Open source meeting note apps for Mac, honestly compared.
Three of them are good, they are all free, and they all ask something of you in return. Each one captures something different, turns speech into text somewhere different, and leaves something different on your disk. This page also says where Aside is worth paying for instead.
| What is being compared |  Aside |
Muesli | Meetily | Anarlog |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capture | Plus. Mic and system audio, separately. No bot | Plus. Mic and system audio, Core Audio tap. No bot | Plus. Mic and system audio, simultaneously. No bot | Plus. On your Mac. No bot |
| Transcription | Plus. On your Mac | Plus. On your Mac, Parakeet or Whisper | Plus. On your Mac, Whisper or Parakeet | Plus. On your Mac |
| Storage | Plus. Markdown files in a folder you pick | Neither. SQLite, with Markdown and PDF export | Neither. Local, format undocumented. Markdown export is Pro | Neither. Local SQLite, with Markdown export |
| Speaker labels | Plus. On your Mac | Plus. On your Mac, a pyannote CoreML model | Limit. Named for Pro, not in the community edition | Limit. Manual free, better identification is Pro |
| Agents | Plus. MCP server, including a live meeting | Neither. A bundled CLI, no MCP server | Limit. None documented | Limit. None documented |
| Price | Plus. $8 / mo, or $79 once | Plus. Free, MIT | Plus. Free, MIT. A paid Pro edition exists | Plus. Free with your keys. Hosted $15 / mo, $150 / yr |
| macOS floor | Limit. macOS 26 or later | Plus. macOS 14.2 or later | Neither. Not published | Neither. Not published |
Muesli.
The closest thing to Aside on this page, and the one to try first if the price is the reason you are here. MIT licensed and macOS only, it needs macOS 14.2 or later, captures your microphone and the system audio through a Core Audio process tap with a ScreenCaptureKit fallback, and runs Parakeet or Whisper on the Neural Engine. Speaker separation is on the machine too, through a pyannote based CoreML model that labels the far-end voices. It keeps everything in a SQLite database under Application Support and exports Markdown or PDF when you ask it to, and the summaries go out to OpenAI, OpenRouter or a local Ollama model, your choice. There is a bundled command line tool but no MCP server.
Meetily.
The one to pick if you are not only on a Mac. MIT licensed, built on Rust, and it runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, capturing the microphone and system audio at the same time with no bot anywhere. Transcription is Whisper or Parakeet on your own machine and the summaries go through Ollama or a key you supply. Two things are worth knowing before you install it: speaker diarisation is named for the paid Pro edition rather than the community one, and Markdown export sits in Pro’s advanced exports as well. Their pages publish no macOS version floor and no Pro price, so both are things to check rather than assume.
Anarlog.
The one that also sells you a way out of the setup. The community app is MIT licensed, runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, captures on the device with nothing joining the call, and transcribes on the machine. Sessions, notes and transcripts live in a local SQLite database, the recordings and attachments are plain files next to it, and Markdown export is there when you want it. Free means free with your own API keys; the hosted tier is $15 a month or $150 a year and is what buys you managed transcription, a cloud model and better speaker identification. On the free tier you label speakers by hand.
When open source is the right answer.
When you want to read the code, when you already have an API key you are happy to spend, or when the budget is zero and will stay there. All three projects are MIT licensed, which means you can fork one, audit what it sends where, and keep running your fork after the maintainer loses interest. If the reason you are shopping is that a subscription offends you, install Muesli this afternoon and see whether it is already enough.
What you are taking on is the setup and the upkeep. You choose and download a speech model, you supply a key or stand up Ollama, and the first time an update breaks the audio capture the person who fixes it is you or a volunteer. Two of the three keep the note in a database rather than as a file, so the Markdown you want is an export you have to remember to run. None of the three ships an MCP server, so an agent reading your meetings is something you build.
When Aside is worth the money.
When you want the thing to work on the first afternoon and stay working. Aside is a signed native Mac app that installs, updates itself and asks for two permissions. The note is written straight into the folder you pick as a Markdown file, so there is no export step and no database holding your meetings; notes as files is what that changes in practice. The MCP server is included, and an agent in Claude Code or Codex can read a meeting while it is still running.
And there is somebody to email. $79 buys the app outright, updates included, with a model of your choosing behind it, which puts the running cost at zero for anyone who already has a key or Ollama. That is the same deal the open source projects offer, with the setup and the maintenance taken off your desk. Aside needs macOS 26 or later and costs $79.
If a cloud recorder is what you are actually comparing against, the comparison pages cover Granola, Otter, Fathom, Fireflies, Wispr Flow and Notion AI, and local vs cloud is the guide about where each side genuinely wins.
Last updated 21 August 2026.
Asked about the open source ones.
Is there a good open source alternative to Granola for Mac?
Three of them are worth your time in August 2026. Muesli is MIT licensed, macOS only, captures the mic and system audio with a Core Audio process tap and transcribes and diarises entirely on the machine. Meetily is MIT licensed and runs on macOS, Windows and Linux with Whisper or Parakeet locally. Anarlog is MIT licensed for the community app, captures on the device with no bot, and keeps sessions in local SQLite. All three need you to supply a model or a key for the summaries.
Do open source meeting apps cost anything to run?
The app is free. The summary is not, unless you run it locally. Muesli, Meetily and Anarlog all write the note by sending the transcript to a model, and that model is either your own API key at your own provider’s rates or a local model through Ollama at the cost of your machine’s time. Anarlog also sells a hosted tier at $15 a month or $150 a year if you would rather not.
Where do open source meeting apps store the transcript?
Mostly in a local database rather than as files. Muesli keeps everything in SQLite at ~/Library/Application Support/Muesli/muesli.db and exports Markdown or PDF on request. Anarlog keeps sessions, notes and transcripts in local SQLite with plain files for the recordings, and exports Markdown. Meetily stores locally and puts Markdown export in its Pro edition. In Aside the Markdown file in your folder is the note.
Do any of them offer speaker labels?
Muesli does, on the machine, using a pyannote based CoreML model that names the far-end voices Speaker 1, Speaker 2 and so on. Anarlog offers manual labelling on the free tier and lists better speaker identification as a Pro feature. Meetily names diarisation for its Pro edition rather than the community one. Aside labels on the machine, and it starts from an advantage none of the four share: your microphone is already a separate track from the far end.
Why pay for Aside when Muesli is free?
Because a repository does not hand you these.
- A signed build that installs and updates itself.
- Notes written straight into your vault as Markdown, not exported out of a database.
- An MCP server that lets an agent read a meeting while it runs.
- A person who answers your email.
- A licence that is bought once.
If none of that is worth $79 to you, Muesli is good and you should use it.