Zoom AI Companion documents your meetings after they end. Hedy coaches you while they're happening. A detailed comparison of features, pricing, and real-world use cases for professionals looking for more than transcripts and summaries.
You searched for a Zoom AI Companion alternative, which probably means you've already noticed the problem: Zoom's AI gives you a summary after the meeting ends, but it doesn't help you while the meeting is happening. You get a transcript, a list of action items, and maybe some meeting notes. What you don't get is the question you should have asked, the detail you missed, or the strategic opportunity you let slip by.
That's the gap Hedy fills. Hedy is an AI meeting assistant that coaches you in real time during any conversation, on any platform, with no bot joining your call. If you're tired of reviewing meeting summaries and thinking "I wish I'd said that during the meeting," this article explains exactly how Hedy solves that problem and why thousands of professionals have made the switch.
Zoom AI Companion is a set of AI features built into Zoom Workplace. It can transcribe your Zoom calls, generate meeting summaries, and answer questions about what was discussed. It extends into Zoom Team Chat, Zoom Phone, and Zoom Docs, and it uses a mix of AI models including generative AI from OpenAI and Anthropic for features like meeting transcription and live transcription.
On paper, it sounds comprehensive. In practice, there are three problems that send people looking for alternatives.
First, Zoom AI Companion only works with Zoom. Your Google Meet calls, Microsoft Teams sessions, phone conversations, and in-person meetings get zero AI support. If even a quarter of your important conversations happen off Zoom, the AI companion offers nothing for those moments.
Second, it's reactive. It documents what happened. It doesn't help you shape what happens. There are no coaching suggestions, no strategic prompts, no "hey, they mentioned budget twice and you haven't followed up." You get the transcript after the fact and a summary that tells you what you already know.
Third, it requires cloud recording with visible bots and consent notifications. Everyone in the meeting knows it's there. In sensitive contexts like medical appointments, coaching sessions, interviews, or difficult 1:1s, that changes the dynamic of the conversation.
If any of this sounds familiar, try Hedy free in your next meeting and see the difference real-time coaching makes.
Here's what's missing from Zoom AI Companion that matters most in practice:
No real-time coaching. It won't notice that a client keeps circling back to the same concern without naming it. It won't suggest follow-up questions when your doctor glosses over side effects. It won't flag that you've been talking for 10 minutes without asking the interviewer a question. Zoom documents. It doesn't coach.
No specialized meeting types. A medical appointment gets analyzed the same way as a quarterly review. A job interview gets the same treatment as a team standup. The AI doesn't adapt to what kind of conversation you're in.
No cross-session intelligence. Each Zoom meeting exists in isolation. You can't ask "what has this client promised us across the last five meetings?" because Zoom doesn't connect conversations that way.
No platform flexibility. If it doesn't happen within Zoom, it doesn't exist to Zoom AI Companion.
No privacy-first recording. Cloud recording is required. Bots are visible. Consent notifications appear. For many professional contexts, this makes the tool impractical.
Every one of these limitations is something Hedy was specifically built to solve.
The most common reason people switch is simple: they want AI that helps them during the conversation, not just after it.
Hedy is an AI meeting assistant that records your conversations and provides automatic suggestions in real time. While you're talking, Hedy analyzes what's being said and delivers specific coaching. A client mentions budget constraints for the second time without giving a number? Hedy suggests you ask directly about budget parameters. A doctor recommends a treatment without covering risks? Hedy prompts you to ask about the risk profile. An interviewer hasn't asked about your leadership experience? Hedy reminds you to bring it up.
This isn't generic advice. These are context-specific suggestions based on what's actually happening in your conversation right now. You choose how often they appear: frequent, balanced, or selective mode.
The other reason people switch: Hedy works everywhere. Zoom meetings, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, phone calls, in-person conversations. You open Hedy on your phone, Mac, or Windows laptop, start a session, and the app listens through your device's microphone or system audio. No bot joins the call. No notification to other participants. Nobody knows it's there unless you tell them.
Professionals using Hedy report that it's changed how they prepare for and perform in high-stakes conversations. Start a free session and experience it yourself.
You might be weighing other options too. Here's how the field stacks up, and why most of them have the same core limitation as Zoom.
Otter.ai offers real-time transcription and meeting summaries across platforms, and Otter AI chat lets you query your transcripts. It's a solid transcription tool. But like Zoom, Otter is a documentation tool. It tells you what happened. It doesn't help you perform better in the moment. No automatic coaching. No specialized meeting modes.
Fathom AI provides free meeting transcription with a clean interface. Good for basic meeting notes. No real-time suggestions, no cross-session intelligence, no specialized session types.
ChatGPT and Google Gemini are powerful AI tools, but they're not built for live conversations. You can paste a transcript into ChatGPT afterward, but that's a manual workflow that helps you after the meeting, not during it. Microsoft Copilot integrates with Teams but focuses on summarization and doc creation rather than real-time coaching.
Vomo AI and other meeting agents offer variations on the same transcribe-and-summarize approach.
Here's the pattern: every tool in this category documents meetings. Almost none of them help you during meetings. Hedy is the exception. It's the only AI meeting assistant that proactively delivers coaching suggestions while your conversation is still happening, across every meeting platform, with no bot required.
That's why users who try Hedy's real-time coaching rarely go back to summary-only tools. Try it free.
Zoom AI Companion makes sense in one specific scenario: all your meetings happen on Zoom, you already have a paid plan, your main need is a transcript and summary, and visible recording doesn't bother you or the people you're meeting with. In that narrow case, it's a reasonable free addition to your existing Zoom Workplace subscription.
If that's not your situation, Hedy is built for you. Specifically:
Business professionals who want to ask better questions, catch details others miss, and walk out of every meeting having made an impression. Hedy's automatic suggestions help you contribute more effectively during negotiations, strategy sessions, and client calls.
Medical patients navigating complex diagnoses or chronic conditions. Hedy's Medical Consultation mode helps you decode terminology, suggests questions about treatments and side effects, and generates clear summaries of what your doctor recommended. No bot announcement. No awkward recording notification.
Job seekers who want real-time coaching during interviews. Hedy's Job Interview mode helps you structure responses, highlight relevant experience, and ask informed questions that demonstrate genuine interest.
Coaches and consultants who want to track client progress across sessions. Hedy's Topics feature connects related meetings into a knowledge base you can query, so walking into a session you know exactly what was discussed last time and what needs follow-up.
Journalists and podcasters who need follow-up question suggestions and fact-checking flags without breaking conversation flow.
Students who want AI that captures lecture key points and generates study-ready summaries tailored to educational content, not business meeting templates.
Anyone who uses more than one meeting platform. Hedy works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, phone calls, and face-to-face conversations. One tool, every context.
Download Hedy and see which session type fits your next conversation.
This is where Hedy creates the most value for users who stick with it long-term, and it's something Zoom AI Companion, Otter.ai, and every other ai notetaker in the market simply don't offer.
Topics let you group related sessions together and treat them as a connected knowledge base. All your meetings with a particular client go into one topic. All your medical appointments with a specialist go into another. All lectures in a course go into a third.
Then you can ask Hedy questions that draw from every session in that topic at once. "What pricing did we discuss with this client?" Hedy searches across all meetings and cites the specific session. "What did my doctor say about medication interactions across my last three visits?" Hedy pulls the answer from multiple appointments.
When you start a new session in a topic, Hedy automatically generates prep notes: outstanding commitments from previous meetings, questions you noted to ask, topics requiring follow-up. You walk into every meeting already briefed on the full history. No scrambling to remember what you promised last time.
For a sales team tracking client relationships, for a coach monitoring client development, for a patient managing a complex health journey, this transforms Hedy from a meeting tool into a relationship and project management system.
Topics are available with Hedy Pro. Try Pro for $1 for your first month and start connecting your conversations.
Zoom AI Companion requires cloud recording for most features. Participants see a recording indicator, and bots may visibly join across Zoom meetings. Otter.ai similarly sends a bot to join calls. These approaches are transparent, but they change the feel of the conversation. Some people become guarded. Others find it distracting or intrusive.
Hedy's approach is fundamentally different. Speech recognition runs on your device. Your audio stays on your phone or laptop unless you explicitly choose to sync it. There's no bot. No announcement. No consent popup for other participants to click through.
This makes Hedy practical in contexts where other tools can't operate: medical appointments, therapy sessions, job interviews, HR conversations, legal discussions, coaching sessions, and any situation where trust matters more than documentation.
Hedy has completed GDPR compliance documentation including a Data Processing Addendum with EU Standard Contractual Clauses, a Transfer Impact Assessment, and Technical and Organizational Measures documentation. SOC2 Type 2 and HIPAA certifications are targeting Q1 2026. Access everything through the Trust Center at trust.hedy.ai.
Privacy shouldn't be a tradeoff for meeting intelligence. With Hedy, it isn't. Get started free.
Hedy's free plan includes up to 5 hours per month, real-time AI insights, transcription in 30+ languages, and summaries. Automatic suggestions run for the first 30 minutes of each session.
Hedy Pro costs $9.99/month or $69.99/year. It unlocks unlimited sessions, 60 minutes of automatic suggestions per session, Topics with cross-session intelligence and prep notes, sharing and collaboration features, export, API access, webhooks, and integrations with Zapier, n8n, and ActivePieces.
The lifetime plan is $199 and includes all Pro features permanently. It pays for itself in under two years compared to any monthly subscription.
By comparison: Zoom AI Companion standalone costs $10/month (without Zoom Pro features). Zoom Pro with AI Companion included starts at $13.33/month. Otter.ai Pro runs around $16.99/month. Fathom AI's paid plan is around $19/month.
Hedy Pro costs less than all of these except Zoom's standalone AI plan, and Hedy includes real-time coaching that none of them offer. If you're on a paid Zoom plan and want to add Hedy's coaching layer on top, the total is roughly $23/month for complete meeting coverage: Zoom handles the video call, Hedy handles the intelligence.
The best tools don't have to be the most expensive. Start free, upgrade when you're ready.
Switching from Zoom AI Companion to Hedy (or adding Hedy alongside it) takes less time than reading this section.
1. Download Hedy from the App Store, Google Play, or hedy.ai for Mac and Windows.
2. Create an account.
3. Before your next meeting, open Hedy, choose a session type (Business Meeting, Medical Consultation, Coaching, Interview, or Lecture), and optionally add context about the meeting.
4. Tap start and put your phone face-down on the table or let the desktop app capture system audio.
5. Watch as Hedy transcribes in real time and delivers automatic suggestions during the conversation.
After the meeting, you'll get a complete summary, detailed meeting notes, extracted to-do items, and the ability to chat with the session to pull any detail you need. If you connect Hedy to Zapier or your webhook tools, that data flows automatically into your existing workflow.
No bot joins your call. No one else in the meeting sees anything. You just show up better prepared, ask better questions, and leave with better outcomes.
Your next meeting is a chance to see what real-time AI coaching feels like. Download Hedy and try it free.
Zoom AI Companion tells you what happened. Hedy helps you make better things happen.
That's the fundamental difference, and it's why professionals who try Hedy's real-time coaching during meetings rarely go back to tools that only provide summaries after the fact. A transcript is useful. A summary saves time. But a suggestion that helps you ask the right question at the right moment? That changes outcomes.
Hedy works across every meeting platform. It runs privately on your device. It adapts to your specific meeting type. It connects your conversations across sessions so you never walk into a meeting unprepared. And it costs less than most alternatives.
If you've been using Zoom AI Companion and wondering if there's something better, there is.
Try Hedy free today. No credit card. No bot. No one knows it's there. Just you, performing at your best.
Is Zoom AI Companion free?
Limited access is available on Zoom's free tier: 3 meetings per month with AI features and 20 AI queries. Full access requires a paid Zoom plan starting at $13.33/month, or a standalone AI Companion subscription for $10/month.
Does Zoom AI Companion work with Google Meet or Microsoft Teams?
No. Zoom AI Companion only works with Zoom meetings. For AI meeting assistance across platforms, you need a standalone tool like Hedy.
What is the best Zoom AI Companion alternative?
Hedy is the strongest alternative for professionals who want real-time coaching during meetings, not just post-meeting summaries. It works across all meeting platforms, offers specialized session types, and provides automatic suggestions during conversations. Try Hedy free.
Can I use Hedy during Zoom meetings?
Yes. Hedy works with Zoom by capturing system audio on Mac or microphone audio on other devices. No bot joins the Zoom call and no one in the meeting is notified.
How does Hedy compare to Otter.ai?
Both offer transcription and meeting summaries across platforms. Hedy goes further with automatic real-time suggestions, specialized session types, cross-session Topics with prep notes, and on-device speech recognition for privacy. Otter is a documentation tool. Hedy is a coaching tool. See for yourself.
Does Hedy replace Zoom AI Companion?
They solve different problems. Many professionals use Zoom AI Companion for basic Zoom meeting documentation and Hedy for real-time coaching across all their conversations. Adding Hedy to an existing Zoom setup costs $9.99/month for a capability Zoom doesn't provide.
