Aircall: Cloud phone and call center platform with built-in AI conversation intelligence: transcription, call summaries, sentiment, and call scoring. Shadow: A bot-free, Mac-based AI meeting assistant that transcribes and summarizes calls locally without joining as a participant. Here's where each one pulls ahead on pricing, features, and the meetings it suits best.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Aircall when running outbound and inbound sales calling with ai transcription matters most, and Shadow when privacy-conscious teams that prefer on-device transcription matters most. Test each on your own meetings; the right choice tends to become obvious quickly.
Cloud phone and call center platform with built-in AI conversation intelligence: transcription, call summaries, sentiment, and call scoring.
A bot-free, Mac-based AI meeting assistant that transcribes and summarizes calls locally without joining as a participant.
Aircall is a cloud-based phone and call center platform widely used by sales and support teams, with an integrated AI conversation intelligence layer that runs across calls rather than as a separate bolt-on system. Its core function is to handle business calling through features like power dialing, call recording, IVR, queueing, and routing, while Aircall AI transcribes conversations and analyzes them for insights. The conversation intelligence capabilities include AI-generated call summaries, key topic recognition, sentiment analysis, talk-to-listen ratios, transcription text search, and call scoring, which together help teams spot coaching opportunities and understand customer objections and buying signals. Aircall centralizes communications in a Workspace that brings voice, text, voicemail, and WhatsApp into a threaded view around each customer, with access to recordings and transcripts. The platform logs activity and transcripts to connected CRMs, and an analytics add-on extends dashboards with advanced filters, longer history, and KPI drill-downs. Aircall is aimed at sales and customer-facing teams that want a reliable cloud phone system with conversation intelligence included, rather than running a separate dialer and analysis tool. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Shadow is a bot-free AI meeting assistant for macOS that captures meetings by listening to your computer's audio in the background rather than joining the call as a visible participant. Because transcription runs locally on the Mac, the audio does not need to leave the device for that core processing step, which the company positions as a privacy advantage. Shadow can automatically detect when a meeting starts, transcribe the conversation with speaker identification, and turn the discussion into structured notes, summaries, and follow-up items. It also captures on-screen content alongside the spoken audio, so material shared during a call (slides, dashboards, or shared windows) can be reflected in the output. The tool works across common conferencing platforms including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Webex, Slack, and Discord. Users can configure customizable prompts (described as Skills) to generate notes, summaries, or drafted emails, and connect outputs to other tools via webhooks. It is aimed at professionals and teams who want meeting capture without adding another bot to the call. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Aircall is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Shadow is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Aircall | Shadow |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Cloud calling with power dialing, recording, IVR, and routing | Bot-free capture that records system audio without joining the meeting as a participant |
| Standout feature | AI call summaries with key topic recognition | On-device (local) transcription on macOS |
| Team usage | Sentiment analysis and talk-to-listen ratios | Speaker identification during transcription |
| Integrations | Transcription with text search and call scoring | Captures on-screen content in addition to spoken audio |
| Languages & capture | CRM logging and an advanced analytics add-on | Customizable prompts/Skills to generate notes, summaries, and emails |
| Best-fit workflow | Cloud calling with power dialing, recording, IVR, and routing | Webhook integration to connect outputs to other tools |
Aircall
Choose Aircall if you need running outbound and inbound sales calling with ai transcription — strengths include conversation intelligence is built into the phone system itself.
Shadow
Choose Shadow if you need capturing notes and summaries across multiple conferencing platforms without a bot joining — strengths include does not add a visible bot to meetings.
Aircall
Shadow
It depends on your workflow. Aircall is strong for running outbound and inbound sales calling with ai transcription, while Shadow is strong for capturing notes and summaries across multiple conferencing platforms without a bot joining. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Aircall is a free tier with paid upgrades and Shadow is a free tier with paid upgrades. Check each vendor's pricing page for the latest plans and free-tier limits.
Yes. Many teams run more than one meeting assistant when the workflows are complementary.
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