Recall.ai alternative: meeting bots

You want recordings and transcripts of your users’ Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet calls, and you’re weighing Recall.ai against the alternatives. Both send a bot into the meeting, capture the audio and video, and hand back a transcript. The question that actually decides the build is what happens after the meeting ends: how you retrieve the recording, how the transcript is shaped, how you get notified, and how long the download links stay alive.

This guide compares Recall.ai with the Nylas Notetaker API for meeting bots, covering bot creation, transcript retrieval, webhooks, and signed URLs, and it’s honest about when Recall.ai is the better fit.

Recall.ai vs the Notetaker API

The Notetaker API sends one bot to Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet through a single POST /v3/grants/{grant_id}/notetakers call, records the call, transcribes it, and returns the media behind short-lived signed URLs. It covers all 3 platforms with one schema, the same way Recall.ai does, but it ships inside the wider Nylas platform alongside email and calendar.

Both products solve the same core problem: you don’t want to write and maintain a separate bot for each meeting platform. The difference is breadth and packaging. Recall.ai is a focused meeting-bot platform with deep desktop-recording and bot-customization options. The Notetaker API is one product in a unified API that already handles calendar sync, so a booked event can record itself without you scheduling a bot by hand. The table below compares the work each approach takes for a typical recording-and-transcript integration.

Task	Recall.ai	Nylas Notetaker API
Create a bot	`POST /api/v1/bot` with a meeting URL	`POST /v3/grants/{grant_id}/notetakers` with `meeting_link`
Supported platforms	Zoom, Teams, Meet, and more	Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet
Transcript retrieval	Bot transcript endpoint	`GET /v3/grants/{grant_id}/notetakers/{notetaker_id}/media`
Notifications	Webhooks	5 webhook triggers, including `notetaker.media`
Calendar-aware recording	Add-on calendar integration	Built-in calendar sync from the same grant
Beyond meetings	Meeting bots only	Email, calendar, and contacts on the same grant

What is a notetaker API and how does it work for meeting transcription?

A notetaker API is a developer interface that dispatches a bot to join an online meeting as a guest participant, records the audio and video, and returns a transcript through HTTP endpoints and webhooks. With the Nylas Notetaker API, one POST /v3/grants/{grant_id}/notetakers request joins a Zoom, Teams, or Meet call, then produces a recording, transcript, summary, and action items.

The flow is the same regardless of platform. You pass a meeting_link, and the bot joins as a non-signed-in guest. While it attends, the bot moves through states like connecting, attending, and processing, each surfaced through notetaker.meeting_state webhooks. After the call ends, the API transcodes the recording and runs transcription, then fires a notetaker.media event. You toggle each output in the meeting_settings object: transcription requires audio_recording and video_recording, and both summary and action_items require transcription. The default leave_after_silence_seconds is 300, so the bot leaves after 5 minutes of silence. See the Notetaker API guide for the full settings reference.

Which meeting transcription tools offer a developer API?

Several meeting transcription tools expose a developer API, including Recall.ai, Otter, Fireflies, and the Nylas Notetaker API. They split into two camps: consumer notetaker apps that bolt an API onto an existing product, and infrastructure-first APIs built for developers to embed in their own apps. The Notetaker API sits in the second camp.

The distinction matters because an API designed as an afterthought tends to leak its product assumptions: fixed bot branding, opinionated summaries, or a transcript shape tied to one UI. An infrastructure API gives you the raw outputs to build your own experience. The Notetaker API returns a speaker-labelled JSON transcript with start and end times in milliseconds, an MP4 recording, and JSON summary and action-item objects, so you can render captions, search by timestamp, or pipe segments into your own model. You also control the bot’s display name, which defaults to “Nylas Notetaker”. For a deeper look at building on it, see the Notetaker API guide.

What is the best API for recording Zoom meetings in my app?

The best API for recording Zoom meetings in your app is one that joins the call as a bot, captures the full meeting window, and returns the recording without requiring host-side cloud recording or per-account Zoom OAuth. The Notetaker API does this with a single POST /v3/grants/{grant_id}/notetakers call that takes the Zoom join URL in meeting_link and starts recording once admitted.

The request below sends a bot into a Zoom meeting and enables every output. It targets the grant-scoped create endpoint, which ties the recording to an authenticated user; the standalone POST /v3/notetakers works the same way without a grant. If a meeting restricts entry and nobody admits the bot, the join times out with a failed_entry state after 10 minutes.

curl --request POST \
  --url 'https://api.us.nylas.com/v3/grants/<NYLAS_GRANT_ID>/notetakers' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <NYLAS_API_KEY>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "meeting_link": "https://us05web.zoom.us/j/12345?pwd=example",
    "name": "Recorder",
    "meeting_settings": {
      "video_recording": true,
      "audio_recording": true,
      "transcription": true,
      "summary": true,
      "action_items": true
    }
  }'

from nylas import Client

nylas = Client(api_key="<NYLAS_API_KEY>")

notetaker = nylas.notetakers.invite(
    request_body={
        "meeting_link": "https://us05web.zoom.us/j/12345?pwd=example",
        "name": "Recorder",
        "meeting_settings": {
            "video_recording": True,
            "audio_recording": True,
            "transcription": True,
            "summary": True,
            "action_items": True,
        },
    },
    identifier="<NYLAS_GRANT_ID>",
)

print(notetaker.data.id, notetaker.data.state)

For the Zoom-specific waiting-room and admission details, see transcribe a Zoom meeting.

How do I retrieve a transcript and recording after the meeting?

Make a GET request to /v3/grants/{grant_id}/notetakers/{notetaker_id}/media once the bot reaches the available state. The API returns one object per enabled output, each carrying a pre-authenticated download url. Each signed URL is valid for 60 minutes from generation, so pull the bytes onto your own storage before the link expires.

The call below fetches the media for a finished meeting. It’s read-only and idempotent, so calling it again mints a fresh set of signed URLs with a new 60-minute window: that’s how you “refresh” an expired link, rather than reusing the old one. Nylas keeps the underlying files for a maximum of 14 days before deleting them for good.

These signed URLs work like bearer credentials: anyone holding one can download the file until it expires. Don’t expose them in a frontend where they land in browser network tabs. Proxy the download through your backend, then put access control in front of the stored files. For the full media field reference and the download pattern, see get a transcript and recording.

How do webhooks tell me a recording is ready?

The Notetaker API exposes 5 webhook triggers, and the one that signals a ready recording is notetaker.media. It fires once each output file finishes processing, a few minutes after the bot leaves, and carries the same download URLs the media endpoint returns. Subscribe to it instead of polling, and you react in seconds instead of burning requests on 404 responses.

Alongside notetaker.media, the notetaker.meeting_state trigger tracks the bot through join, attend, and processing, which is useful for a live “recording in progress” indicator. Because the signed URLs in the payload expire after 60 minutes, treat the webhook as a trigger to fetch and store the files immediately, not as long-term storage. For the full trigger list and a complete handler, see Notetaker webhooks; the transcribe a Zoom meeting recipe shows the create-to-webhook loop end to end.

When should you use Recall.ai instead?

Use Recall.ai when meeting bots are the entire product and you need recording surfaces the Notetaker API doesn’t cover. Recall.ai supports more platforms beyond Zoom, Teams, and Meet, and it offers desktop and browser-based capture for tools that don’t expose a join link. If your roadmap is meeting intelligence and nothing else, that depth is worth pricing out on their documentation.

When meeting recording is one feature inside a larger app, the choice tilts the other way. If you already connect users’ calendars or mailboxes, the same Nylas grant that reads a user’s events can also record them, so a booked meeting records itself through calendar sync with no separate bot scheduling. Platform coverage and per-bot limits move between releases, so verify both vendors’ current docs while you scope. One grant reaching email, calendar, and meeting recording collapses three integrations into one, which is the case where the unified approach wins.

What’s next

Notetaker API guide for bot creation, the meeting_settings object, and every webhook trigger
Get a transcript and recording for the media response shape and the signed-URL download pattern
Transcribe a Zoom meeting for the full create-to-download flow on a Zoom call
Getting started with Nylas to create a project and your first grant