Zoom AI Companion (ZoomMate) Review 2026: Pricing, Features and Verdict

What it is

Zoom's in client assistant was sold for years as AI Companion. In 2026 Zoom expanded it and now markets it as ZoomMate. Zoom's June 1, 2026 announcement describes ZoomMate as an AI workspace built into Zoom Workplace, and Zoom's AI whitepaper calls it "the central intelligence layer" across meetings, team chat, email, documents and connected business systems. Zoom's support center and pricing URLs still use the AI Companion name, which is why most people still search for it that way.

In practice there are two products:

1. Meeting AI included with Zoom. Meeting summaries, in meeting questions ("what did I miss?"), AI note taking and basic AI queries. Free accounts get a taste; paid Workplace plans get unlimited summaries.
2. The ZoomMate plan. A paid add on with 2,200 AI credits per user per month that adds custom and prebuilt agents, deep research, workflows across third party apps, and Zoom's AI Productivity Suite (Slides, Sheets, Paper and Canvas).

Because it is part of the Zoom client, nothing joins your meeting as a separate participant.

Pricing explained

Plan	Monthly	Annual	AI included
Workplace Basic (free)	$0	$0	ZoomMate Basic: summaries and in meeting questions for 3 hosted meetings a month, My Notes 3 uses, 20 AI queries, agentic search over 10 files and 3 meetings, 10 workflow runs
Workplace Pro	$16.99 per user	$14.16 per user	Unlimited meeting summaries and in meeting questions, 8 custom summary templates a month, basic AI queries, agentic search, workflows in Zoom
Workplace Business	$21.99 per user	$18.33 per user	Unlimited summaries and in meeting questions for larger teams
ZoomMate plan	$20 per user	$16.67 per user	2,200 AI credits a month, unlimited AI note taking and templates, agents, deep research, third party workflows, Slides, Sheets, Paper, Canvas, Voice Translator
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Contact Zoom

Prices are as listed on zoom.us/pricing and zoom.us/pricing/aic in October 2026.

If you pay for Zoom, summaries are already paid for. A 10 person team on Workplace Pro annual pays $1,699 a year for Zoom and gets unlimited AI summaries inside it. Adding Fireflies Pro for the same team would cost another $1,200 a year.

Free accounts are a sampler. Three summarized meetings a month, and Basic meetings are capped at 40 minutes with up to 100 participants.

ZoomMate is metered. The 2,200 monthly credits pay for agentic actions like document and slide generation. Zoom's page does not publish a per action credit cost, so heavy users should watch the usage dashboard in the first month.

When to buy ZoomMate. Only if you want meeting outcomes turned into deliverables: a plan document, a slide deck, follow up workflows into Jira or a CRM. For notes alone, the Workplace plan is enough.

Key features

Meeting summaries

After each meeting, Zoom writes a summary of what was discussed and decided. Pro includes 8 custom summary templates a month; the ZoomMate plan makes templates unlimited.

In meeting questions

Ask the assistant during the call what has been decided, what you missed if you joined late, or what action items exist so far. Unlimited on paid Workplace plans.

My Notes

ZoomMate's AI note taking works for Zoom, third party meeting platforms and in person conversations. Basic gets 3 uses a month; the ZoomMate plan makes it unlimited.

Agents and workflows

The ZoomMate plan adds a custom agent builder with third party connections, prebuilt agents for sales, IT, marketing and finance, an agent library, and workflows that run across Zoom and third party apps.

Agentic search and deep research

Search across Zoom content (transcripts, chats, docs) and connected sources such as Google Drive, OneDrive, CRMs and ticketing tools, with permission aware answers. ZoomMate adds web search and deep research.

AI Productivity Suite

Zoom Slides, Sheets, Paper (Word ready documents) and Canvas, generated from meetings and connected data. Included with the ZoomMate plan.

Voice Translator

Live audio translation for meetings, on the ZoomMate plan.

Languages

Zoom's AI whitepaper says ZoomMate currently supports only English. Non English teams should confirm summary language support on their own account before they standardize on it.

What users say

We could not find a ratings page for the AI assistant on its own. The Zoom Workplace iPhone app, where most people use it, holds 4.7 on the App Store from 3,252,812 ratings. Zoom the company scores 1.3 on Trustpilot from 1,579 reviews as of October 2026, and those reviews are almost entirely about billing and support: annual auto renewals people did not expect, refunds refused after renewal, and AI support agents that could not resolve account problems. None of the Trustpilot reviews we read mentioned AI Companion or ZoomMate specifically.

The takeaway for buyers: the AI itself is low risk because it is included, but review your Zoom renewal date and billing terms before adding a paid ZoomMate plan.

Privacy and security

Zoom's AI whitepaper is unusually detailed:

• Training: Zoom does not use customer audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments or other communications like content (polls, whiteboards, reactions) to train Zoom's or third party AI models.
• Models: a federated approach that combines Zoom's own models with third party models, including Anthropic and OpenAI. Zoom says it has zero data retention terms with third party model providers, with limited trust and safety exceptions.
• Deployment choices: customers can ask Zoom to switch from the federated approach to Zoom Hosted Models Plus (third party models through Amazon Bedrock on Zoom's AWS environment) or Zoom Hosted Models Only, with some features reduced.
• No transcript mode: admins can disable and lock meeting transcripts. Zoom then writes summaries from temporary speech to text data and keeps no persistent transcript.
• Encryption: TLS 1.2 or higher, or AES 256 bit GCM, between Zoom and its subprocessors, including AI model providers.

For IT teams this is the main argument for Zoom over a third party bot: the AI runs under the same admin controls, contracts and data processing terms you already signed with Zoom.

Who it is for

• Companies already paying for Zoom Workplace that want meeting notes at no extra cost.
• IT and security teams that prefer AI under existing vendor contracts over a new bot vendor.
• Teams that want deliverables from meetings (docs, slides, workflows) and will pay for ZoomMate.

Who should skip it

• Teams whose meetings are mostly in Google Meet or Teams. Use Fathom or Fireflies, which work across all three.
• Non English teams until ZoomMate adds languages; Fireflies lists 100+.
• Free Zoom users who want more than 3 summaries a month; Fathom is unlimited for $0.
• Microsoft 365 shops already licensed for Copilot in Teams.

Alternatives

• Copilot in Teams: the Microsoft equivalent.
• Fathom: free unlimited notes on Zoom, Meet and Teams.
• Otter.ai: live transcripts across platforms.
• Read AI: its premium features are offered to Zoom One Pro, Business and Business Plus subscribers through Zoom Essential Apps.
• Full ranking: best AI note takers.

Verdict

If your company pays for Zoom Workplace Pro or Business, turn on the meeting AI before you buy anything else. Unlimited summaries and in meeting questions are already in your bill, nothing joins the call, and Zoom publishes clear limits on how it uses your data. Add the ZoomMate plan only if you will use agents and the productivity suite, and only for English speaking teams for now. Buy a separate note taker when your meetings spill across Meet and Teams, when you need more languages, or when you are on the free plan.