Pluely and Shadow are both AI meeting assistants for recording, transcription, and summaries, compared here on pricing, features, and workflow fit. Pluely: A lightweight open-source desktop AI meeting assistant that captures system audio for live transcription and on-call answers without joining as a visible bot. Shadow: A bot-free, Mac-based AI meeting assistant that transcribes and summarizes calls locally without joining as a participant. They overlap on ai-meeting-assistants, so the right pick depends on team size, budget, and which meeting workflows you automate.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
For ai-meeting-assistants workflows, shortlist Pluely when getting live transcription and ai assistance during meetings without a visible bot in the call matters most, and Shadow when capturing notes and summaries across multiple conferencing platforms without a bot joining matters most. Both record across Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams; trial each on real meetings before committing.
A lightweight open-source desktop AI meeting assistant that captures system audio for live transcription and on-call answers without joining as a visible bot.
A bot-free, Mac-based AI meeting assistant that transcribes and summarizes calls locally without joining as a participant.
Pluely 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 | Pluely | Shadow |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Bot-free capture of system audio and microphone for live transcription | Bot-free capture that records system audio without joining the meeting as a participant |
| Standout feature | Always-on-top overlay app for macOS, Windows, and Linux | On-device (local) transcription on macOS |
| Team usage | Bring-your-own-key support for many LLMs (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Mistral, Cohere, Ollama, custom) | Speaker identification during transcription |
| Integrations | Multiple speech-to-text providers (Whisper, Deepgram, ElevenLabs, Groq, Azure, and others) | Captures on-screen content in addition to spoken audio |
| Languages & capture | Lightweight (~10MB) and fast to launch | Customizable prompts/Skills to generate notes, summaries, and emails |
| Best-fit workflow | Open source under GPL with optional local processing via Ollama | Webhook integration to connect outputs to other tools |
Pluely
Choose Pluely if you need getting live transcription and ai assistance during meetings without a visible bot in the call — strengths include free and open source with fully inspectable code.
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.
Pluely
Shadow
It depends on your workflow. Pluely is strong for getting live transcription and ai assistance during meetings without a visible bot in the call, while Shadow is strong for capturing notes and summaries across multiple conferencing platforms without a bot joining. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Pluely 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 and the budget is justified.