Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Parabol: Free, open-source agile meeting tool for retrospectives, sprint poker, and standups with automated meeting summaries and AI topic grouping. This comparison weighs them on pricing, features, and everyday workflow fit.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Bubbles when teams replacing status meetings with async video updates matters most, and Parabol when facilitating sprint poker estimation sessions matters most. Try them side by side on real calls before deciding — needs vary by team.
Async video and AI meeting notes with action items
Free, open-source agile meeting tool for retrospectives, sprint poker, and standups with automated meeting summaries and AI topic grouping.
Bubbles is an AI meeting notetaker combined with an asynchronous screen and video recorder. For live meetings, it can automatically join and record calls on Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Zoom, then produce AI-generated summaries and extract action items so participants do not have to take notes manually. Recordings, transcripts and notes are organized in a centralized workspace and tied to calendar events, making it easy to find and share what was discussed. Beyond live meetings, Bubbles is built around reducing the number of meetings teams hold: users can record short async videos with screen capture and voice, then collect threaded video and text replies, which lets routine updates, design feedback and quick questions happen without scheduling a call. It connects with calendars such as Google Calendar and Outlook and integrates with a wide range of other tools including Slack, Notion and Asana for routing notes and recordings into existing workflows. Bubbles is aimed at marketers, designers, product managers and other collaborative teams that want to cut meeting time while keeping a clear record of decisions and next steps. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Parabol is a free, open-source platform built for facilitating agile meetings, with a particular focus on sprint retrospectives alongside estimation (sprint poker) and team check-ins. Its retrospective experience follows a structured reflect, group, vote, discuss, and action workflow compatible with popular formats like Start/Stop/Continue, 4Ls, and Mad/Sad/Glad, plus custom templates. Facilitators get multiplayer drag-and-drop cards, live task editing, timers, dynamic agenda items, discussion threads, emoji reactions, and a large library of retrospective formats and icebreaker questions. At the end of each retro, Parabol automatically generates a meeting summary that rolls up notes and tasks, posts them to a team timeline, and delivers them to attendees via email or Slack so next steps are clear. Its AI capabilities include automatic naming of grouped card clusters and AI topic summaries to speed up synthesis during retros. Parabol integrates with Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Slack, and Mattermost, and because the codebase is publicly available on GitHub, teams can self-host or review how it works. It is used by hundreds of thousands of people across distributed and remote teams. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Bubbles is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Parabol is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Bubbles | Parabol |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Automatic meeting recording across Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Zoom | Structured retrospective workflow (reflect, group, vote, discuss, action) |
| Standout feature | AI-generated summaries and action item extraction | Automated meeting summaries delivered via email and Slack |
| Team usage | Async screen and video recording for replacing live meetings | AI auto-naming of grouped cards and AI topic summaries |
| Integrations | Threaded video and text replies on recordings | Sprint poker estimation and team standup/check-in templates |
| Languages & capture | Calendar integration with note and recording organization | Large library of retrospective formats and icebreaker questions |
| Best-fit workflow | Integrations with Slack, Notion, Asana and many other tools | Integrations with Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Slack, and Mattermost |
Bubbles
Choose Bubbles if you need teams replacing status meetings with async video updates — strengths include combines live meeting notes with async video collaboration in one tool.
Parabol
Choose Parabol if you need running sprint retrospectives for remote and distributed agile teams — strengths include free and open-source with the option to self-host.
Bubbles
Parabol
It depends on your workflow. Bubbles is strong for teams replacing status meetings with async video updates, while Parabol is strong for running sprint retrospectives for remote and distributed agile teams. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Bubbles is a free tier with paid upgrades and Parabol 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.
More head-to-head comparisons involving Bubbles and Parabol.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items BuildBetter: A no-bot meeting recorder (BB Recorder) that captures and processes calls locally on Mac, with optional cloud upload for team collaboration. Which one wins depends on your platform mix, budget, and how hands-off you want notes to be.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Buzz: Popular open-source desktop app that transcribes and translates audio offline on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper. Here's where each one pulls ahead on pricing, features, and the meetings it suits best.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items CLOVA Note: South Korean AI meeting-minutes service by Naver that records meetings, transcribes speech, separates speakers, and generates summaries and action items. Which one wins depends on your platform mix, budget, and how hands-off you want notes to be.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Calendly Notetaker: An AI meeting notetaker built into the Calendly scheduling platform that records meetings and generates summaries, transcripts, and action items. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items CallBro: Bot-free AI meeting assistant that transcribes calls from system audio and produces structured notes without joining the call. This comparison weighs them on pricing, features, and everyday workflow fit.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Callabo: Korean AI meeting-notes service from Return Zero that records, transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes meetings for individuals and teams. The right pick comes down to team size, budget, and the workflows you want to automate.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Canopy Notetaker: AI meeting assistant built for accounting firms that records client calls and produces accounting-specific summaries and tasks. The right pick comes down to team size, budget, and the workflows you want to automate.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items CaptureMyMeeting: AI meeting assistant that imports Zoom and Webex cloud recordings to generate notes, action items, and insights. This comparison weighs them on pricing, features, and everyday workflow fit.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Carv: AI assistant for recruiters that records, transcribes, and takes notes during interviews and intake calls, then drafts documents and updates the ATS. Which one wins depends on your platform mix, budget, and how hands-off you want notes to be.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Castmagic: AI content platform that transcribes podcasts, videos, and recorded meetings with speaker diarization and turns them into show notes, summaries, and other assets. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Celeste AI: Brazilian Portuguese-focused AI voice and transcription platform offering on-demand transcription plus a meeting assistant and AI notes, with credit-based and subscription plans. Which one wins depends on your platform mix, budget, and how hands-off you want notes to be.
Bubbles: Async video and AI meeting notes with action items Choppity: AI video and audio platform that transcribes recordings, generates styled captions, and turns long-form content into short clips. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.