Backchannel vs Fellow

Backchannel is a self-hosted, open-source AI meeting assistant that captures local audio and produces live speaker-attributed transcripts and meeting insights without joining calls as a bot. It works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and in-person meetings. Five live agents can surface questions, objections, opportunities, and action items, while briefing lenses and an arbiter prepare a post-call summary. Users can ask questions against the live transcript while recording continues and save answers with the call. Model options include Google Gemini, OpenAI, local ONNX Whisper and Parakeet, and compatible servers such as Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, and LiteLLM. Recordings and transcripts remain on the user’s server, according to the maker. Desktop builds are listed for Windows x64, macOS Apple Silicon, and Linux x64, with Docker Compose for full self-hosting. The free plan has no hosted tier, seat pricing, or feature paywall, though hardware and configured API usage may cost extra.

Fellow is an AI meeting assistant that records and transcribes meetings, then creates a Meeting Recap with summaries, decisions and action items. It captures meetings through a bot, or its desktop and mobile apps can record audio directly without a bot joining. Supported settings include Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack Huddles and in-person meetings. Ask Fellow searches transcripts, summaries and notes from past meetings to answer questions or surface decisions and tasks. The service lists transcription in 99 languages, while its AI Note Taker description specifies 93. It is available on Android, iOS, macOS, Windows and web, plus an extension and API. The Free plan includes five AI notes and five AI recordings per user for life, with a maximum of five seats. Paid plans start at $7/user/mo billed annually; a 14-day trial is listed, and the workspace moves to Free when the trial ends. Meeting data is not used to train Fellow or third-party AI models, including on Free.