Notem
Budget separately for your AI assistant
The free trial includes 100 free AI credits to try Light. Ask your assistant to find action items, compare decisions or draft follow-ups. Check source references before relying on an answer: selected excerpts are not an exhaustive review of every meeting.
Where available, the AI subscription adds 1,000 credits for $2/month and renews automatically until cancelled. Basic is $8/month alone or $10/month with AI credits; Pro is $18/month alone or $20/month with AI credits, before tax. AI credits also work alongside PAYG and are tracked separately from recording allowances and Notem Balance. Purchased credits unlock Super; Light supports everyday assistance. Credit use varies by request and mode, so credits do not guarantee a fixed number of answers.
Monthly AI credits expire at their applicable period end without rollover. Where available, an extra one-time $2 pack adds 1,000 credits valid for one calendar month from payment confirmation. Extra packs do not reset subscription dates or extend older credits. Older purchases retain their recorded expiry terms. New meeting subscriptions purchased with AI share the monthly billing cycle; AI added separately has its own renewal date. Manage AI renewal separately in Billing. Cancelling stops future AI renewal charges; remaining credits keep their recorded expiry. Cancelling a meeting plan does not cancel a separate AI subscription. AI credits do not restore an expired trial or increase recording allowances. Check Billing for purchase availability.
First compare the units you are buying
An AI notetaker can charge by minute, meeting, seat, or a combination of features and capacity. Those units are not interchangeable. Notem’s paid monthly plans include recorded minutes rather than a fixed number of meetings. A short call uses fewer minutes than a long discussion. PAYG also follows duration, and both models round each meeting up separately to a whole minute. Online bot waiting time can still make PAYG and subscription meters differ. A seat-based plan may add cost when teammates need paid access. Before comparing dollar amounts, write down the unit for each candidate and the restrictions attached to it. This guide uses Notem’s own PAYG and subscription rules for the arithmetic; it does not assume that every other service meters recordings the same way.
Notem’s PAYG and monthly prices
Notem PAYG is $0.01 per started billable minute through Notem Balance, without a recurring subscription requirement. Basic is $8 per month for 1,000 recorded minutes. Pro is $18 per month for 2,500 recorded minutes. The trial covers up to seven successfully processed meetings within seven days. Monthly subscriptions charge again at renewal and reset the included minutes without rollover. A subscription allowance is not unlimited meeting access, and a free trial is not a permanent zero-cost plan. Applicable taxes can affect checkout totals. Review the current pricing page before purchasing, and use the balance and usage screens to understand which payment model is active on your account.
Calculate PAYG one session at a time
For recorded audio, multiply the number of started billable minutes by $0.01. Round each session up to its started minute before adding the month’s total. A recording lasting ten minutes and one second therefore contributes eleven billable minutes, not ten. Three such recordings total thirty-three minutes, or $0.33 before tax. This small difference is easy to overlook when you first add every second together and round only once. Use realistic session durations, including the ordinary overruns in your meetings, rather than estimating solely from calendar invitations.
Online bot time is not the calendar slot
For online meetings, PAYG uses billable meeting-bot time, which can include waiting time for an admitted bot. Live Notes and uploaded recordings use recorded audio duration. A four-hour calendar invitation is therefore neither proof of a four-hour recording nor a reliable invoice calculation. A failed bot join is not a successfully processed meeting. Check the actual usage and billing record when estimating online costs. If you frequently admit the notetaker well before the discussion begins, that workflow may change the billable-minute estimate even though the amount of speech you later read is much shorter.
Find the Basic break-even point
Divide the $8 Basic price by $0.01 per minute: the result is eight hundred started billable minutes. Below that total, PAYG is cheaper than Basic on price alone. At exactly eight hundred minutes, they tie before tax. Above it, Basic can be cheaper while your recorded duration remains within 1,000 minutes for the period. For example, twenty forty-five-minute recordings use 900 included minutes. Ten ninety-minute recordings use the same 900 minutes. There is no paid meeting-count limit. Compare recorded duration with the subscription allowance and started billable minutes with PAYG, especially when online bot waiting time differs from the recording.
Find the Pro break-even point
Pro’s $18 monthly price corresponds to eighteen hundred billable minutes at the PAYG rate. Pro includes 2,500 recorded minutes per month, so it covers workloads above Basic’s 1,000-minute allowance within that limit. Thirty sixty-minute recordings use 1,800 minutes and tie PAYG at $18 when billable and recorded durations match. Twenty-five ten-minute recordings use only 250 minutes and cost $2.50 on PAYG before tax. Calculate the whole month before treating a larger minute allowance as a reason to buy a larger plan.
Worked monthly examples
These scenarios assume that every listed session is successfully processed, durations are already whole billable minutes, and no applicable tax is added. They compare eligible standard plans rather than inventing an overage price for a plan that does not cover the workload. The table also shows why neither a minute total nor a meeting count alone answers the question. Thirty short sessions and thirty long sessions have the same count but very different PAYG totals. Use the calculation as a planning aid and verify actual usage in your account after a normal month.
| Workload | PAYG total | Eligible monthly option | Lower listed cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 × 45 minutes | $3.60 | Basic $8 | PAYG |
| 20 × 60 minutes | $12.00 | Pro $18 | PAYG |
| 25 × 10 minutes | $2.50 | Basic $8 | PAYG |
| 30 × 60 minutes | $18.00 | Pro $18 | Tie |
| 50 × 45 minutes | $22.50 | Pro $18 | Pro |
Include quiet months and seasonal work
A freelancer may have twenty calls during a launch and only three the following month. A student may record lectures during term and stop during a break. Compare several plausible months instead of multiplying a busy week by fifty-two. PAYG can suit uneven use because it avoids buying a recurring allowance for each quiet month. A subscription may suit a stable workload when the count fits and the total billable duration makes it less expensive. That is a budgeting distinction, not a promise about what every user’s next invoice will be.
Separate prepaid balance from money spent
Adding money to Notem Balance is a top-up, not proof that the entire amount has already been consumed by meetings. Conversely, a positive balance is not a guarantee that a long session cannot exceed your expected budget. Use the charge history and remaining balance to distinguish deposits from usage. Monthly subscription payments buy the period’s allowance instead of a per-session cash charge. Keep those records separate when calculating your actual cost per useful meeting. Otherwise, an initial top-up or a lightly used subscription can make the comparison appear more expensive than the underlying usage model.
When a free plan is cheaper than either option
If another service’s free plan covers your required capture and outputs, its subscription cost is zero. That can beat both Notem payment models, even when Notem PAYG is inexpensive. Check conversation length, storage, imports, languages, and paid-only features before drawing that conclusion. Annual discounts on paid alternatives also deserve attention, but compare the required annual commitment with monthly flexibility. The fair question is not whether PAYG always wins; it is whether paying for a particular tool’s workflow produces enough value for your actual usage and requirements.
A practical decision rule
List the next month’s expected sessions, estimate started billable minutes for each, and total the PAYG cost. Compare that with the lowest subscription whose minute allowance covers the workload. Then check capture methods, note usefulness, and sharing needs. If the difference is small, choose the model you find easier to manage and reassess after the month. If your workload exceeds the listed allowances, inspect current account options rather than assuming a price not published here. This method gives you a repeatable answer grounded in usage instead of a universal claim that subscriptions or PAYG are always cheapest.
