Earkeep
The Fellow alternative for the day you actually had
Last updated: · Reviewed quarterly
Fellow is a meeting system: shared agendas, action items with owners, a template for every ritual. Earkeep has none of that. It listens all day, transcribes on your device, and lets you mark the meeting afterwards.
14-day full trial, no account required.
- Nothing to schedule, nothing to start
- Transcribed on your device, never uploaded
- €39 once, not $7 to $25 per seat a month
The short answer
Fellow is for "teams that want a meeting system, not just a notes app", as one Reddit user put it, and is nine years deep in agendas and action items. If what you lose is what was said off the calendar, Earkeep records the whole day locally.
Why people look for a Fellow alternative
Nothing to schedule, nothing to start
Fellow's four capture routes (a scheduled bot, a record button, Zoom's native capture, the mobile app) all need a decision in advance, and there is no always-on mode. The huddle nobody scheduled doesn't exist in Fellow.
Earkeep is already listening, and you drag a span across the timeline afterwards. One note on in-person: Fellow's help centre says its Note Taker cannot tell speakers apart on one shared device.
Controls on a server, or no server at all
Fellow's controls are real and, for a regulated team, excellent: SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA with a BAA, retention from zero days to six years, redaction that removes the audio too. The strongest sit on Enterprise, with a ten-seat minimum.
But Fellow transcribes in the cloud, always, with no offline mode. It lets you set retention to zero days; Earkeep never writes the audio down at all, transcribing it in memory on your machine.
A record you own, in files your agents can read
Fellow's record lives in its workspace, with an export, an API from Team up, and pushes to Notion, Confluence, Jira, Asana or Linear. Earkeep writes one plain .jsonl per day into a folder you pick, so grep still works on it in ten years.
Earkeep runs ten ACP agents in-app plus a two-tool MCP server. Fellow's Anthropic-verified connector has five read-only tools, more than ours, but it reads its cloud, not your disk.
Side by side
| Capability | Earkeep | Fellow |
|---|---|---|
| Always-on capture | No start button, no bot | A bot, a button or an upload, every time |
| Retroactive spans | Define the meeting afterward | A meeting is a calendar event |
| Collaborative agendas before the meeting | Earkeep starts when the sound does | Shared agendas, 500+ templates |
| Action items and accountability across a recurring series | No task tracking, no shared list | Owners, due dates, resurfaced next time |
| Bot-free capture | No bot exists to join | Botless desktop recording; the bot is the default for scheduled calls |
| Audio processed on your device | In memory, never written to disk | Cloud only, recordings stored server-side |
| Plain files you own | One .jsonl a day you can grep | Proprietary workspace, export only |
| AI summary when it ends | Via an agent you connect | Summary, decisions and AI action items |
| Files notes into your wiki or tracker | Via an agent you connect | Notion, Confluence, Jira, Asana, Linear |
| Labels who said what | Not yet | Speaker labels with timestamps |
| Keeps a recording you can replay | No audio is ever kept | Searchable recording library |
| Your own agents can read it | ACP agents plus MCP, over local files | Five-tool MCP server, over Fellow's cloud |
| Certifications and admin retention controls | No certifications, no admin console | SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA with BAA, zero-day to six-year retention |
| Free tier that doesn't expire | 14 days free, then €39 once | Free forever, but 5 AI notes and 5 recordings lifetime |
| Mobile apps | Desktop only | iOS and Android |
| Pricing | €39 one time, one device | Free tier, then $7-25/user/month annual |
| Platform | macOS 13+, Windows 10+ | Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, browser extensions |
Built inNo, but an agent you connect canPartlyNot available
What each one costs by year five
Switching takes an afternoon
- Install it, then let a day run. It captures from the start. Nothing migrates: your Fellow agendas, notes and recordings stay in Fellow.
- Mark yesterday, or connect a calendar. Drag a span across the timeline, or connect Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook or any ICS URL so each event titles its own span.
- Decide whether it replaces Fellow or sits beside it. If your team runs on Fellow's agenda loop, keep it and use Earkeep for your own record. If you mostly used Fellow as a notetaker: Team is $7 per user per month annually ($11 monthly), capped at 10 AI recordings, and uncapped Business is $15, $180 a year per person. Earkeep is €39 once.
Which one fits you
Choose Earkeep if
You want the whole day kept, on your own machine, and the record to be a file, not an account.
- The conversations you lose were never on a calendar
- You'd rather not decide in advance which twenty minutes matter
- The audio must not reach a third party at all
- You want transcripts as plain files your agents can read
- €39 once beats $180 a year indefinitely
Choose Fellow if
Fellow's whole workflow beats Earkeep's, and the honest thing is to say which parts.
- You want shared agendas before the meeting, from 500+ templates
- You need action items with owners and due dates that resurface next time
- You run 1:1s and manager rituals, nine years refined
- A team is standardising with SSO, provisioning, audit trails, SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA. No IT department should standardise on Earkeep
- You need iOS or Android; Earkeep is desktop only
Fellow's 4.7 stars across 2,437 G2 reviews mostly praise agendas and follow-through, not transcription: a real moat. Note that Feedback and Objectives/OKRs are now "[Legacy Feature]" and no longer sold. See Earkeep for people managers and Earkeep for engineering leads.
Other tools people weigh this against
Granola, Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, MeetGeek and Avoma, or all sixteen side by side.
Frequently asked questions
Is Earkeep a good Fellow alternative?
To Fellow's notetaker, yes; to the rest of Fellow, no. Earkeep has no agendas, action items, templates, team workspace or certifications, which are most of why people buy Fellow.
Does Fellow have an always-on recording mode?
No. All four of its capture routes (a scheduled bot, the desktop app started by hand, Zoom's native capture, the mobile app) need a decision in advance. Earkeep records from launch until a timed pause or a never-record calendar meeting stops it.
Is Fellow's free tier enough to evaluate it properly?
Probably not: 5 AI notes and 5 recordings per user for the account's lifetime. There is also a 14-day paid trial with no card, after which it downgrades to Free. Earkeep's 14-day trial is everything, no account, then €39 once.
Where does Fellow process meeting audio, and does Earkeep differ?
Fellow is cloud-only. Third-party analyses put its data on AWS in Canada with US sub-processors (their reporting, not Fellow's). Earkeep transcribes in memory on your machine, and nothing from your meetings leaves it.
Can I run Earkeep alongside Fellow instead of replacing it?
Yes, and for a team on Fellow's agendas that is sensible: Fellow keeps the shared structure, Earkeep your own local record. Nothing needs connecting.
Try Earkeep
14-day full trial, no account required.