A recruiter does a phone screen at 9, a video interview at 11 and an onsite loop at 2. At 5 the hiring manager asks what the candidate said about relocation, and the scorecard in the ATS is still empty.
Recruiters don’t need a better summary. They need the interview on the candidate’s record, in the candidate’s own words, before the debrief starts. A note that lives in a separate app, or in a notebook, is a note the hiring manager will never read. This roundup compares four tools on that job: Metaview, Fireflies, Otter and AmyNote, using only what each vendor publishes about itself.
Quick Verdict
- Best for full-time recruiting teams: Metaview. It posts notes and scorecards into Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday and others, and records phone screens. Pro costs $60 a user a month.
- Best general note-taker with ATS integrations: Fireflies. Its integrations page lists Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable, BambooHR, Gem and Loxo. Pro costs $10 a seat a month billed annually.
- Cheapest path into Greenhouse: Otter. Its Recruiting Agent syncs to Greenhouse through Zapier, which starts on Pro at $8.33 a month billed annually. Each meeting is capped at 90 minutes on Pro.
- Best for in-person interviews on an iPhone: AmyNote. It costs $99 a year, lists no length cap and keeps replayable audio. It has no ATS integration, no phone-call capture and no free plan.
What We Compared
We read each vendor’s pricing, product and privacy pages on October 19, 2026 and asked five questions:
- ATS handoff. Do the notes reach the candidate’s record without copy and paste?
- Phone screens. Can it record a phone call, not just Zoom or Teams?
- Length. Will it cut off a long interview or onsite loop?
- Candidate notice. Does it help you tell candidates they are being recorded?
- Privacy. Does the vendor train AI on what candidates say?
We also priced one recruiter for one year on the cheapest paid plan. We did not test transcript accuracy, and we did not use vendors’ own time-saved claims, which we could not verify. For a recruiter, the deciding questions come first: can the tool hear the conversation at all, and does what it produces land where the hiring team already works?
Metaview: Built for Hiring, Priced Like It
Strengths. Metaview is the only tool here built only for recruiting. It reads your scorecards and job descriptions, and posts notes and completed scorecards to the candidate’s record in Greenhouse, Ashby, Workday, Lever, Teamtailor, iCIMS, SmartRecruiters, Recruitee, Recruiterflow and more. That matters more than it sounds: the scorecard is the thing a hiring manager is chased for, and a pre-filled one turns a ten-minute chore into a review.
Phone interviews run through Metaview’s switchboard, which its site says can “join and record phone interviews in a single click,” so a phone screen is captured like a video call. On Zoom, Meet, Teams and Webex no bot has to join, and there is a Mac app. Its page says teams can “configure candidate opt-out language per jurisdiction, set retention windows, and prove deletion when a candidate asks.” The footer lists SOC 2 Type II and GDPR.
Weaknesses. Pro costs $60 a user a month, and the pricing page shows no annual price. That is $720 a year per recruiter, roughly six times anything else in this roundup. The free plan covers 25 calls a month per user and keeps access to only the last 14 days, which is fine for a trial and thin for a live requisition. Metaview says it captures in-person meetings but does not name the device, and we found no iOS app for it. Its public privacy policy has a training statement only for Google user data, not a general one about interview content.
Fireflies: The Widest ATS List for the Money
Strengths. Fireflies lists seven applicant tracking systems: Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable, BambooHR, Gem and Loxo. Its pricing page also advertises auto-extracting details such as a “candidate scorecard” from a meeting, which uses AI credits. It has iOS and Android apps for in-person recording, a desktop app and a Chrome extension, and it pulls calls from dialer apps such as Aircall and Outreach.
On privacy, Fireflies’ policy says it does not use personal information to train AI models, and its Zero Data Retention policy bars third-party vendors from keeping meeting content. SOC 2 Type II is listed on every plan.
Weaknesses. Free stores only 400 minutes per team, fewer than nine 45-minute screens before you start deleting. Pro is $10 a seat a month billed annually or $18 monthly, and it is the first plan that lists “unlimited integrations,” so the ATS sync is effectively a paid feature. Recordings are capped at 2 hours on Free and Pro, 3 hours on Business and 4 hours on Enterprise. Fireflies is a general meeting tool first, so anything recruiting-specific, such as candidate notice wording, is left to you.
Otter: Cheap, but the Clock Runs
Strengths. Otter’s Recruiting Agent summarizes resumes, suggests interview questions and drafts feedback emails to candidates. It syncs notes “to Greenhouse and other ATS systems.” It runs on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android, so the same account covers a video screen at the desk and an in-person coffee. Pro costs $8.33 a month billed annually or $16.99 monthly.
Weaknesses. The Greenhouse sync goes through Zapier, and Zapier is not on the free Basic plan. That is one more tool to set up and keep working. Basic cuts every conversation off at 30 minutes and Pro stops at 90, so a two-hour onsite needs Business at $19.99 a month billed annually ($30 monthly), where the cap is 4 hours. The recording disclaimer email, the feature that tells participants they are being recorded, is Enterprise only, as are dialer integrations.
Two more points deserve a careful read. The Recruiting Agent advertises detecting “the candidate’s emotional tone and sentiment throughout the interview.” Whether that belongs in a hiring decision is a question for your legal and HR teams, not your note-taker. And Otter’s privacy policy says it trains its AI on de-identified audio and transcripts.
AmyNote: In the Room, Not in the ATS
Weaknesses first. AmyNote has no ATS integration, and its site makes no phone-call claim. To get notes into Greenhouse, you export a PDF, TXT or Word file and attach it to the candidate. It runs on iPhone and iPad only, with no desktop app and no meeting bot, so it is the wrong tool for a recruiter whose day is back-to-back video screens. It has no candidate-notice tools, no free plan beyond a 3-day trial, and no SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA certification.
Strengths. AmyNote records an in-person interview on a phone placed on the table, lists no length cap and needs no account for core features. That fits the conversations the other three handle least well: the onsite loop in a conference room, the coffee with a passive candidate, the career fair, the client intake meeting at an agency. The audio stays replayable, so you can check exactly what the candidate said about notice period or salary instead of trusting a one-line summary.
It remembers speakers across sessions, which helps when the same hiring manager sits on every panel. It transcribes 140+ languages and translates into 100+, useful for agency recruiters placing candidates across borders. Pricing is $99 a year, $19.99 a month or $12.99 a week, with unlimited recordings.
Privacy. AmyNote says it does not use your data to train AI models and does not sell meeting content. Transcription and AI run through Microsoft Azure, OpenAI and Anthropic’s Claude, with TLS in transit, which AmyNote says is not end-to-end encryption. The saved library lives on the recruiter’s iPhone. Local-first does not mean local-only: when a transcript or summary runs, the audio or text is uploaded, and a processing copy may be kept in AmyNote’s cloud.
Side-by-Side Comparison
- ATS integration: Metaview and Fireflies, native. Otter, Greenhouse through Zapier on Pro and up. AmyNote, file export only.
- Phone screens: Metaview through its switchboard. Fireflies pulls calls from dialer apps such as Aircall and Outreach. Otter lists dialer integrations on Enterprise. AmyNote makes no phone-call claim.
- Length cap on the cheapest paid plan: Otter Pro 90 minutes. Fireflies Pro 2 hours. AmyNote none listed. Metaview none listed.
- Candidate notice tools: Metaview, opt-out language per jurisdiction. Otter, a disclaimer email on Enterprise. Fireflies and AmyNote list none.
- Trains on your interviews: Fireflies and AmyNote say no. Otter trains on de-identified data. Metaview’s public policy has no general statement.
- One recruiter, one year: AmyNote $99. Otter Pro $99.96. Fireflies Pro $120. Metaview Pro $720 at the monthly price.
Before You Record a Candidate
Whichever tool you pick, recording an interview is a decision about the candidate as much as about your workflow. Recording consent rules differ between states and countries, and a candidate has less room to say no than a colleague does. A few habits hold up regardless of the tool:
- Say it out loud, at the start. Tell the candidate the interview is being recorded and why, and give them a real option to decline. Only Metaview and Otter Enterprise offer built-in notice tools; with the others, the notice is on you.
- Decide how long you keep it. A recording of a rejected candidate is personal data. Set a retention period with your legal or HR team and delete on schedule.
- Keep the record about the job. Scorecards should reflect job-related evidence. Features that score tone or emotion deserve the same scrutiny as any other assessment you would put in front of a hiring panel.
- Check where the audio goes. Read the vendor’s training and retention lines before the first interview, not after a candidate asks.
The Bottom Line
If you hire full time and live in an ATS, Metaview is the specialist. It costs more, but it handles scorecards, phone screens and candidate notices. If you want a cheaper general tool that still writes to Greenhouse or Lever, pick Fireflies. Otter is the cheapest way into Greenhouse, as long as your interviews end within 90 minutes and you are comfortable setting up Zapier.
AmyNote is for the agency recruiter or hiring manager who meets candidates in person, on an iPhone, sometimes in another language. It costs $99 a year, keeps replayable audio on the phone and does not train on what candidates say. It will not fill in your scorecard or record a phone screen. It has a 3-day trial on the App Store.
Originally published as an X Article by @AmyNoteApp.
