What is Recall.ai?
Recall.ai (Y Combinator Winter 2020) is the plumbing behind many AI note-takers. Its Meeting Bot API sends a bot into a Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, GoTo Meeting or Slack Huddle call and hands back audio, video, transcripts and participant data; a Desktop Recording SDK captures meetings without a bot.
Recording costs $0.50 an hour, billed to the second, with the first 5 hours free; built-in transcription adds $0.15 an hour. Recall raised a $38M Series B led by Bessemer in September 2025 at a $250M valuation, and at the time said it served more than 2,000 companies, including HubSpot, ClickUp and Apollo.io.
How much does Recall.ai cost?
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Pay as you go | $0.50/hour | First 5 hours free; transcription $0.15/hour extra |
| Startup programme | $0.25/hour | First 10,000 hours, eligible startups |
| Launch | Custom | Adds Slack support |
| Enterprise | Custom | SSO, uptime guarantees, HIPAA BAA |
Pay as you go $0.50/hour of recording (first 5 hours free); built-in transcription $0.15/hour; 7 days of free storage, then $0.05 per hour retained for 30 days; startup programme $0.25/hour for the first 10,000 hours. Launch and Enterprise custom.
Is Recall.ai worth it?
If your app needs to hear what happened in a customer's Zoom call, you quickly learn that each video platform has its own rules, its own bot permissions and its own breaking changes.
Recall.ai takes that problem off you. One API call sends a bot into a Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex, GoTo or Slack call, and you get back the recording, a transcript and who said what. A desktop SDK records without a visible bot, and the calendar API that schedules bots from a user's calendar is free. Customers including HubSpot and ClickUp use it rather than run their own.
The price is simple. Recording costs $0.50 an hour, a 30-minute meeting costs $0.25, and the number of participants does not matter. Built-in transcription is $0.15 an hour, or you can send the audio to AssemblyAI or another provider. Eligible startups pay $0.25 an hour for their first 10,000 hours.
The catch: recordings are stored free for only 7 days, after which keeping them costs $0.05 per hour of recording for 30 days, so plan to move files into your own storage. A HIPAA agreement, single sign-on and uptime guarantees are Enterprise-only, and bots that send audio or video into the call cost extra, $1 an hour for GPU bots. A visible bot in the meeting also has to be explained to every customer on the call.
Our take: building your own bots means chasing every Zoom and Teams change for as long as the product lives, and at 50 cents an hour renting Recall's stays the cheaper side of that bet until you record tens of thousands of hours a month and can negotiate.
Where it earns its place
A two-engineer startup building a sales-call coach
Join reps' calls and analyse them after
Schedule bots from reps' calendars with the free calendar API, record at $0.25 an hour on the startup programme, and send audio to your own transcription provider. 2,000 call hours a month costs about $500.
A product manager at a CRM company
Add automatic meeting notes to every account record
Recall returns transcripts with speaker names; at $0.65 an hour including built-in transcription, 10,000 meeting hours a month is about $6,500 before volume discounts.
A hiring platform's security lead
Record candidate interviews with health-adjacent data
Pay as you go includes SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 coverage and data residency, but a HIPAA BAA requires the Enterprise contract.
Before you commit
- Setup
- Sign up for pay as you go, take an API key, and send a bot to a meeting URL with one request; the first 5 hours are free.
- Integrations
- Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, GoTo Meeting and Slack Huddles; desktop and mobile recording SDKs; third-party or built-in transcription; a free calendar API.
- Data and privacy
- SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, GDPR and CCPA; recordings kept 7 days free, then $0.05 per hour of recording for 30 days; data residency in the US, EU or Japan; HIPAA BAA on Enterprise only.
- Cost at scale
- 10,000 recorded hours a month cost $5,000, or $6,500 with built-in transcription, before volume discounts; keeping all of it for 30 days adds $500.
- Limits
- 4-core bots add $0.10 an hour and GPU bots $1; Slack support starts on the custom-priced Launch plan.
What's good
- One API across Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex, GoTo and Slack Huddles
- $0.50 an hour, billed to the second, regardless of participants
- Free calendar API and first 5 hours free
- Desktop SDK for bot-free recording
- US, EU and Japan data residency on every plan
What's not
- Only 7 days of free storage
- HIPAA BAA, SSO and uptime guarantees only on Enterprise
- GPU bots cost $1 an hour extra
- Visible bots can put off meeting guests
- Volume discounts need a sales call
Best for
Product teams building note-takers, sales coaching, interview or CRM features that need recordings from customers' video calls.
Recall.ai alternatives
Recall.ai: common questions
- Is Recall.ai worth it?
- Recall.ai is the sensible way to get meeting recordings into your product, because building and maintaining bots for six video platforms yourself is a job nobody finishes. We rate it 4.3 out of 5.
- How much does Recall.ai cost?
- Pay as you go $0.50/hour of recording (first 5 hours free); built-in transcription $0.15/hour; 7 days of free storage, then $0.05 per hour retained for 30 days; startup programme $0.25/hour for the first 10,000 hours. Launch and Enterprise custom.
- What are the downsides of Recall.ai?
- Only 7 days of free storage; hIPAA BAA, SSO and uptime guarantees only on Enterprise; gPU bots cost $1 an hour extra; visible bots can put off meeting guests; volume discounts need a sales call.
- Who is Recall.ai best for?
- Product teams building note-takers, sales coaching, interview or CRM features that need recordings from customers' video calls.
- How much does Recall.ai cost for a team or in production?
- 10,000 recorded hours a month cost $5,000, or $6,500 with built-in transcription, before volume discounts; keeping all of it for 30 days adds $500.
- Is Recall.ai safe for company data?
- SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, GDPR and CCPA; recordings kept 7 days free, then $0.05 per hour of recording for 30 days; data residency in the US, EU or Japan; HIPAA BAA on Enterprise only.
- What are the best Recall.ai alternatives?
- The closest alternatives we have reviewed are AssemblyAI, Fireflies.ai and Fathom.
Answers checked Oct 26, 2026.
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