Teams transcribes
the call.
Nobody dials in
from the room.
Teams transcribes the Teams call, with the names off the invite and the file under your company's own storage. MeetNotes records the meeting that has no call at all. An honest comparison, including what Teams does better.
When Microsoft Teams
is the right answer
We sell one of these two things, so read this part sceptically — and then check it against their site, which is linked at the bottom.
Your meeting is already a Teams call and your company already pays for Teams. Transcription is inside the meeting you were having anyway — nothing to install, nobody to remember to press record, and the transcript lands in the organiser's own OneDrive under rules your IT department already set.
You want speaker names you never have to confirm. A Teams transcript carries each speaker's name and a timestamp because the call already knows who joined it — no microphone in a room can match that.
You need the record to live inside your company's compliance, retention and admin controls. That is not a category we compete in, and for a regulated org it outranks everything else on this page.
What they are better at: If the meeting is a Teams call, Teams already has the audio, already knows who everyone is, and already stores the result under your company's rules. Nothing recorded by a phone lying on a table beats a transcript taken from the call itself. Teams also lists far more transcription languages than most of this category, and offers live translated transcription on its Premium tier. For an online meeting inside a Microsoft company, that is the tool.
When MeetNotes
is the right answer
There is no call. Six people, a table, a site visit after lunch — nothing is streaming, so there is nothing for Teams to transcribe.
The room switches language mid-sentence. Teams runs on one selected spoken language per meeting; if the room speaks another, Microsoft's own help page says it prompts the organiser to change it — and changing it changes the transcript for everyone. Here there is no language to pick before recording, because the sentence that starts in Hindi and ends in English is the normal case.
You need a document tonight, for people outside your tenant — a PDF or an editable Word file that opens for anyone, with no Microsoft account and no app.
You want the meeting to end as minutes rather than as a transcript: summary, decisions, and action items carrying an owner and a date.
The differences that
actually decide it
Structural facts only — no feature-count scoreboard, and no prices, because prices change and a stale price is a false claim.
| Microsoft Teams | MeetNotes | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the audio comes from | The Teams call itself | Your phone's microphone, in the room |
| Speaker names | From the call — name and timestamp on every line | From the voices, and you confirm them before export |
| A meeting with no call at all | Nothing to transcribe | The entire product |
| Language | One spoken language selected per meeting | None selected — the room speaks what it speaks |
| Recipient needs an account | Generally, inside your tenant | No — the PDF and the share link open for anyone |
| Shape of the output | A transcript of the call | Minutes: summary, decisions, action items with owners |
Same recording.
Both tools. Scored blind.
We put a 38-minute cross-border partnership call through both and had it scored blind. Teams was the more complete of the two transcripts — it caught more of the small talk and more of the words. What it did to the proper nouns is the reason we publish it.
“Zero”
The word wasXero
“my orb / my op / my ops”
The word wasMYOB
“Israel”
The word wasNew Zealand
“Datablix · Jenny · Vortex AI”
The word wasDatabricks · Genie · Cortex AI
A fifth error is not shown: the product the entire meeting was about, rendered throughout as an unrelated personal name. It is withheld because naming it would identify the company whose meeting this was. The supplied Teams export contained the transcript only — no summary or action-item section — so nothing on that side was scored against our minutes. That is what was in the file we were given, not a statement about what Teams can produce.
One meeting is one meeting: this is what happened to this recording on this day, not a general ranking and not a claim about your audio. The scores, the rubric and how the run was judged are on the open challenge page.
Record one meeting.
Run both. Let an AI
judge them blind.
A comparison page written by a vendor is worth nothing next to a test you run on your own audio. Ours is published in full: a protocol, a judge prompt that names no product, and a standing promise to publish the head-to-heads we lose.
- A Teams transcript carries each speaker's name and a timestamp, and is stored in the meeting organiser's OneDrive for Business — support.microsoft.com — "View live transcription in Microsoft Teams meetings", checked 26 August 2026
- Transcription runs on one selected spoken language; if people speak another, Teams prompts the organiser to update it, and the change applies to everyone — support.microsoft.com — same page, checked 26 August 2026
- Teams lists 40+ transcription languages, with live translated transcription on Teams Premium — support.microsoft.com — same page, checked 26 August 2026
Product names are the trademarks of their owners, used here to identify the products compared. If we have got something wrong about Microsoft Teams, write to support@getmeetnotes.com and we will correct it on this page.
The only comparison that counts is yours
100 minutes free. Record your next real meeting on both and see.
