Oats

Key features

• No bot joins the call — Captures system audio on your machine instead of injecting a participant into Zoom/Meet/Teams.
• On-device or Ariso cloud AI — Run recording + transcription + notes locally, or connect an Ariso account for cloud transcription and enhanced features.
• Structured outputs — Quick digest, full summary, action items with owners, and a meeting quality score.
• Todos that sync with notes — Action items collect in a Todos tab; closing one in notes closes it there (local Obsidian Tasks support on the local backend).
• Obsidian / Markdown storage — Local notes are plain Markdown in a vault you choose — export, sync, or leave without a proprietary lock-in.
• Searchable meeting library — Ask questions across past meetings (“what did we decide about pricing?”).
• Open source (MIT) — Full GitHub repo to audit, fork, or self-host; downloads for macOS and Windows (beta).
• Speaker tagging (cloud) — Match voices to people on the Ariso backend so notes say names instead of “Speaker 2.”

Pricing

Read from Oats's pricing page in September 2026 (verify current).

Oats itself is free forever — no seats, no trial timer, no paywall after meeting six. Both the local on-device path and the Ariso cloud transcription path are described as free on the product site and GitHub README. There is no separate Oats SKU with a monthly sticker price; enhanced cloud features ride the Ariso account, and Ariso’s broader “Ari” suite has its own startup/commercial packaging elsewhere on ariso.ai if you expand beyond Oats.

Practical cost is hardware and time: local models need enough Mac/PC resources, and Windows is still beta. If you need enterprise SSO, guaranteed SLA, or a hosted bot that works when your laptop is closed, budget for a different vendor — Oats is intentionally the opposite product.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Truly free + open source with a no-bot recording model most SaaS notetakers will not match.
• Local Markdown / Obsidian path is excellent for privacy-sensitive and FOSS-minded teams.
• Action items → Todos loop treats notes as work, not archive sludge.

Cons

• Desktop-bound — Closing the laptop mid-process can pause work; audio queues for later, but this is not a cloud bot that keeps listening without you.
• Local quality vs cloud — On-device diarization and summary quality will trail heavy cloud models on hard audio; speaker tagging is cloud-first today.
• Early product surface — Editing generated notes, custom local models, and screen recording were still roadmap/PH discussion items around launch — expect rough edges.

Who should use Oats?

Choose Oats if you hate meeting bots, care about on-device privacy, want Markdown you control, and are fine installing a Mac (or Windows beta) app. It is a strong fit for startups, agencies, and security-conscious teams that already live in Obsidian or plain files.

Look elsewhere if you need a calendar bot for meetings you do not attend, mandatory admin controls across hundreds of seats, or polished mobile capture. Pairing with something like Ulpaso or Ify only makes sense if your stack needs adjacent AI workspace tools — Oats itself is the notetaker layer.

FAQs