Read AI Review: Features, Pricing & Alternatives

What is Read AI?

Read AI is an AI meeting notetaker that joins your calls on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Webex, then produces transcripts, summaries, action items and highlights. It has grown beyond meetings: it can also summarize email in Gmail and Outlook and messages in Slack and Teams, so a single assistant sees most of your work conversations.

The company was founded in 2021 in Seattle by David Shim (CEO), Robert Williams (CTO) and Elliott Waldron, and is backed by Madrona Venture Group, Goodwater Capital and Smash Capital. Its stated goal is an AI auto-pilot for knowledge workers across meetings, emails and messages, rather than a stand-alone transcription tool.

Recent changes push Read AI toward an agent-style assistant. Ask Read is a search copilot that answers questions about your meetings, email and messages with citations. Ada, the personal digital twin, can schedule meetings, draft replies and suggest CRM updates, mostly through email at ada@read.ai. Read AI is also available as a Claude connector, a ChatGPT app and an MCP server, and offers a speaker coach that scores engagement.

Key features of Read AI

• Meeting summaries and transcriptsAutomatic recaps with action items, key questions and highlights for calls on Zoom, Meet, Teams and Webex, in 20+ languages.
• Ask ReadA search copilot that answers questions across meetings, email and messages and cites the source conversations.
• Ada digital twinA personal assistant that schedules meetings, drafts email replies and suggests CRM updates based on what was discussed.
• Email and message summariesConnects to Gmail, Outlook, Slack and Teams to condense long threads into short briefings.
• Speaker coach and playbackEngagement and talk-time feedback, plus video playback and highlight clips on the Enterprise tier and above.
• IntegrationsPushes notes to Notion, Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, Confluence and others, with Zapier and webhooks on paid plans.

Who is Read AI best for?

• Sales and customer teams who want call notes and CRM updates in Salesforce or HubSpot without manual typing.
• Managers with back-to-back meetings who need quick recaps and a way to search what was agreed weeks ago.
• Regulated organizations that need HIPAA support, SAML and SCIM, which are available on the Enterprise+ plan.
• Individual professionals who want to try an AI notetaker on a free plan before paying.

Popular ways to use Read AI

• Meeting recaps: Send a summary with owners and action items to attendees minutes after a call ends.
• Deal tracking: Sync call notes to your CRM so pipeline records reflect what customers actually said.
• Catch-up search: Ask Read what was decided about a project across meetings, email and Slack.
• Scheduling: Copy Ada on an email thread to book a follow-up meeting without back-and-forth.
• Presentation coaching: Review speaker coach metrics to see how much you talked and how engaged the room was.

Read AI pricing (October 2026)

Annual billing saves about 25% compared with monthly billing. Prices are per user, and the free plan does not require a credit card.

Read AI pros and cons

How to get started with Read AI

1. Sign up at read.ai with your Google or Microsoft work account.
2. Connect your calendar so Read AI can join scheduled meetings automatically.
3. Choose which meetings it should join and who receives the summary.
4. Optionally connect Gmail, Outlook, Slack or Teams for message summaries.
5. Link your CRM or Notion so notes flow into the tools you already use.

Tips to get better results from Read AI

• Tell participants an AI notetaker is present and check local recording consent rules.
• Set auto-join to your own meetings only at first, then widen it once your team is comfortable.
• Use Ask Read before a recurring meeting to pull up open action items from the last session.
• Review retention settings so transcripts are kept only as long as your policy allows.

Read AI vs alternatives

Read AI competes most directly with Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai and Fathom. All three record and summarize meetings, but Read AI stands out by also summarizing email and Slack or Teams messages and letting you search across all of them with Ask Read. Fathom is often chosen for its generous free tier, while Fireflies leans on a wide integration list.

If you prefer not to have a bot in the call, Granola captures audio from your device instead, and tl;dv focuses on recordings and sales coaching. Read AI suits teams that want one assistant spanning meetings and messages, plus enterprise controls like HIPAA and SCIM. See all best AI productivity tools.

Our verdict: is Read AI worth it?

Read AI FAQs

Pricing and features change often. Details on this page were last reviewed in October 2026. Always confirm current plans on the official Read AI website.