Read AI
Meeting notes plus engagement scoring, extended across email and chat
Read AI is an AI meeting assistant that sends a bot into Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams calls to transcribe and summarise them, then layers behavioural analytics on top, scoring engagement, sentiment, and participation and coaching individual speakers; it extends the same summarisation across Gmail, Outlook, Slack, and Teams messages, and is sold per user per month with a hard cap of five meeting transcripts a month on the free plan.
Overview
Read AI is the product in this category that decided meeting notes were not the interesting part. It was founded in Seattle in 2021 by David Shim, previously chief executive of Placed and then of Foursquare, and it started from measurement rather than transcription: how engaged were the people in this call, who dominated it, who checked out, and what does that predict. The transcript and summary are table stakes underneath a layer of engagement scores, sentiment tracking, and a personalised speaker coach that tells you your talk-time ratio and filler word count.
In 2024 the company raised a $50M Series B led by Smash Capital with Madrona and Goodwater participating, bringing total funding to about $81M at a reported $450M valuation, and used it to push a Copilot Everywhere strategy. That means Read AI is no longer only about meetings. The Gmail extension summarises email threads, the Slack and Teams connectors summarise message history, and the search layer spans all of it, so you can ask a question and get an answer assembled from a call, an email chain, and a channel at once.
For a small business the pricing is a two-part decision. The free plan is genuinely usable but hard-capped at five meeting transcripts a month, with unlimited search and summaries around them, which is more generous than a minute meter for light users and abruptly useless for anyone busy. Pro at $15 per user per month billed annually removes the transcript cap. The awkward part is that audio and video playback is not on Pro at all: it sits on the Enterprise tier at $22.50, which means the cheapest Read AI plan that lets you replay what someone actually said costs more than Otter Business.
Set against Granola, Read AI is the maximalist opposite. Granola is a silent local notepad that keeps no recording and refuses to score you; Read AI sends a visible bot, retains recordings on the higher tiers, and its entire premise is that measuring how people behave in meetings is useful. Some teams find the engagement scoring genuinely clarifying. Others find being told their sentiment score after a difficult conversation with a client faintly dystopian, and that reaction is worth testing on your own team before you roll it out.
Best for
Managers and distributed teams who want meeting notes plus a behavioural read on how meetings are going, organisations trying to reduce meeting load with data rather than opinion, and anyone who wants one search layer across calls, email, and chat rather than a notetaker alone.
Not the right fit for
- Teams uncomfortable with being scored; engagement and sentiment analytics applied to colleagues is a management decision as much as a software one, and some teams will react badly to it.
- Anyone who cannot have a visible vendor-named bot in a client call; Read AI is bot-based with no local silent capture equivalent to Granola or Krisp.
- Buyers who need video playback on a budget; it is not on the Pro tier at all and only arrives at the $22.50 Enterprise tier, which is more expensive than several competitors that include it much lower down.
- Busy people hoping to stay on the free plan; five meeting transcripts a month is two days of a normal calendar.
- Small regulated businesses needing HIPAA; it is gated to Enterprise+ at $29.75 a seat with a five-licence minimum, which is a real floor for a three-person practice.
How it works
- 1
You connect Google or Microsoft calendar and Read AI schedules a bot to join upcoming Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams calls. The bot appears in the participant list under the vendor's name and is visible to everyone in the room.
- 2
During the meeting Read AI transcribes and simultaneously measures behaviour: who is speaking, for how long, how the sentiment of the conversation moves, and how engaged participants appear. Those measurements are the product's actual differentiator and they run live rather than being computed afterwards.
- 3
After the call you get a report rather than only notes: summary, action items, key questions, topics, plus engagement and sentiment scores and a personal coaching view showing your talk-time ratio and speaking habits over time. Reports can be shared with attendees automatically.
- 4
The Copilot Everywhere layer extends the same treatment beyond meetings. The Gmail and Outlook integrations summarise email threads, the Slack and Teams connectors summarise messages, and a single search spans meetings, mail, and chat so a question about an account returns an answer assembled from all three. Pro adds Notion, Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, Confluence, Zapier, and webhooks.
Feature breakdown
27 features in 5 modulesCapture and transcription
Conventional bot-based capture, competently done.- Meeting bot
- Joins scheduled Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams calls from your calendar, appearing in the participant list under the vendor's name.
- Transcripts in 20-plus languages
- Transcription and summarisation across more than twenty languages, included on the free plan rather than reserved for paid tiers.
- Speaker identification
- Separates and labels speakers, which is a prerequisite for the talk-time and engagement analytics that follow.
- File upload credits
- A separate meter from meetings: 100 upload credits a month on Pro, 200 on Enterprise, 300 on Enterprise+, for transcribing recordings made elsewhere.
- Mobile and desktop apps
- Native apps alongside the web experience, included from the free tier.
- Audio and video playback
- Recording playback and video highlights are Enterprise-tier features. Pro users get the transcript and the report but cannot replay the call.
Meeting analytics and coaching
The reason to choose Read AI over anything else on this list.- Engagement scoring
- Scores how engaged participants were during the call rather than only what was said, which is the product's founding idea.
- Sentiment tracking
- Tracks how the emotional tone of a conversation moves over its duration, surfaced in the post-meeting report.
- Talk-time and participation breakdown
- Shows who dominated, who did not speak, and how balanced the conversation was, per meeting and as a trend.
- Personalised meeting coach
- Individual feedback on speaking habits including talk-time ratio and filler words, available on the free plan, which no other product here offers for nothing.
- Meeting effectiveness trends
- Aggregates scores over time so a team can see whether a recurring meeting is worth keeping on the calendar.
- Shareable meeting reports
- The output is a report with summary, action items, key questions, and topics, distributed to attendees automatically rather than living only in your account.
Copilot Everywhere
The 2024 strategy that took Read AI beyond meetings.- Gmail and Outlook summarisation
- A Chrome extension and Outlook integration summarise long email threads in place, treating mail as another conversation to compress.
- Slack and Microsoft Teams messages
- Summarises message history in channels and chats, so catching up on a busy channel works the same way as catching up on a missed call.
- Unlimited enterprise search
- Search spans meetings, email, and messages together, and it is included on the free plan rather than being the upsell, which is unusual.
- Smart Scheduler
- Handles meeting scheduling from within the same assistant rather than requiring a separate booking tool.
- Cross-source answers
- A question about an account returns an answer assembled from a call, an email chain, and a channel rather than from meetings alone.
Integrations and automation
Premium integrations sit behind the Pro paywall.- CRM connectors
- Salesforce and HubSpot integrations arrive on the Pro tier and push meeting reports into the account record.
- Notion and Confluence
- Meeting reports route into documentation systems automatically on Pro and above.
- Jira
- Action items become tickets rather than staying inside the notetaker.
- Zapier and webhooks
- Both are Pro-tier features, covering automation beyond the native connector list.
- Basic integrations on free
- The free plan includes basic connectors, with the premium set held back for Pro, which is a clean and honest split.
Administration and compliance
Layered across three paid tiers, with the good parts at the top.- SAML and SCIM
- Single sign-on and directory provisioning are Enterprise+ features, requiring at least five licences.
- Domain capture
- Enterprise+ can claim all accounts on a company domain so shadow usage becomes managed usage.
- Custom data retention
- Retention windows are configurable on Enterprise+; lower tiers use the vendor's defaults.
- HIPAA compliance
- Available on Enterprise+ only, at $29.75 per user per month billed annually with a five-licence minimum.
- Workspace onboarding and premium support
- Enterprise adds premium support and Enterprise+ adds assisted workspace onboarding.
Use cases
4 documentedManager of a distributed team
Recurring meetings have quietly become useless, some people never speak, and nobody can tell whether the weekly sync is worth the twelve person-hours it consumes.
Engagement scores and participation breakdowns give the manager data instead of a hunch, and meeting effectiveness trends make the case for killing or restructuring the meeting.
Individual contributor trying to speak better
A new team lead suspects they talk too much in meetings but has no way to check without asking colleagues to judge them.
The personalised meeting coach reports talk-time ratio and filler words over time, and it is available on the free plan, so the improvement loop costs nothing.
Account manager drowning in channels
Context on an account is scattered across three calls, a long email thread, and a Slack channel, and reconstructing it before a renewal takes an hour.
Unlimited search across meetings, email, and messages assembles the answer from all three sources at once, which is a capability none of the meeting-only tools in this category have.
Light user who takes four calls a month
A part-time advisor wants summaries of a handful of calls and refuses to pay a subscription for it.
The free plan's five monthly transcripts, plus unlimited search, summaries, and the speaker coach, cover the entire need at zero cost.
Pricing
from $0 (Free), then $15 per user per month billed annually (Pro)Per-seat subscription metered by number of meeting transcripts on the free plan and by feature tier above it. Paid tiers are unlimited on transcripts but meter file uploads in credits per month.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 per user per month |
Unusually generous on everything except the one thing being metered. Five transcripts is roughly two days of a full calendar. |
| Pro | $15 per user per month billed annually ($19.75 monthly) |
No audio or video playback on this tier. You get the report and the transcript, not the recording. |
| Enterprise | $22.50 per user per month billed annually ($29.75 monthly) |
The tier where recordings appear, which is a costly place to put them relative to competitors. |
| Enterprise+ | $29.75 per user per month billed annually ($39.75 monthly), minimum 5 licences |
|
Billing notes
- Annual billing carries a stated 25 percent discount across every paid tier; the prices quoted here are the annual equivalents.
- The free plan's meter is meeting transcripts, not minutes, which suits light users with long calls and punishes anyone with a full calendar.
- Audio and video playback is an Enterprise-tier feature at $22.50 a seat. Fathom, Bluedot, MeetGeek, and tl;dv all include recordings materially cheaper.
- File upload credits are a second meter that applies on every paid tier: 100, 200, and 300 a month respectively.
- Enterprise+ requires a minimum of five licences, so a three-person business cannot buy HIPAA compliance at any price.
- Downgrading to the free plan reinstates the five-transcript monthly cap immediately; the existing archive remains searchable but new capture stops after five meetings.
Value assessment: Read AI is priced as an analytics product that includes notes, not as a notetaker. Someone in 20 meetings a week takes roughly 80 meetings a month, which burns the free plan's five transcripts in the first two days, so that person is on Pro at $15 per seat per month billed annually, about $180 a year, for unlimited transcripts, engagement analytics, premium integrations, and cross-source search. That is fair against Otter Business at $20 and Fireflies, particularly because the search across email and chat has no equivalent elsewhere. Where the value case breaks is recordings: needing playback pushes you to $22.50 a seat, which is more than Otter, more than Granola, more than Fireflies Business, and considerably more than Fathom, all of which give you recordings or notes cheaper. Buy Pro for the analytics. Do not buy Enterprise for the video.
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Engagement, sentiment, and participation analytics are genuinely differentiated; no other product on this list measures how a meeting went rather than only what was said.
- The personalised meeting coach is available on the free plan and is the cheapest speaking-habit feedback loop available anywhere.
- Unlimited search across meetings, email, and chat together answers questions no meeting-only tool can answer, and it is included on the free tier.
- The free plan is generous on features and honest about its single limit, which is a better structure than a minute meter that quietly degrades.
- Well funded at roughly $81M raised and a $450M reported valuation, with a Series B closed in 2024 and around 110 employees, so it is neither fragile nor bloated.
- Premium integrations on Pro cover the tools small teams actually use: Salesforce, HubSpot, Notion, Jira, Confluence, Zapier, and webhooks.
- Twenty-plus languages included on the free tier, which is far better than Otter's six.
Limitations
- Audio and video playback is locked to the $22.50 Enterprise tier, which is the single worst-value decision in the pricing table given how many competitors include recordings for less.
- Bot-based capture only, with a vendor-named participant visible in every call and no local silent capture path for confidential client conversations.
- Engagement and sentiment scoring applied to employees is culturally loaded; it can read as surveillance, and it needs a conversation with your team before it is switched on.
- Sentiment and engagement scores are inferred from behavioural signals and should be treated as directional, not as measurement; a quiet participant is not necessarily a disengaged one.
- HIPAA, SSO, and custom retention are all Enterprise+ with a five-licence minimum, so the smallest businesses are locked out of the compliance features entirely.
- No published self-serve API beyond webhooks and Zapier, and no MCP connector of the kind Granola, Krisp, and Circleback now ship.
- The Copilot Everywhere breadth across meetings, mail, chat, and scheduling means no single surface is as deep as a specialist tool for that surface.
Head-to-head comparisons
6 alternativesRead AI vs Granola
from $0 (Basic), then $14 per user per month (Business)Granola captures locally with nothing in the room, keeps no desktop recording, and refuses to score anybody, for $14 a seat. Read AI puts a bot in the call and measures engagement, sentiment, and talk time, for $15 on Pro. Choose Granola if meetings are confidential conversations and you want notes in your own voice; choose Read AI if you want data about how your meetings and your team are actually functioning.
Full Read AI vs Granola comparisonRead AI vs Otter.ai
from $0 (Basic), then $8.33 per user per month (Pro, billed annually)Otter is the transcription veteran with better English recognition, a live transcript, deep export, and an unmetered Business tier at about $20. Read AI has fewer transcription credentials and far more analytics, plus search across email and chat, at $15 on Pro. Take Otter if the transcript itself is the deliverable; take Read AI if the meeting behaviour is what you want to understand.
Full Read AI vs Otter.ai comparisonRead AI vs Supernormal
from $0 (Free), then $20 per month (Team)Both go beyond notes, in opposite directions. Supernormal is bot-free and turns meetings into deliverables such as decks and spreadsheets, priced by credits with unlimited seats from $20 a month. Read AI is bot-based and turns meetings into measurement. Pick Supernormal if the post-meeting artefact is the work; pick Read AI if the meeting itself is what you want to improve.
Full Read AI vs Supernormal comparisonRead AI vs Fathom
from $0 (Free plan, unlimited recording and transcription)Fathom gives unlimited recording and summaries on a free tier that actually works for a full calendar, with video playback included well below Read AI's $22.50 threshold. Read AI counters with engagement analytics and cross-source search that Fathom does not attempt. If you need recordings and a usable free plan, Fathom wins outright; if you need meeting analytics, Read AI is the only answer here.
Full Read AI vs Fathom comparisonRead AI vs Fireflies.ai
from $0 (Free), then $10 per user per month billed annually (Pro; $18 monthly)Fireflies is the broad bot-based platform with 100-plus languages, a large integration catalogue, and its own conversation intelligence, metered by storage minutes and AI credits. Read AI is narrower on transcription and deeper on behavioural analytics, with an email and chat layer Fireflies does not have. Fireflies for coverage and automation; Read AI for insight into how people are actually communicating.
Full Read AI vs Fireflies.ai comparisonRead AI vs Sembly AI
from $10 per month billed annually (Basic, single user), $17 month to monthSembly leans on structured meeting intelligence, agentic automations, and 40-plus languages with no free plan, from $10 a seat annually. Read AI leans on engagement scoring and cross-source search with a free tier capped at five transcripts. Sembly is the better buy for structured outputs and automation on a budget; Read AI is the better buy if you want the behavioural read and a free plan to start on.
Full Read AI vs Sembly AI comparisonImplementation & onboarding
- Setup time
- Ten minutes for meetings. Connect Google or Microsoft calendar, set whether the bot joins everything or only approved calls, and you are covered. Adding the Gmail extension and the Slack or Teams connectors takes another ten minutes each and is where most of the differentiated value sits.
- Learning curve
- Low mechanically, higher socially. Reading the reports takes no training. Deciding what to do about the fact that your colleague's engagement score is low, and whether to share those scores at all, is the part that requires actual thought before rollout.
- Onboarding
- Self-serve through Enterprise. Enterprise+ adds assisted workspace onboarding and requires at least five licences. Domain capture on Enterprise+ is the tool for converting scattered individual free accounts into a managed workspace.
- Migration notes
- File upload credits (100 a month on Pro) let you backfill an archive from recordings made elsewhere, slowly. There is no bulk migration path from another notetaker. Leaving is straightforward for text but the analytics history does not export in any meaningful form, so the trend data you build up is genuinely locked in.
Platform, API & security
- Platforms
- WebmacOS and Windows desktop appsiOSAndroidChrome extension for Gmail
- API
- Webhooks and Zapier on the Pro tier. There is no prominent self-serve public API or MCP connector.
- Compliance
- SOC 2GDPRHIPAA on the Enterprise+ tier only
- Data residency
- US-hosted; Read AI does not advertise self-serve regional data residency options.
- SSO
- SAML and SCIM are Enterprise+ features, with a five-licence minimum.
- Security notes
- Custom data retention windows are configurable on Enterprise+; lower tiers use vendor defaults. Domain capture on Enterprise+ lets an administrator bring existing individual accounts on a company domain under central control. Because the product ingests email and chat as well as meetings, the data footprint you are granting is broader than a meeting-only notetaker's, and that should be assessed on its own terms.
Support & resources
- Channels
- Email supportHelp centrePremium support on EnterpriseWorkspace onboarding on Enterprise+
- Documentation
- Product documentation and help centre at read.ai covering meeting capture, reports, the Gmail extension, integrations, and admin controls.
- Community
- Active product blog and changelog; no substantial official user forum.
Company
- Founded
- 2021
- Headquarters
- Seattle, Washington, United States
- Ownership
- Venture-backed
- Founders
- David Shim
- Employees
- Approximately 110 (2026)
- Funding
- Approximately $81M raised in total, including a $50M Series B in 2024 led by Smash Capital with Madrona and Goodwater Capital participating, at a reported $450M valuation.
Funding history
| Round | Amount | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | Undisclosed | 2022 | Early backing from Madrona and Goodwater Capital in Seattle. |
| Series A | Undisclosed | 2023 | Part of the roughly $31M raised prior to the Series B. |
| Series B | $50M | 2024 | Led by Smash Capital at a reported $450M valuation, funding the Copilot Everywhere expansion into email and chat. |
Timeline
- 2021Founded in Seattle by David Shim, previously chief executive of Placed and then Foursquare, around the idea of measuring meeting engagement rather than only transcribing.
- 2022Launches meeting reports combining transcript, summary, and engagement and sentiment scores, plus a personalised speaker coach.
- 2024Raises a $50M Series B led by Smash Capital at a reported $450M valuation and announces Copilot Everywhere, launching the Read AI for Gmail Chrome extension.
- 2025Extends summarisation and unlimited search across Slack and Microsoft Teams messages so a single query spans calls, mail, and chat.
- 2026Runs a four-tier structure from a free plan capped at five transcripts up to Enterprise+ at $29.75 a seat with HIPAA, SAML, SCIM, and domain capture.
Integrations
- Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams
- Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar
- Gmail and Outlook (thread summarisation)
- Slack and Microsoft Teams messages
- Salesforce and HubSpot (Pro and above)
- Notion and Confluence
- Jira
- Zapier
- Webhooks
Frequently asked questions
10 questionsWhat is Read AI?
Read AI is an AI meeting assistant that transcribes and summarises calls and then scores them, measuring engagement, sentiment, talk time, and participation, and coaching individual speakers on their habits. It extends the same summarisation and search across Gmail, Outlook, Slack, and Microsoft Teams messages, so one query can pull an answer from a call, an email thread, and a channel together.
How much does Read AI cost?
The free plan is $0 with five meeting transcripts a month. Pro is $15 per user per month billed annually, or $19.75 monthly, for unlimited transcripts and premium integrations. Enterprise is $22.50 annually or $29.75 monthly and adds audio and video playback. Enterprise+ is $29.75 annually or $39.75 monthly with a five-licence minimum and adds HIPAA, SAML, SCIM, domain capture, and custom retention.
How is Read AI metered, and what would 20 meetings a week cost?
The free plan meters meeting transcripts, not minutes: five a month, full stop. Paid tiers are unlimited on transcripts but meter file uploads in credits. Someone in 20 meetings a week takes about 80 meetings a month, which exhausts the free allowance within the first two days, so that person needs Pro at $15 per seat per month billed annually, roughly $180 a year. If they also want to replay recordings, that becomes Enterprise at $22.50 a seat, about $270 a year, which is more expensive than most competitors that include recordings by default.
Does Read AI put a bot in my meetings?
Yes. A participant named after the vendor joins your Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams call and is visible to everyone in the room. There is no local silent capture path. If a client seeing a recorder in the attendee list would be a problem, Read AI is architecturally the wrong choice and Granola, Krisp, Bluedot, Circleback, or Supernormal all avoid it.
Does Read AI keep audio and video, and for how long?
Recordings exist but playback is a paid feature that only appears on the Enterprise tier at $22.50 per seat billed annually, along with video highlights. Pro users get the transcript and the report but cannot listen back. Custom data retention windows are only configurable on the Enterprise+ tier; below that you are on the vendor's default retention, which you should confirm in writing if it matters.
What are engagement and sentiment scores, and should I trust them?
They are inferred measures of how involved participants seemed and how the emotional tone of the conversation moved, computed from behavioural signals during the call. They are directional rather than precise: a quiet participant is not necessarily disengaged, and a tense negotiation can score badly while going perfectly well. Used as a prompt to ask better questions about a recurring meeting, they are useful. Used as a performance metric for individuals, they will damage trust faster than they produce insight.
Does Read AI train its models on my meetings, and can I opt out?
Read AI holds SOC 2 and offers GDPR terms, and it does not present model training on customer data as a headline default the way Otter does. Because the product ingests email and chat as well as calls, the surface area is larger than a meeting-only notetaker's, so the sensible step for any careful buyer is to request the data processing agreement and an explicit written statement on model training and retention before connecting Gmail or Slack. Do not assume the answer from the marketing site.
How does Read AI handle consent in two-party recording jurisdictions?
The bot's visible presence in the participant list is the built-in notification, and Read AI additionally distributes the meeting report to attendees, which makes the capture unusually visible after the fact. Neither of those satisfies two-party consent law by itself in California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, or Washington, or GDPR in the EU. Announce the recording verbally and get agreement before the conversation starts. Read AI's analytics layer adds a second consideration: you are not only recording people, you are scoring them, and in some jurisdictions and works councils that is a separate conversation with its own consent requirement.
Can Read AI update my CRM?
Yes, from the Pro tier. Salesforce and HubSpot integrations push meeting reports and action items onto the account record, alongside Notion, Confluence, Jira, Zapier, and webhooks. It attaches context to records rather than mapping structured fields for a deal-review process, so it is CRM hygiene rather than revenue operations.
Is the free plan actually usable?
For a light user, yes, and it is one of the better free plans here. You get unlimited search across meetings, email, and chat, unlimited summaries, the personalised meeting coach, 20-plus languages, and the mobile and desktop apps. The only thing metered is meeting transcripts, at five a month. That works for an advisor or a part-time consultant and fails immediately for anyone with a normal calendar, which is exactly how the free plan is designed to behave.
Editorial verdict
Read AI is the only product in this category that is genuinely about meetings rather than transcripts, and that is both its case and its risk. The engagement scoring, participation breakdowns, and speaker coaching answer a question no competitor asks, and the search layer spanning calls, email, and chat is a real capability nobody else on this list offers. Pro at $15 a seat billed annually is a defensible price for that, and the free plan is a fair way to try it. The two things to think hard about before buying are the pricing of recordings, which sit on a $22.50 tier when Fathom, Bluedot, and MeetGeek include them for far less, and the culture question, because measuring how engaged your colleagues appeared in a meeting is a management intervention dressed as a software feature. If you want that data and your team is comfortable with it, Read AI is worth the money. If you want a notetaker, buy a notetaker.
Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.