Bluedot vs Circleback
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
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The short answer
Editorial assessmentBluedot compared with Circleback
Both are bot-free premium notetakers at similar prices, roughly $20 against $21 to $25. Circleback wins on note quality, 100-plus languages, and the depth of its automation layer. Bluedot wins by keeping the video and letting you clip and comment on moments. Circleback for multilingual teams building workflows; Bluedot for recruiters and consultants who need playback.
Choose Bluedot if
Recruiters, consultants, and client-facing teams who need a recording they can replay and clip but cannot put a bot in front of the person they are talking to, and privacy-sensitive buyers who want a written no-training guarantee rather than a data processing agreement they have to negotiate.
Choose Circleback if
Teams of 2 to 50 who care more about note quality and post-meeting automation than about paying nothing, especially multilingual teams and anyone in healthcare or another regulated field who needs HIPAA without buying an enterprise tier.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Bluedot | Circleback |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Meeting Notes | Meeting Notes |
| Starting price | $0 (Free, 5 meetings lifetime), then $14 per user per month billed annually (Basic) | $0 (Free), then $15 per user per month billed annually (Pro; $18 monthly) |
| Pricing model | Per-user-per-month subscription with no minute or meeting meter on paid plans. Capability is tiered by recording type (audio versus video), recording length, template customisation, and integration depth. | Freemium per-seat subscription: a free plan with 30 days of history, Pro and Business billed monthly or annually, and a published annual-only Enterprise tier with volume bands. |
| Free plan | Five meetings for the lifetime of the account, one hour maximum per recording, with the Chrome extension, desktop and mobile apps, and basic integrations including Slack, Notion, Zapier, and Make. | Free forever: unlimited meetings and members, 30 days of meeting and recording history, limited automations, API, MCP, and CLI access, and 2 teams. |
| Free trial | No fixed-length trial; the free plan's five lifetime meetings serve as the evaluation | Paid plans can be trialled from the pricing page; the trial length is not published |
| Best for | Recruiters, consultants, and client-facing teams who need a recording they can replay and clip but cannot put a bot in front of the person they are talking to, and privacy-sensitive buyers who want a written no-training guarantee rather than a data processing agreement they have to negotiate. | Teams of 2 to 50 who care more about note quality and post-meeting automation than about paying nothing, especially multilingual teams and anyone in healthcare or another regulated field who needs HIPAA without buying an enterprise tier. |
| Setup time | Under ten minutes. Install the Chrome extension for browser calls or the desktop app for Zoom, Teams, and Slack, grant permissions, and record with one click. There is no calendar bot to configure. | Ten minutes to first notes: connect a calendar, install the desktop app if you want bot-free capture, and take a meeting. Building the automation rules that justify the price is a further afternoon. |
| Learning curve | Very low. The only thing worth deliberate attention is template design on the Pro tier, because the difference between a default summary and a template shaped for your meeting type is most of the perceived quality of the product. | Low for capture and notes. The automation layer rewards someone who thinks in terms of triggers and fields, and the CLI and API assume a technical user, though nothing requires them. |
| Platforms | Chrome extension, macOS desktop app, Windows desktop app, iOS and Android, Apple Watch, Web | Web app, Desktop app for macOS and Windows, Mobile apps, Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Discord, RingCentral, and Slack huddles, In-person recording |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II (independently audited), GDPR-compliant data processing controls | SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA (positioned within the Enterprise tier) |
| Founded | 2022 | 2023 |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom, with operations in Dusseldorf, Germany | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Ownership | Angel-funded | Venture-backed (Y Combinator) |
Strengths and limitations
Bluedot
Strengths
- Bot-free capture that still keeps the video, which is a combination Granola and Circleback deliberately do not offer and bot-based tools cannot offer without a participant in the room.
- The clearest published privacy position in the category: no training on customer data, no retention by AI providers, immediate deletion with backups cleared within thirty days, all stated on the security page rather than buried in a DPA.
- SOC 2 Type II with annual third-party penetration testing and AES-256 encryption, which is stronger assurance than most companies this size can show.
- No minute, meeting, or storage meter on paid plans, so the bill does not move with usage.
Limitations
- A twenty-person company with roughly 560,000 euros of angel funding. The product is good and the balance sheet is thin, which is a genuine continuity risk for anything you plan to depend on for years.
- The free plan is five meetings for the lifetime of the account, which is the stingiest free offer here by a wide margin.
- Basic at $14 is audio only with a one-hour cap, so the advertised advantage of the product costs $20 rather than $14.
- CRM and ATS integrations, SSO, and custom retention are all on the $32 Business tier, which is expensive relative to what larger vendors include lower down.
Circleback
Strengths
- Note quality is the best-regarded in the category, polished enough to send to a client without editing, which is what most of the 500-plus testimonials on the site are actually about.
- Action items are assigned and organized rather than merely listed, which is the prerequisite that makes the automation layer worth anything.
- More than 1,000 integrations plus an API, webhooks, a CLI, and an MCP endpoint gives it more programmatic surface than any comparably sized vendor here.
- Bot-free desktop capture works across Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Webex, Discord, and RingCentral, and bot-based joining is still available when you need to send it somewhere you are not.
Limitations
- The free plan's 30-day history window is short for a tool whose value compounds with archive size, and the trial length for paid plans is not published.
- The company is roughly ten people with $2.5M raised, which makes vendor risk a legitimate concern for anyone standardizing a whole organization on it.
- No sales coaching layer: no call scoring, no playbook adherence, no rep analytics, so revenue teams will need a second tool.
- HIPAA is positioned within Enterprise rather than the self-serve tiers, so the regulated-industry pitch requires a sales conversation after all.
Pricing compared
Bluedot
Per-user-per-month subscription with no minute or meeting meter on paid plans. Capability is tiered by recording type (audio versus video), recording length, template customisation, and integration depth.
- Free$0
- Basic$14
- Pro$20
- Business$32
Priced against what it uniquely does, Bluedot is fair. Someone in 20 meetings a week pays exactly the same as someone in two, because nothing is metered: $20 per seat per month billed annually on Pro, about $240 a year, for bot-free capture that keeps unlimited-length video, custom templates, unlimited storage, an API, and MCP. Granola at $14 is cheaper and keeps no recording. Krisp at $8 keeps recordings but caps storage at 10 GB and writes weaker notes. Circleback at $15 to $25 a seat billed annually is bot-free with better language coverage and now keeps video and audio playback. Bluedot is the only one of the four that lets you replay and clip a client call that had no bot in it, and $240 a year is a reasonable price for that specific capability. Where it is poor value is at the edges: $14 Basic withholds video and caps recordings at an hour, and $32 Business is a steep jump to get CRM writeback and SSO from a twenty-person company.
Circleback
Freemium per-seat subscription: a free plan with 30 days of history, Pro and Business billed monthly or annually, and a published annual-only Enterprise tier with volume bands.
- Free$0
- Pro$15
- Business$25
- Enterprise$35
Circleback is priced like a premium tool and mostly earns it, and the 2026 repackaging made it easier to try. The free plan has no meeting cap and keeps 30 days of history; at $15 a seat billed annually ($18 monthly) Pro adds 100-plus languages, bot-free capture, unlimited history, and a full automation layer with API, webhooks, CLI, and MCP, which Fireflies charges $19 a seat for and Fathom gates behind a $25 Business tier. Where it loses is the free floor: Fathom gives away unlimited recording, so a cost-driven founder who never needs history beyond a month has cheaper options. Buy Circleback when note quality and post-meeting automation are the point.
Editorial verdict on each
Bluedot
Bluedot occupies a gap nobody else fills cleanly: bot-free capture that keeps the video. Granola will not store the recording, and most tools that do keep video put a participant in your client's call to get it. If you are a recruiter, a consultant, or a customer success team who needs to replay and clip conversations that cannot have a bot in them, Bluedot at $20 a seat billed annually with unlimited storage, custom templates, an API, and MCP is the obvious answer, and its published no-training, immediate-deletion, SOC 2 Type II posture is the most straightforward privacy statement in the category. The two things to weigh honestly are the tiering, because $14 Basic withholds video and caps recordings at an hour and $32 Business is where CRM writeback and SSO live, and the company, because twenty people on angel funding is a real continuity risk. Buy it for what it uniquely does, on Pro, and keep your own copies through the API.
Read the full Bluedot profileCircleback
MomentumCircleback is the connoisseur's pick in this category: the notes read better than anything else here, the action items are assigned rather than listed, and the automation surface, with 1,000-plus integrations plus API, webhooks, a CLI, and MCP, is deeper than companies twenty times its size ship. The two honest objections are the absence of a free plan, which puts it out of reach for a founder with no budget when Fathom and Granola exist, and the fact that ten people and $2.5M is a thin foundation for an organization-wide standard. Buy it if meetings generate real downstream admin you want automated away, if you work across languages, or if you need notes polished enough to forward to a client. If you just want decent notes for free, this is not the tool to argue yourself into.
Read the full Circleback profileBluedot profile last reviewed 2026-09-27; Circleback last reviewed 2026-09-27. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.
The best in AI Meeting Note Takers
23 trackedAI meeting note takers join calls to record, transcribe, and summarize them, turning conversations into searchable notes, action items, and CRM updates without anyone typing.
The broadest platform in meeting AI: transcription, search, AI apps, and integrations that reach every corner of the small-business stack.
A free plan with unlimited recording and transcription that forced every paid notetaker in the category to justify its price.
A ten-person team out-writing the funded competition on note quality, then automating what the notes say.
Abandoned the meeting bot entirely for a local notepad that finishes what you type, a mechanism the rest of the category is now copying.
A five minute Chrome extension install with no bot to whitelist, and notes open automatically in a post-call tab the moment you hang up.
Frequently asked questions
6 questionsWhat is the difference between Bluedot and Circleback?
Both are bot-free premium notetakers at similar prices, roughly $20 against $21 to $25. Circleback wins on note quality, 100-plus languages, and the depth of its automation layer. Bluedot wins by keeping the video and letting you clip and comment on moments. Circleback for multilingual teams building workflows; Bluedot for recruiters and consultants who need playback.
Is Bluedot or Circleback cheaper?
Bluedot starts at $0 (Free, 5 meetings lifetime), then $14 per user per month billed annually (Basic). Circleback starts at $0 (Free), then $15 per user per month billed annually (Pro; $18 monthly). The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole cost. Bluedot pricing model: Per-user-per-month subscription with no minute or meeting meter on paid plans. Capability is tiered by recording type (audio versus video), recording length, template customisation, and integration depth. Circleback pricing model: Freemium per-seat subscription: a free plan with 30 days of history, Pro and Business billed monthly or annually, and a published annual-only Enterprise tier with volume bands.
Does Bluedot or Circleback have a free plan?
Bluedot has a free plan. Five meetings for the lifetime of the account, one hour maximum per recording, with the Chrome extension, desktop and mobile apps, and basic integrations including Slack, Notion, Zapier, and Make. Trial terms: No fixed-length trial; the free plan's five lifetime meetings serve as the evaluation. Circleback has a free plan. Free forever: unlimited meetings and members, 30 days of meeting and recording history, limited automations, API, MCP, and CLI access, and 2 teams. Trial terms: Paid plans can be trialled from the pricing page; the trial length is not published.
Who should choose Bluedot?
Recruiters, consultants, and client-facing teams who need a recording they can replay and clip but cannot put a bot in front of the person they are talking to, and privacy-sensitive buyers who want a written no-training guarantee rather than a data processing agreement they have to negotiate.
Who should choose Circleback?
Teams of 2 to 50 who care more about note quality and post-meeting automation than about paying nothing, especially multilingual teams and anyone in healthcare or another regulated field who needs HIPAA without buying an enterprise tier.
What are the best alternatives to Bluedot and Circleback?
SaaSTracker profiles 23 products in AI Meeting Note Takers. The Summer 2026 awards in the category went to Fireflies.ai (Category Leader), Fathom (Best Value), Granola (Innovation). Every profile is compiled from primary sources, so a shortlist can be built from pricing, limitations, and fit rather than from star ratings.
