# Circleback vs Shadow Circleback records 272,906 monthly visits with +12.5% month-over-month growth and Free Trial pricing. Shadow records 17,796 monthly visits with -4.4% growth and Freemium pricing. | Metric | [Circleback](https://openaitools.app/tool/circleback) | [Shadow](https://openaitools.app/tool/shadow) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | Website URL | https://circleback.ai | https://www.shadow.do | | Categories | AI Note Taker, AI Meeting Assistant, AI Transcription, AI Notes Generator | AI Meeting Assistant, AI Transcription, AI Note Taker, AI Summarizer | | Pricing Model | Free Trial | Freemium | | Monthly Visits | 272,906 | 17,796 | | MoM Growth Rate | +12.5% | -4.4% | | Primary Market | United States | United States | | Direct Visits | 200,016 | 7,167 | | Review Score | 4.4 | 4.3 | | Saved Count | 2 | 1 | | Supported Platforms | Website | Website | ## Circleback Circleback is built around the idea that a meeting should keep producing value after it ends. It joins or records your calls — via a bot or a bot-free desktop app for macOS and Windows — transcribes each speaker by name, and automatically generates organized notes, decisions, and assigned action items. Everything it captures becomes searchable, so you can ask questions and get answers drawn from every conversation your team has had. The product goes beyond note-taking with a layer of automations and integrations. After a meeting it can update HubSpot or Salesforce records, create Linear issues, update Notion pages and Asana tasks, log activity in Attio, or send notes to Slack. A universal task list aggregates action items from all meetings, and an API, webhooks, MCP endpoint, and CLI let developers feed meeting context into AI agents and custom workflows. Circleback is backed by Y Combinator and used by teams at a wide range of companies. It supports in-person recording, importing past audio or video, and capturing what is shared on screen so slides and dashboards appear in your notes. It offers a free tier plus paid plans, with pricing listed on its site. **Pricing & Plans:** Free to start, with paid plans for higher usage and advanced features. A free trial and tier are available; see circleback.ai/pricing for current plan details. - **Accurate multi-speaker transcription:** Supports 100+ languages with speaker identification by name and strong technical-term and accent accuracy. - **Automatic notes and action items:** Generates structured summaries, decisions, and assigned action items right after each meeting. - **Automations and integrations:** Pushes updates to CRMs, issue trackers, Notion, Asana, Slack, and dozens more apps automatically. - **Search across all conversations:** Ask questions and get answers synthesized from every meeting, email context, and connected source. - **Bot-free desktop and mobile recording:** Record in-person meetings or calls without a bot joining, using the macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android apps. **Strengths:** Highly accurate notes and action items praised by users across sales and product roles; Very broad integration coverage, from CRMs to issue trackers and Slack; Bot-free desktop app option plus in-person recording support; Supports 100+ languages with named speaker identification **Limitations:** Advanced automation and higher usage require paid plans; The breadth of integrations can take time to configure well; Very long meetings and heavy usage consume plan minutes quickly [Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/circleback.md) ## Shadow Shadow starts from a complaint many knowledge workers share about meeting assistants: the bot that joins your call, the note-taker that locks your history behind a subscription, and the data that leaves your machine for someone else's servers. Shadow's answer is a native Mac app that operates entirely in the background. It has no bot that joins the meeting, auto-detects when a call begins, records and transcribes it locally, and stops on its own when the call ends. Speaker identification is done in real time, so transcripts arrive labelled with who said what. The output is deliberately portable. Every meeting is written to your Mac as Markdown — transcripts, notes, and Skill results — with every call and every person linked into a knowledge base. You can open the folder as an Obsidian vault, sync it with iCloud Drive or Google Drive, search it with Spotlight, or point any AI agent at it. Shadow emphasises that there is a built-in advantage: because agents read the raw files rather than a connector's filtered view, tools like Claude, Codex, or OpenClaw get the complete context. Between calls, Shadow is more than a note-taker. Press a keyboard shortcut on any screen and it can see what you're looking at, hear what you say, or read selected text, then run an Action Skill to produce an email, a set of notes, or code. Skills are just prompts you can edit or write from scratch, and a webhook can forward results to Zapier, n8n, or Make. The privacy stance is equally concrete: transcription is local, audio does not leave the device, meeting content is never used for model training, and you choose which Skills are allowed to call AI at all. **Pricing & Plans:** Shadow is free to start, and the developer's stated policy is that every meeting is saved to your Mac as Markdown with no history limit on any plan — you keep the files even if you stop paying. For current paid tiers, check the pricing page inside the app. - **Bot-free auto recording:** Shadow detects when a call starts, records automatically, and stops at the end — no bot in the meeting, nothing to remember to press. - **On-device transcription:** Transcription runs on your Mac, with real-time speaker identification so you always know who said what. - **Markdown you own:** Every call is saved as a clean .md file locally, openable as an Obsidian vault, backed up with iCloud or Drive, or searchable by Spotlight. - **Meeting and Action Skills:** Run prompts on a completed call (notes, BANT, follow-ups, summaries) plus shortcut-driven actions on your screen between meetings. - **Webhooks and automation:** A webhook pushes transcripts and Skill results into Zapier, n8n, or Make so meetings feed your existing workflows. **Strengths:** No bot joins your call, so meetings stay natural; Local, on-device transcription with no history limits; Meetings stored as portable Markdown that works with Obsidian and AI agents; Flexible Skills you can edit or write from scratch **Limitations:** Mac-only — there is no Windows or web app; Local-first storage means you manage your own folder, sync, and backups; By design it records without a bot, so you are responsible for getting consent from other participants; Skill output quality still depends on prompt craft, though Skills ship with sensible defaults [Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/shadow.md) ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How do Circleback and Shadow compare in monthly traffic? Circleback has 272,906 monthly visits, while Shadow has 17,796. Traffic estimates describe audience size, not product quality. ### How do their growth rates compare? Circleback has a month-over-month growth rate of +12.5%; Shadow has -4.4%. ### How does pricing compare? Circleback: Free Trial. Free to start, with paid plans for higher usage and advanced features. A free trial and tier are available; see circleback.ai/pricing for current plan details. Shadow: Freemium. Shadow is free to start, and the developer's stated policy is that every meeting is saved to your Mac as Markdown with no history limit on any plan — you keep the files even if you stop paying. For current paid tiers, check the pricing page inside the app. ## Alternatives | # | Tool Name | Monthly Visits | MoM Growth Rate | Pricing Model | Summary | Profile (Markdown) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | 1 | [TurboScribe](https://openaitools.app/tool/turboscribe-ai) | 27,661,771 | +2.1% | Freemium | Unlimited AI transcription of audio and video in 98+ languages | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/turboscribe-ai.md) | | 2 | [Otter AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/otter-ai) | 7,360,981 | +9.6% | Freemium | AI meeting agent that transcribes, summarises, and turns every conversation into searchable knowledge | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/otter-ai.md) | | 3 | [Tactiq](https://openaitools.app/tool/tactiq) | 6,521,542 | +4.1% | Freemium | Live meeting transcription and AI notes without a bot in the call | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/tactiq.md) | | 4 | [Fathom](https://openaitools.app/tool/fathom-2-0) | 5,620,385 | +0.2% | Freemium, Free Trial | AI notetaker that records, transcribes and summarizes meetings — bot-free | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/fathom-2-0.md) | | 5 | [Fireflies.ai](https://openaitools.app/tool/fireflies-ai) | 4,411,502 | +3% | Freemium | AI teammate that records, transcribes and summarizes every meeting | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/fireflies-ai.md) | | 6 | [Notta](https://openaitools.app/tool/notta) | 2,585,354 | +2% | Freemium, Paid, Contact for Pricing | Delivers fast multi-language transcription and visual notes, but lacks some of Circleback's advanced workflow automations. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/notta.md) | | 7 | [tl;dv](https://openaitools.app/tool/tldv-io) | 1,396,729 | +1.9% | Freemium | Excels at capturing global video calls and creating timestamped clips, though deeper workspace integrations are limited. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/tldv-io.md) | | 8 | [Noota](https://openaitools.app/tool/noota) | 283,526 | +3.3% | Freemium, Paid, Contact for Pricing | Bot-free AI meeting assistant hosted in Europe | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/noota.md) | | 9 | [Fellow](https://openaitools.app/tool/fellow) | 188,722 | -5% | Contact for Pricing | The secure AI meeting notetaker built for teams that cannot get privacy wrong | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/fellow.md) | | 10 | [MeetGeek](https://openaitools.app/tool/meetgeek) | 188,118 | -7.5% | Freemium, Free Trial | Automates meeting analytics and CRM routing efficiently, but features a less intuitive interface for casual users. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/meetgeek.md) | --- Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/circleback-vs-shadow More Markdown: [Categories](https://openaitools.app/categories.md) · [Traffic rankings](https://openaitools.app/rankings.md) · [llms.txt](https://openaitools.app/llms.txt)