dyslexiaOneNote's AI features became free this month. Anyone with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence now gets them. Microsoft finished rolling out the feature, called Copilot Notebooks, between June and August 2026 (Microsoft 365 Copilot Blog).
That one change makes the note-taking decision simpler. You may not need a separate subscription. A usable summary of your own scrawled notes might already be included.
OneNote Copilot Notebooks: the free option already in your account
Most dyslexic employees already have OneNote. It comes bundled free with every Microsoft 365 work licence, and it always has.
What changed is Copilot. OneNote now includes built-in Copilot for summarising notes. It can also draft content grounded in your own material (Microsoft Support, checked August 2026).
Ask it to turn a page of rushed meeting notes into a clear agenda. Or turn it into an action list, ready to send.
A newer feature, Copilot Notebooks, groups your chats, documents, and notes into one project space. It answers questions using everything inside that space. The feature rolled out fully between July and August 2026 (Microsoft 365 Copilot Blog, June 2026).
What OneNote's Copilot features cost extra, if your employer already has a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence (Microsoft, checked August 2026).
The setting that matters most: turn Copilot on inside a notebook. Then pin your regular work notebook into a Copilot Notebook, so it always has context. The catch is licensing, not the software.
Copilot features need a Microsoft 365 Copilot or Copilot Chat seat. Not every employer has bought one yet.
Try asking Copilot inside a project notebook: "What did we agree on the budget last week?" It answers using your own pages. You don't need to scroll back through days of handwriting to find the line.
OneNote is also weak outside its own ecosystem. It will not join a live call and transcribe it for you. It also won't pull structure from notes typed in another app.
Check with IT whether your employer already licenses Microsoft 365 Copilot, before buying anything else here.
Otter.ai: still the best at catching what was actually said
OneNote is built for notes you write yourself. Otter.ai is built for capturing what other people say, in real time, across any meeting platform.
Otter Pro costs $8.33 a month billed annually. That's $99.96 a year, about £74 (Otter.ai pricing, checked August 2026; XE.com rate, 5 August 2026).
Otter Business costs $19.99 per user a month billed annually. That's about $239.88 a year, roughly £178. It has a five-seat minimum, even for a smaller team.
Otter's edge is platform independence. It joins Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams calls, and transcribes live.
You can then search every past meeting by keyword. That matters if you switch tools depending on who you're meeting with.
Three Otter settings matter most:
- Custom vocabulary: add your team's jargon and acronyms, so the transcript stops mangling them.
- Automatic calendar join: Otter joins your meetings on its own, so you never forget to start it.
- Live transcript panel: follow the conversation in text during the call, instead of relying on memory.
In practice, you can stop taking notes by hand during a call. Search the transcript afterwards for the one number or deadline someone mentioned.
Otter is weak at organising notes you wrote yourself outside a meeting. It is a capture tool, not a workspace.
For a full breakdown of Otter against Microsoft Teams' own free transcription, see the Otter vs Teams transcription comparison.
If your meetings span several platforms, Otter is the one tool here worth paying for yourself.
Notion AI: only worth it if your notes are already a mess
Notion changed its pricing in a way that matters here. It retired the standalone $10 AI add-on in May 2025. Full Notion AI now lives only inside the $20 per user Business plan (Notion pricing, checked August 2026).
Billed annually, that's $240 a year, about £178. Billed monthly, it rises to roughly $24 a user, about £288 a year.
What you get for that price is different from OneNote or Otter. Notion AI works across your entire workspace, not one meeting or one page. It pulls scattered notes from different projects into one searchable, linked system.
Two Notion AI settings do the real work:
- Workspace-wide AI search: answers questions using every page you have access to, not just the one you're looking at.
- Linked databases: stop the same project update living in three different places.
Notion AI has no built-in live transcription. You would still need to paste in a transcript from Otter or Teams first.
An operations lead running four projects at once has a common problem: actions scattered across pages. Notion AI can pull every outstanding action into one list, instead of checking each page by hand.
That is the kind of task Notion AI is built for. Neither of the other two tools does it.
A task that feels too big to start is not a motivation problem, it's a missing first step. If scattered notes are stalling projects before they even begin, the task breakdown planner can help. It turns any task you type into a short, concrete list of first steps, in under a minute.
Notion AI earns its cost only if disorganisation across many projects, not a single meeting, is your actual problem.
The three, side by side
| Tool | Price (2026) | Best at |
|---|---|---|
| OneNote Copilot Notebooks | Free with M365 Copilot licence | Summarising notes you already wrote |
| Otter.ai Business | ~£178/year, 5-seat minimum | Live meeting capture across platforms |
| Notion AI (Business) | ~£178/year per user | Organising scattered notes into one system |
Is this a legitimate adjustment, or a shortcut you need to justify?
None of these tools need justifying. Assistive AI, including dictation and note-summarising tools, counts as a reasonable adjustment under the Equality Act 2010 in the UK. In the US, the same tools count as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA.
Nearly half of US employees hide their AI use at work, afraid of looking incompetent (Laserfiche/Reworked.co, August 2025). For a dyslexic employee using these tools to capture and organise notes, that fear does not fit the facts.
Access to Work has funded AI writing and note-taking tools since at least 2025 (DWP guidance, checked July 2026).
If a colleague questions your AI note tool, the honest answer is also the accurate one: it's a workplace adjustment.
Which to actually buy
Start with what you already have. If your employer licenses Microsoft 365 Copilot, OneNote's Copilot Notebooks costs nothing extra. It solves the most common problem: turning your own notes into something usable later.
If you're losing information in live meetings, not written notes, Otter is the fix. Ask your employer to fund Business through a workplace adjustment before paying for Pro yourself.
Notion AI is the one to skip unless your employer already pays for Notion Business for the whole team. Asking to add it for one person at $20 a month is a hard case to make.
Re-reading your own meeting notes twice, or asking a colleague what you missed, is not a quirk. It is unpaid work. The masking cost calculator puts a number on what your current note-taking workaround costs you a year.
Access to Work can fund AI note-taking software as an assistive technology purchase in the UK. The Access to Work calculator estimates what your award could cover, before you ask your employer to pay upfront.
Whichever tool you pick, check what your employer already licenses before spending your own money.