# Google Meet Bot API | Record & Transcribe from $0.35/hr

> Build a Google Meet bot with one API call. Record audio, capture per-participant video, and get real-time transcripts from $0.35/hr. $5 free credit, no infra.

Source: https://meetstream.ai/meeting-bot-api/google-meet

## Google Meet Bot API to Record, Transcribe, and Stream Google Meet

One POST request sends a named bot into a Google Meet call and returns the recording, a separate audio and video stream per participant, and a transcript. Works without a Workspace recording licence, from $0.35 per bot-hour.

### What is a Google Meet bot API?

A Google Meet bot API puts a participant into a Meet call from your code and returns the media. You send a meeting link, a bot joins under a name you choose, and you get an MP4, per-participant audio and video, and a transcript when the call ends.

Google Meet is the platform where the gap between the native APIs and what product teams need is widest. Meet's own recording is limited to specific Workspace editions, and its media API is still a gated developer preview. A bot works regardless of which edition your customer is on. The meeting bot API overview covers all three platforms.

### Send a bot into a Google Meet call

One request. The bot joins, records, and fires a webhook when the meeting ends.

```
curl -X POST https://api.meetstream.ai/api/v1/bots/create_bot \ -H "Authorization: Token $MEETSTREAM_API_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "meeting_link": "https://meet.google.com/abc-defg-hij", "bot_name": "Acme Notetaker", "transcription": { "provider": "meetstream" }, "webhook_url": "https://your-app.example.com/meetstream" }'
```

The webhook returns the composed recording plus a separate track per participant.

```
{ "event": "bot.done", "bot_id": "bot_9fJ2p", "recording": { "mp4_url": "https://media.meetstream.ai/..." }, "participants": [ { "name": "Amy Stace", "audio_url": "...", "video_url": "..." }, { "name": "Theo Flynn", "audio_url": "...", "video_url": "..." } ], "transcript_url": "https://api.meetstream.ai/api/v1/transcript/..." }
```

### What you get from every Google Meet call

- Composed MP4 in grid or speaker view.

- Per-participant audio and video , a real stream per person. This is worth noting on Meet in particular, because Google's own media API cannot do it (see below).

- Real-time media over a secure WebSocket at roughly 200ms, covered on the real-time transcripts page.

- Transcripts through the transcription API .

- Participant events and meeting chat.

### What Google Meet actually enforces

Meet's rules are mostly about admission and edition, and Google is unusually explicit about bots.

Native recording needs a specific Workspace edition. Google lists the editions that include it , and free personal Google accounts are not among them. Recording also stops automatically after a total of eight hours.

Google names note-taker bots in its admission settings. This is the single most important fact on this page. When a host unchecks "Anyone can ask to join", Google's documentation states that anonymous users or third-party bots, like note takers, are automatically denied access without the host having to do anything. Meet has three access types: Open, where nobody knocks; Trusted, where outsiders not on the invite must knock; and Restricted, where only invited people get in. Your integration needs to handle being refused, because on Meet it will happen.

Admins can require consent, not just give notice. Workspace safety settings include recording, transcription and Gemini notes consent . A participant who declines is removed from the call. Hardware room devices and dial-in participants are auto-consented.

Google treats third-party recording as a risk to manage. Its admin documentation has an article titled "External apps are recording Meet meetings" that opens by calling it a security risk and lists remedies including blocking app domains and setting access to Restricted. Build accordingly: a visible, named bot that the host has reason to admit will fare much better than one that looks anonymous.

### Google's own APIs and where they stop

Meet REST API, generally available. It exposes conference records, participants, recordings and transcripts . The catch is that it only returns artifacts Meet itself produced, so someone has to have turned native recording on, and the files land in the organizer's Drive behind a Restricted OAuth scope. Transcript entries are deleted 30 days after the conference.

Meet Media API, still a developer preview. It is not generally available, and the gating is stricter than most teams expect: the Cloud project, the OAuth principal and every participant in the conference must be enrolled in the preview programme. Google's pre-GA terms also bar you from giving access to users outside your own company.

There is a technical ceiling too. The Media API carries a maximum of three audio streams regardless of how many people are in the call . Beyond three participants, Meet sends the three loudest speakers and rotates them, with attribution by RTP contributing source. That is not per-participant isolation, and if your product measures talk time or builds per-speaker clips, it will not do what you need. Only one Media API client may connect to a conference at a time.

This is the clearest case across the three platforms for using a bot: the native path either requires the host to have already recorded, or is a preview you cannot ship commercially.

### Getting the bot admitted

Because Meet actively denies bots under common settings, admission deserves design attention rather than an afterthought.

The bot joins under a name you choose and appears in the participant list. Hosts admit it the way they would admit any external guest. Participant events tell your application whether it was admitted, denied or is still knocking, so your product can tell the user what happened. In practice the teams with the highest admission rates name the bot after their own product, so the host recognises it.

### Google Meet bot API pricing

A bot costs $0.35 per bot-hour . Transcription adds $0.10 per hour, so a recorded and transcribed meeting is $0.45 per hour all-in , falling toward $0.25 per bot-hour at volume. Thirty days of storage is included rather than metered, and every account starts with $5 of free credit. The pricing page has the full breakdown.

There is no seat licence, no platform fee and no minimum commitment, so the bill tracks usage rather than headcount. If you are comparing against another vendor, the Recall.ai comparison sets out the differences.

### Limits and operational detail

Session length. A bot stays in a Google Meet call for four hours by default and can be extended to ten hours through the API, which covers all-hands meetings and full-day sessions.

Concurrency. There is no cap on how many bots run at once and no limit to request an increase to. Capacity planning stays on our side.

Storage and regions. Recordings and transcripts are kept for 30 days, or written into your own S3 bucket so your retention policy governs them from the first byte. Bots run in the United States by default, with EU, Australia, Japan and the Middle East available and other regions on request.

Security. MeetStream is ISO 27001 certified and SOC 2 Type 2 is currently under audit. We do not hold a HIPAA certification and we do not sign Business Associate Agreements today. The security page is kept current.

### How we know this

Google Meet is the platform where admission fails most often, and it fails quietly. The behaviour described above, where a host's access setting silently denies note-taker bots, is the single most common reason a Meet integration appears to work in testing and then returns nothing for a real customer.

MeetStream runs meeting bots on Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams for more than 30 products in production. Every platform claim on this page links to that platform's own documentation so you can verify it rather than take our word for it, and we have deliberately left out anything we could not source. Where our own position is weaker than a competitor's we say so: we are ISO 27001 certified, SOC 2 Type 2 is under audit rather than complete, and we do not hold a HIPAA certification or sign Business Associate Agreements today.

Platform rules change. If you find something here that no longer matches the vendor documentation, tell us and we will correct it. Written by Sidhdharth Sivasubramanian, co-founder and CEO of MeetStream. Last reviewed 26 August 2026.

### Frequently asked questions

Native Meet recording is limited to specific Workspace editions and is not available on free personal accounts. A bot joins as a participant and records independently of the host's edition, subject to the meeting's admission settings.

A non-host can only record natively if they are in the host's organisation with host management off, or if promoted to co-host. A bot records what it receives as a participant, so it does not need host rights, but it does need to be admitted.

It can. Google documents that when a host unchecks 'Anyone can ask to join', third-party bots such as note takers are automatically denied. Handle refusal explicitly: MeetStream sends participant events so you know whether the bot got in.

Through MeetStream, yes. Google's own Meet Media API cannot: it caps at three audio streams that rotate between the loudest speakers, regardless of participant count.

Not for most commercial products yet. It is a developer preview that requires the Cloud project, the OAuth principal and every participant to be enrolled in the preview programme, and Google's pre-GA terms bar giving access to users outside your company.

Only recordings that Meet itself produced, which means someone had to enable native recording, and access needs a Restricted Drive scope. Transcript entries are deleted 30 days after the conference.

Google's native recording stops automatically after eight hours. A MeetStream bot records for four hours by default and up to ten hours when you raise the limit through the API.

Yes. Meet notifies participants when recording starts and warns people who join later. Admins can go further and require explicit consent, in which case declining removes the participant from the call.

$0.35 per bot-hour for recording, $0.45 per hour with transcription, dropping toward $0.25 at volume. Thirty days of storage is included and every account starts with $5 of free credit.

Yes. The Send Message API lets the bot announce itself in the room, which is good practice and helps with the recording statutes that turn on whether a recording was secret.

### Keep exploring

### Put a bot in your next Google Meet call

$5 of free credit, self-serve API keys, and no sales call between you and your first recording.

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Full site index for agents: https://meetstream.ai/llms.txt
API contract (OpenAPI 3.1): https://meetstream.ai/openapi.json
MCP discovery: https://meetstream.ai/.well-known/mcp