How much should a 150-person company budget for an AI notetaker for its recruiting team?

Budget for the people who will capture interviews, not for everyone who interviews. As of November 2026, published prices put a separate AI notetaker for four recruiters at about $400 to $2,900 a year, and seats for all four recruiters plus twenty interviewing managers at about $4,000 to $17,300 a year. Before buying seats for the managers, check what the company already pays for: Lever includes AI interview transcripts in its core subscription, Greenhouse Notetaker comes with its Core, Plus and Pro tiers, and Zoom says meeting summaries remain included with eligible paid Zoom Workplace plans. For most 150-person companies, the sensible budget is recruiter seats, shared notes or built-in tools for managers, and a separate line for setup and review time.

The figures below are worked examples for the team in the question (four recruiters, about twenty interviewing managers), using each vendor's published price. We make Interview Signal, one of the tools below; everything about the other products comes from their own sites, linked and dated. For a longer list of prices, see AI interview note-taker pricing.

How much should a 150-person company budget for an AI notetaker?

Three levels cover almost every company of this size.

Many companies land between levels 2 and 3: seats for the recruiters and for the handful of managers who interview every week, and built-in tools or shared notes for the rest.

What does it cost for the four recruiters?

Published prices as of November 2026; yearly figures are the plan price times 4 seats times 12 months.

Interview Signal's prices are from our pricing page. Its weaknesses for this team: no ATS integration, no mobile or web app, no video recording, and few public reviews yet.

What does it cost if all twenty-four interviewers get a seat?

Vendors that do not publish a price cannot go in this table. BrightHire's pricing page, for example, says its interview intelligence is "Priced by company size" and shows no amounts, and Ashby's AI Notetaker page says each plan comes with "500 interviews to try AI Notetaker at no additional cost and no expiration", with Foundations pricing shown in the product and Plus and Enterprise pricing tailored to the account.

Do the twenty interviewing managers need their own seats?

Ask three questions before you buy twenty seats.

1. How often does each manager interview? Count last quarter's interviews per person from the ATS. A manager who runs two interviews a month uses a seat very differently from a recruiter who runs six screens a day.
2. Do they need to capture, or only to read? If the recruiter's notes and scorecard are what the manager uses, the manager reads; they do not capture. Granola's sharing guide, for example, says sharing a note "doesn't add the recipient to the workspace or use a billable seat."
3. Is a built-in tool good enough for their rounds? For scheduled video interviews, the meeting platform's or the ATS's own notes may cover them at no extra license cost.

Worked example: if five of the twenty managers run most of the interviews, seats for four recruiters and those five managers on Otter Business cost 9 × $19.99 × 12 = $2,158.92 a year, and on Granola Business 9 × $14 × 12 = $1,512. Replace the five with your own count.

What might the company already be paying for?

Check each contract before adding a new vendor. As of November 2026:

• Lever: Lever's September 2025 announcement says its AI interview transcripts and summaries are part of the core subscription rather than "a premium feature locked behind a new contract." See AI notetakers for Lever.
• Greenhouse: Greenhouse Notetaker is available on the Core, Plus and Pro tiers; Greenhouse publishes no separate price. Its setup guide (updated November 4, 2026) says a Site Admin turns it on and then enables it per interview in the interview plan.
• Zoom: Zoom retired the AI Companion name in June 2026 and says meeting summaries are among the features "still included with eligible paid plans" (Zoom).
• Google Workspace: Google says Meet's "Take notes for me" "requires an eligible Google Workspace edition or Google AI plan" (Google Meet Help).

Built-in tools have limits that matter for recruiting: most cover only scheduled video calls, not phone screens, and they produce meeting summaries rather than interview scorecards. That is often fine for managers and not enough for recruiters.

What else belongs in the budget besides licenses?

• Getting notes into the ATS. Native integrations vary by tool. A Zapier route needs a paid Zapier plan when the ATS is a premium app, as Greenhouse is; Zapier's pricing page starts Pro at $19.99 a month billed yearly.
• Security and privacy review. IT and legal will want a data processing agreement, retention settings and a risk assessment; our DPIA template for AI note takers speeds this up.
• Consent wording for candidates and interviewers, including all-party consent states; see the consent script.
• Training and rollout time, covered step by step in how to roll out an AI note taker.
• Review time. Someone still checks AI notes against the transcript before they reach a debrief or a client.
• Growth. Price the seat count you expect at renewal. Otter Business stops at 25 members and Otter Pro at 5; Interview Signal Team starts at three seats.

A budget line you can copy

AI notetaker – FY [year]

Licenses
  Recruiter seats:     [4] x $[price] x 12           = $[ ]
  Manager seats:       [n] x $[price] x 12           = $[ ]
  Billing:             [monthly / yearly prepaid]

Already paid for (no new spend)
  ATS note taker:      [included / not included]
  Meeting platform:    [Zoom / Teams / Meet notes: yes / no]

One-time
  Security and privacy review:   [hours] x [rate]    = $[ ]
  ATS connection or Zapier:      $[ ] a year
  Training:                      [hours] x [people]  = [ ] hours

Ongoing
  Note review:         [minutes per interview] x [interviews] = [ ] hours

Renewal check
  Expected seats next year: [ ]   Plan cap or minimum: [ ]

To turn the license lines into a business case with a baseline, benefits and a pilot, use the business case template; to place the line inside the wider recruiting budget, use the recruiting budget template.

How do you get from a range to a real number?

1. Count interviews by person and type (phone screens, video rounds, onsites) for the last quarter.
2. Decide who captures and who only reads, using the three questions above.
3. Trial two tools on real interviews with consent, using the AI note taker evaluation checklist. Free tiers are trials, not plans: Otter's Basic plan caps a conversation at 30 minutes, shorter than most interviews.
4. Get written quotes at your seat count, monthly and yearly, with any member caps, minimum seats and contract terms.
5. Add the non-license lines and present the total, not the per-seat price.