Search 'free meeting transcription' and you'll find a lot of tools that are free in name only — they cap you at a few hundred minutes a month, or the free tier exists to funnel your data into a paid upsell.
The usual catches
- Monthly minute limits that run out fast
- Watermarked or truncated exports
- Your recordings used to improve the vendor's models
- A bot that needs access to your whole calendar
Genuinely free
Because Ledgeur runs on your device, there is no server cost to recoup — so it is free for one person, with no minute caps and no data harvesting. The paid plan is for when the record has to leave your machine: synced across your devices, shared with a team, and readable by your AI agents. Those cost hosting, so they cost money.