Price terms as published
Each line is the vendor’s own wording, split from the price capture checked on 2026-09-18. Nothing here is rounded, converted or re-worded — the full sentences stay in the review below. Lines that carry only a price continue the plan named on the line above, in the vendor’s own order.
| # | Plan / term | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Free (MIT open source): on-device Local backend fully offline, and Ariso cloud backend currently free with no model training on meeting data | 2026-09-18 |
One-liner: Oats is a free, open-source meeting notetaker from Ariso that records meeting audio directly on your Mac or Windows machine — no bot joins the call — and writes a digest, full summary, per-person action items, and a meeting quality score afterward. You can run the whole pipeline on-device with a local model, or use the free Ariso cloud backend. It reached Product Hunt on September 15, 2026. Facts below were checked against the official ariso.ai page, the ariso-ai/oats GitHub repository, and the Product Hunt listing on 2026-09-18.
Verified facts (checked 2026-09-18)
| Attribute | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Free, open-source AI meeting-notes app for macOS and Windows (beta); records system audio with no bot joining the call | Official ariso.ai/oats |
| License / stack | MIT licensed; built with Tauri v2, Vue 3, Vite, Rust, FluidAudio, and MLX | GitHub repo ariso-ai/oats |
| Price | Free for both backends — “no seats, no trial timer, no paywall waiting at meeting #6” | Official site + GitHub README backend table |
| Local backend | 100% offline: transcription on Apple Neural Engine (macOS) or a native CPU sidecar (Windows), notes from an on-device LLM; no login, audio never leaves the machine | GitHub README backend table |
| Ariso cloud backend | Free, requires sign-in (Google or Microsoft); audio is encrypted with your key; real-time transcription; Ariso states meeting data is never used to train its models, including on the free plan | GitHub README + Product Hunt maker post |
| Output per meeting | Quick digest, full summary, action items assigned per person, and a 1–5 “meeting quality score” | Official ariso.ai/oats |
| Searchable library | All meetings land in a searchable history; you can ask questions across past meetings | Official site |
| Works with | Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, phone calls, in-person conversation — “any audio your Mac can hear” | Official site |
| Current version | v0.23 — Todos tab collecting action items across meetings (tick to close); on the Local backend notes save as plain Markdown with Obsidian Tasks in a vault you choose; Microsoft sign-in | Official site “What’s new” |
| v0.21 | One-click download/export of a meeting’s recording and notes | Official site changelog |
| Speaker tagging | Matches voices to named people; currently available on the Ariso cloud backend only | Official site |
| Cloud extras | Enhanced transcription, multi-language support, speaker recognition, assessments, coaching, and automatic follow-up tracking via the Ariso backend; pricing for these enhancements is not published on the site | Product Hunt maker post |
| Maker | Erkang Zheng / the Ariso team; Oats is described as Ariso’s first step toward open-sourcing more of its products | Product Hunt listing |
| Launch | Product Hunt launch the week of September 14, 2026 (listed September 15) | Product Hunt + startup launch digests |
This is an official-information entry: we did not install Oats or run it against a real meeting, so there is no score.
Why the no-bot, local-first combination matters
Most meeting notetakers have two properties in common: a bot identity joins the call (visible to every attendee, and blocked at some companies), and the audio travels to the vendor’s cloud. Oats removes both. Because it captures your own computer’s audio output, there is nothing to invite and nothing for an IT policy to reject — the same mechanism lets it cover a phone call or an in-person conversation a bot could never join. The Local backend then keeps the entire pipeline offline, which is the configuration privacy-sensitive conversations actually require rather than just a marketing checkbox: you can audit the code because it is MIT licensed, and the notes are plain Markdown in a folder you pick.
The Obsidian-vault export in v0.23 is the detail that makes the local story coherent. Notes written as Markdown and action items written as Obsidian Tasks mean the output is not trapped in a proprietary app you can be priced out of later — the vault is yours to open in Obsidian, sync through any channel, or move. Cross-meeting follow-through gets a dedicated Todos tab instead of a pile of documents, so action items accumulate in one place and close when ticked in either the notes or Obsidian.
Where to stay honest
- It is pre-1.0 software shipping weekly. v0.23 implies a fast-moving, early product; features and the cloud/free boundary can change. Windows is explicitly still beta.
- The best features are cloud-side today. Speaker tagging is Ariso-backend-only at launch; the Local backend is the private mode but the narrower one. You are choosing privacy over polish, not getting both at parity.
- “Free cloud” has no published long-term pricing. Enhanced cloud features (coaching, assessments, multi-language) exist, but the official site does not publish what they will cost if Ariso monetizes them. Treat cloud free as today’s price, not a guarantee.
- Local AI quality depends on your hardware. On-device transcription and summarization run on the Apple Neural Engine or a CPU sidecar; results on older machines will not match a server model. The GitHub README itself frames the cloud backend as the zero-setup default.
- Don’t confuse it with OpenOats. A separate product at openoats.com (“a meeting note-taker that talks back,” real-time copilot) shares the Oats name; it is not this app.
- Recording consent is on you. Capturing system audio without a bot also means no automatic “recording” notice to other participants — follow local two-party-consent rules before recording calls.
Who it’s for
- People who cannot or will not invite a meeting bot into calls (company policy, client calls, sensitive interviews)
- Privacy-first users who want transcription and summaries to run fully offline, with source code they can inspect
- Obsidian users who want meeting notes and tasks landing as plain Markdown in their own vault
- Anyone comparing the free tier against paid notetakers like Otter or Granola — see our Oats vs Granola comparison for the bot-free face-off and the Granola vs Otter comparison for the paid side of this category
Who it’s not for
- Teams that want polished speaker identification, multi-language transcription, and cross-device sync with zero setup — that is the cloud-backend camp (Otter, Granola, Fathom), not the local mode
- Anyone who needs a stable, supported v1 product rather than weekly beta releases