I’ve tried every free AI note-taking app and found the one that actually works

I’ve lost track of how many AI note-taking apps I’ve installed this year.

Every week there’s a new program that promises to record, transcribe, and summarize my meetings, and every week the free tier either collapses after 30 minutes or locks the AI ​​features behind a pool of credits that runs out within days.

After a few weeks of using the popular apps on Android instead of just reading their marketing pages, I kept coming back to Otter. It’s not perfect, and I’ll get to where it’s lacking in a moment, but it’s the only free AI note-taker for Android that can stand up to serious use.

Here’s what it does right and what the rest does wrong.