How minutes compares
Most meeting note-takers — Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, tl;dv, Granola, MeetGeek and friends — are cloud SaaS: you sign up, a bot or their cloud records your calls, and your audio, transcripts, and summaries live on the vendor's servers under their terms, billed per seat.
minutes takes the opposite approach. It's open-source software you run on your server, with your speech-to-text and translation API keys. Your meeting audio and transcripts stay on infrastructure you control, in the region you choose. That's the whole point — and the main trade-off (you operate a server).
This page is here to help you choose honestly, including where the mature SaaS tools are simply further along.
At a glance
| minutes | Typical cloud note-taker¹ | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Self-hosted (your VPS / your cloud) | Vendor's cloud |
| Source | Open-source (MIT) | Proprietary |
| Where your data lives | Your server, your region (EU-friendly) | Vendor's cloud, often US |
| Pricing model | Your infra cost + your STT/LLM API usage, billed by the providers directly — no per-seat fee | Per-seat subscription (commonly ~$10–30/user/mo) |
| API keys | Bring your own (Soniox for STT, Anthropic for translation) | Bundled into the subscription |
| Capture | Browser extension grabs the meeting tab's audio — no bot joins the call | Often a bot that joins as a visible participant, or vendor cloud capture |
| Live translation | Built in — English, German, Persian (incl. right-to-left), live + on uploads | Varies; usually transcription + summaries, translation less common |
| GDPR controls | Consent gate, retention purge, and per-meeting erasure built in; data never leaves your box except to your STT/LLM providers | Varies by vendor and plan |
| Lock-in | None — plain Postgres + object storage you own; export to txt/md/json | Export varies; data in the vendor's system |
¹ "Typical cloud note-taker" is a generalization of the popular SaaS tools as of 2026. Vendors differ and change quickly — check the current details on each product's own site (see sources below). Some, like Fellow, advertise SOC 2 / GDPR / HIPAA; a few offer EU hosting. The structural point stands regardless: in a SaaS tool your meeting data is processed and stored by the vendor; with minutes it is processed and stored by you.
Where minutes is different
- You own the data. Audio and transcripts sit in your Postgres and your object store. The only third parties that ever see your content are the two you choose and pay directly: Soniox (audio → text) and Anthropic (text → translation). Nothing else leaves your box.
- It's open-source. Read the code, audit it, change it, self-host it forever. MIT licensed.
- No per-seat tax. You pay your VPS (~a few dollars/month for the showcase box) and your actual Soniox/Anthropic usage. Adding users doesn't add a subscription line.
- No bot in the meeting. The capture extension streams the tab's audio from a participant who's already in the call — there's no separate "Notetaker" bot showing up in the participant list.
- Live, multilingual. Transcribe and translate as the meeting happens across English/German/Persian, with proper right-to-left rendering — not just an after-the-fact summary.
- GDPR by construction. EU region, a consent gate, retention purges, and one-click meeting erasure are part of the product, not an enterprise add-on.
Where the SaaS tools are ahead
Being fair: the established products have had years and large teams. Today they generally do these better than minutes:
- AI summaries, action items, and "ask your meetings" chat — minutes focuses on an accurate live transcript + translation; rich post-meeting AI is not its focus (yet).
- Integrations — CRM sync, calendar auto-join, Slack/Notion/Drive exports, Zapier. minutes exports files; it doesn't wire into your stack.
- Mobile apps and polish — minutes is a web app + a Chrome extension. No iOS/Android app.
- Language coverage — minutes targets English, German, and Persian. The big tools support dozens.
- Zero-ops — they're sign-up-and-go. minutes asks you to run a server, manage users, and bring API keys.
- Maturity & support — minutes is a focused v1; the default single-box deploy is a low-cost showcase with no built-in HA or backups (see Limitations).
Choose minutes if…
- You (or your customers) must keep meeting data in-house or in the EU for privacy/GDPR/contractual reasons.
- You want open-source software you can audit and self-host, with no per-seat pricing.
- You mainly need an accurate live transcript + live translation across English/German/Persian, and you can run a small server.
Choose a cloud SaaS tool if…
- You want zero infrastructure and instant setup.
- You need deep integrations, polished AI summaries, mobile apps, or very broad language support today.
- Sending meeting data to a third-party cloud is acceptable for your use case.
Sources (AI meeting-notetaker comparisons, 2026 — verify current pricing/features on each vendor's site):