Choose with receipts, not marketing
Every comparison below credits what the competitor genuinely does better — then shows where Donna’s architecture wins. If a cloud tool fits you better, these pages will tell you so.
Donna vs Otter.ai
The best-known name in AI meeting notes, strongest at real-time transcription.
Donna vs Fireflies.ai
The integration powerhouse — its bot feeds transcripts into CRMs and 60+ tools.
Donna vs Fathom
The free-tier favorite — unlimited recording for individuals with instant summaries.
Donna vs tl;dv
The EU-hosted, GDPR-forward cloud notetaker with broad language support.
Donna vs MeetGeek
The workflow automator — templates, KPIs, and auto-shared recaps for ops-minded teams.
Donna vs Granola
The botless notepad — captures system audio on your device and enriches your own notes.
Donna vs Meetily
The open-source, privacy-first desktop notetaker — local Whisper on your own machine.
The one-table version
| Axis | Otter | Fireflies | Fathom | tl;dv | MeetGeek | Granola | Meetily | Donna |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Otter’s cloud (SaaS) | Fireflies’ cloud (SaaS) | Fathom’s cloud (SaaS) | tl;dv’s cloud (EU-hosted SaaS) | MeetGeek’s cloud (SaaS) | Desktop app; AI processing in Granola’s cloud | Self-hosted desktop app (macOS/Windows) | Your own Linux VPS (self-hosted) |
| Where your recordings live | Stored and processed on Otter’s servers | Stored and processed on Fireflies’ servers | Stored and processed on Fathom’s servers | Stored and processed on tl;dv’s EU servers | Stored and processed on MeetGeek’s servers | Audio captured on-device; transcripts processed by cloud AI | On your device — fully local processing available | Your server’s disk and your PostgreSQL database — nothing on a vendor cloud |
| How it attends meetings | OtterPilot bot joins your calls | The “Fred” bot joins your calls | Bot joins Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams calls | Bot joins your calls | Bot auto-joins calendar meetings | Botless — nothing joins the call; it listens to system audio | No bot — listens locally from your machine during calls | Joins Google Meet as a visible participant — on demand, or auto-joined from your calendar’s iCal feed |
| Meeting video capture | Captures shared slides/screens | Video capture on higher tiers | Yes — call recording with highlight clips | Yes — recordings with clips and timestamps | Yes | No | No | Yes — screen video + audio, compressed server-side after the call |
| Transcription engine | Proprietary, vendor-managed | Vendor-managed, multilingual | Vendor-managed | Vendor-managed, 30+ languages | Vendor-managed | Vendor-managed | Whisper.cpp locally; summaries via Ollama or your own API key | Whisper large-v3 via the Groq API, with your key |
Put Donna in your next meeting
Donna deploys onto your own VPS in an afternoon: nginx, pm2, PostgreSQL, your API keys. Early access is open — tell us about your team and we’ll get her a seat at your table.
Request early access