# Sembly AI vs Shadow

Sembly AI records 111,734 monthly visits with +3.8% month-over-month growth and Freemium pricing. Shadow records 17,796 monthly visits with -4.4% growth and Freemium pricing.

| Metric | [Sembly AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/sembly-ai) | [Shadow](https://openaitools.app/tool/shadow) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://www.sembly.ai | https://www.shadow.do |
| Categories | AI Meeting Assistant, AI Note Taker, AI Summarizer, AI Transcriber | AI Meeting Assistant, AI Transcription, AI Note Taker, AI Summarizer |
| Pricing Model | Freemium | Freemium |
| Monthly Visits | 111,734 | 17,796 |
| MoM Growth Rate | +3.8% | -4.4% |
| Primary Market | Mexico | United States |
| Direct Visits | 69,992 | 7,167 |
| Review Score | 4.3 | 4.3 |
| Saved Count | 4 | 1 |
| Supported Platforms | Website | Website |

## Sembly AI

Sembly AI positions itself less as a note-taker and more as an end-to-end meeting workflow. It connects to your calendar, joins scheduled conferences automatically, and can also act as a proxy attendee for meetings you skip so you still receive the recording, notes, decisions, and tasks. In-meeting voice commands let you mark a task or decision as it happens rather than reconstructing it later. An accompanying app records offline and in-person conversations, then produces the same class of notes, key items, and action lists as an online meeting.

The recap layer handles multilingual transcription with named speakers, summary sections, topics with timestamps, and automatic extraction of decisions, risks, and notable events. Every commitment made during a meeting becomes a task with an owner, deadline, and short description.

The delivery layer is what distinguishes Sembly for consultancies and agencies: it drafts proposals, status reports, and pitch decks from meeting content and exports them as editable PowerPoint and Word files, generates follow-up emails, and assembles reports that draw on meeting history, reference materials, and project context. Brand kits keep the output on-client. Pricing spans a free tier, a free trial, paid plans, and enterprise agreements requiring a quote.

**Pricing & Plans:** Freemium with a free trial, paid tiers, and enterprise pricing on request. Exact plan limits and per-seat rates change over time, so confirm current details on the official pricing page.

- **Automatic recording and attendance:** Sembly joins Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex sessions from your calendar, and can attend on your behalf when you cannot join.
- **Multilingual transcripts with speakers:** Word-for-word transcription in 45+ languages with every speaker identified by name, so shared notes are unambiguous.
- **Notes, key items, and tasks:** Summaries, topics, decisions, risks, and tasks with owners and deadlines are generated within minutes of the meeting ending.
- **Proposals, reports, and decks:** Turn a meeting into client follow-ups, status reports, and pitch decks exported as editable PowerPoint and Word files.
- **Organizational knowledge:** Meeting history, project context, and reference materials feed later reports, and client branding keeps artifacts on-brand.

**Strengths:** Covers the whole meeting lifecycle: record, recap, and produce client deliverables; Offline recording app extends coverage to in-person conversations; Proxy attendance means skipped meetings still generate notes and tasks; Client branding and PowerPoint/Word export suit agency and consultancy workflows

**Limitations:** Advanced artifact and organizational-knowledge features are aimed at paid and enterprise plans; Recording and AI note-taking require participants' awareness and consent in many jurisdictions; Value depends on team-wide adoption; isolated users get less from organizational knowledge

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/sembly-ai.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 Sembly AI and Shadow compare in monthly traffic?

Sembly AI has 111,734 monthly visits, while Shadow has 17,796. Traffic estimates describe audience size, not product quality.

### How do their growth rates compare?

Sembly AI has a month-over-month growth rate of +3.8%; Shadow has -4.4%.

### How does pricing compare?

Sembly AI: Freemium. Freemium with a free trial, paid tiers, and enterprise pricing on request. Exact plan limits and per-seat rates change over time, so confirm current details on the official pricing page. 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 | [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) |
| 2 | [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) |
| 3 | [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) |
| 4 | [Read Speaker Coach](https://openaitools.app/tool/read-speaker-coach) | 4,071,302 | -4.8% | Freemium, Paid | Meeting summaries, transcripts, and AI search that turn meetings into outcomes | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/read-speaker-coach.md) |
| 5 | [Notta](https://openaitools.app/tool/notta) | 2,585,354 | +2% | Freemium, Paid, Contact for Pricing | AI note taker that transcribes, summarizes and visualizes meetings | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/notta.md) |
| 6 | [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) |
| 7 | [Circleback](https://openaitools.app/tool/circleback) | 272,906 | +12.5% | Free Trial | AI notetaker and company brain that turns every meeting into searchable knowledge | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/circleback.md) |
| 8 | [Mymeet.ai](https://openaitools.app/tool/mymeet-ai) | 259,566 | -0.4% | Freemium | AI meeting assistant that transcribes, summarizes and assigns your action items | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/mymeet-ai.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 | [Bubbles](https://openaitools.app/tool/bubbles) | 148,424 | +2% | Freemium, Free Trial | Always-on AI meeting notetaker with a self-erasing screen replay | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/bubbles.md) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/sembly-ai-vs-shadow

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