language-switching errors that trip up hiring-first tools.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is Notta a good AI note taker for job interviews?

Yes — for most interviewers it is the best place to start. Notta transcribes interviews in 58 languages, lets you capture audio with an auto-join bot or bot-free from its desktop app, and turns each interview into a searchable transcript with an AI summary you can shape into notes, all for $8.17 a month. Its bilingual add-on keeps two-language interviews in a single transcript. The one thing it does not do is sync notes to an ATS, so if you need scorecard mapping into Greenhouse or Ashby, consider Metaview instead.

### Is it legal to record a job interview with an AI note taker?

Usually, if the candidate knows. Many US states are all-party consent states, meaning everyone on the call must agree to the recording. Tell candidates in writing before the interview and offer an opt-out — a visible bot on its own has been ruled not to demonstrate consent.

### Can I use Otter, Fireflies or Notta in my own job interview?

Only with the employer's agreement. Several employers, including Robinhood, Barclays, Salesforce and Wise, ask candidates not to use AI notetakers in live interviews. Ask the recruiter first; if you would rather not, take handwritten notes and write them up within the hour.

### Do candidates have to agree to an AI note taker?

Yes, in practice. Beyond consent-law requirements, an August 2026 court ruling in the Otter.ai privacy litigation held that a visible notetaker does not by itself show participants knew they were recorded. Tools like Greenhouse Notetaker and Metaview build candidate notice and opt-out into the workflow.

### What's the best free AI note taker for interviews?

Metaview's Notetaker Free tier, with 25 calls a month, is the most capable free option if you need notes that map to rubrics and sync to an ATS on paid plans. Fireflies has a free tier with a 2-hour meeting cap, and Granola's Basic plan is free with 30-day history. Notta's Pro plan at $8.17 a month billed annually is the cheapest paid option and the strongest choice for bilingual interviews.

### Does Notta sync interview notes to an ATS?

No ATS integration is documented. Notta keeps interview transcripts and summaries inside its own workspace, where you can search, edit and export them — but notes do not post automatically to a candidate record in Greenhouse, Ashby or Lever. For teams that need that automation, Metaview or the ATS built-ins are the better fit.

### Does Metaview work without a bot?

Yes. Metaview added a bot-free desktop app on 12 October 2026, alongside its auto-join bot and phone switchboard, so you can capture interview notes without a visible participant. Notta also offers bot-free desktop capture on its bot or bot-free plans.

## Related reading

- [The best AI interview note takers for hiring teams](https://testbenchlab.com/best/ai-interview-note-takers-for-hiring-teams/)
- [Meeting bot or bot-free recorder: what recruiters should use for interviews](https://testbenchlab.com/guides/meeting-bot-vs-bot-free-recorder-for-recruiters/)
- [What to compare in AI interview note-taking tools](https://testbenchlab.com/guides/choosing-ai-interview-note-taking-tools/)
- [Why speaker identification matters in interview transcripts](https://testbenchlab.com/guides/why-speaker-identification-matters/)
- [The best interview transcription software in 2026](https://testbenchlab.com/best/best-interview-transcription-software/)
- [One-party vs two-party consent states: can you use an AI voice recorder?](https://testbenchlab.com/guides/recording-consent-laws-by-state/)
- [How to record a Zoom meeting (and get an AI transcript)](https://testbenchlab.com/guides/how-to-record-a-zoom-meeting/)
- [How to record a Microsoft Teams meeting](https://testbenchlab.com/guides/how-to-record-a-teams-meeting/)

## Sources

1. [Metaview pricing (Notetaker tab)](https://www.metaview.ai/pricing?product=notes) — Metaview; vendor pricing page; checked checked 29 Oct 2026
2. [Botless notes and faster agents (bot-free desktop app announcement)](https://www.metaview.ai/resources/blog/october-2026-botless-notes-faster-agents) — Metaview; published 12 Oct 2026
3. [Greenhouse Notetaker product page](https://www.greenhouse.com/product-features/greenhouse-notetaker) — Greenhouse; checked checked 29 Oct 2026
4. [Ashby AI Notetaker add-on and documentation](https://www.ashbyhq.com/add-ons/ai-notetaker) — Ashby; checked checked 29 Oct 2026
5. [Fireflies pricing and ATS integrations](https://fireflies.ai/pricing) — Fireflies.ai; vendor pricing page; checked checked 29 Oct 2026
6. [Granola pricing (audio deleted after transcription on all plans)](https://www.granola.ai/pricing) — Granola; vendor pricing page; checked checked 29 Oct 2026
7. [Notta pricing (Pro $8.17/month billed annually; bilingual add-on)](https://www.notta.ai/en/pricing) — Notta; vendor pricing page; checked checked 2 Sep 2026, re-checked on publish
8. [Everything you need to know about interviewing at Robinhood](https://robinhood.com/us/en/careers/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-interviewing-at-robinhood/) — Robinhood; checked checked 29 Oct 2026
9. [Metaview vs BrightHire (2026)](https://www.socialtalent.com/compare/metaview-vs-brighthire) — SocialTalent; published 28 Jul 2026 (mod. 15 Oct)
10. [Companies That Allow AI in Interviews](https://ophyai.com/blog/interview-tips/companies-that-allow-ai-in-interviews) — Ophy AI; checked checked 29 Sep 2026
11. [In re Otter.ai Privacy Litigation](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-dis-crt-n-d-cal/322025.html) — US District Court, N.D. Cal. (via FindLaw); published 13 Aug 2026
12. [Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act (820 ILCS 42)](https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/ILCS/Articles?ActID=4015&ChapterID=68&Print=True) — Illinois General Assembly; published in force 1 Jan 2020