People leave Zoom for an alternative because they assume Zoom’s free plan is the stingy one. It is not. Zoom free caps a group meeting at 40 minutes; Google Meet and Microsoft Teams each give you 60. So the honest frame is this: every major video tool meters the same three things — minutes, participants and recording — and “free” mostly moves the wall rather than removing it. Here is what each free tier actually includes, and which wall will hit you first. Details are read off the vendors’ own pages, checked in October 2026.
Google Meet — the room with no install and no 40-minute clock
If your team already lives in Gmail or Google Workspace, this is the zero-friction default. Any Google account gets meetings for up to 100 participants, 60 minutes each, and — the detail people miss — no time limit at all on 1:1 calls and mobile dial-ins. It runs in the browser, so a guest clicks a link and is in without an account. The catch is upkeep, not minutes: the free personal tier does not include meeting recording. Best for teams already inside Google holding mostly short calls.
Microsoft Teams (free) — same clock, more plumbing
The arithmetic matches Meet: 60-minute group calls, up to 100 participants. What free sells is the plumbing — chat, shared files and Outlook calendar in the same window as the call. Paid tiers leap to 30 hours and 300 participants, which tells you plainly who free is aimed at: a small business, not a 200-person all-hands. Best if you already run on Microsoft 365 or Windows. Re-read the terms — free tiers here change quietly.
Jitsi Meet — the one that asks for no account at all
Open source under Apache-2.0, and the free public instance at meet.jit.si requires nothing from you or your guests. The pitch: a client who refuses to install an app or create a login can still join from a browser link. Two limits — the public instance throttles room size and duration under load, and recording and transcription are not built in; they need extra self-hosted components. Best for one-off client calls and teams who want the option to run meetings on their own server; our Jitsi Meet tool page covers the self-hosting trade-offs.
Cisco Webex Free — the only one that still records
On minutes it is the weakest here: unlimited meetings, but capped at 40 minutes each — the same wall as Zoom. Read the rest of its list and it flips. Unlimited whiteboards, unlimited messaging, and local plus unlimited cloud recording all sit on the free plan. If a kept record of every call matters more than long calls, this is the anomaly worth knowing. Best for people who record by default: interviews, client calls, anything you may need to replay.
Official image from jitsi.org.
Three things free tiers quietly meter
The recording, not the meeting. Zoom free records locally only; cloud recording starts on a paid tier, and Meet’s personal free plan records nothing at all. A plan that is fine for talking can still be useless for keeping.
The AI summary. Zoom now bundles meeting summaries into free, but only for three hosted meetings a month — past that it is metered. If notes are the whole reason you are there, a dedicated note-taker is often the cheaper fix than a Zoom upgrade; see our Otter.ai alternatives guide for how the free note-takers actually meter.
The group call, not the 1:1. Almost every 40- and 60-minute cap here applies to group meetings; one-to-one and mobile calls are usually unlimited. Read your real usage — a plan that fails a five-person standup is fine for coaching calls.
How to combine them
Run daily meetings on whichever ecosystem you already pay for — Meet inside Google, Teams inside Microsoft — because the switching cost is zero. Keep Jitsi for outside calls where you cannot demand a sign-up. When a call must be archived, move it to Webex free or record locally. Take notes outside the platform too: capture the call, then run the audio through a note-taker, which is the loop our Sony XM6 meeting-summary test looks at from the hardware side. And if the meeting also needs a shared canvas, that is a different tool again — see our Miro alternatives.
Questions people actually ask
Is Zoom free really 40 minutes? For group meetings of three or more, yes. 1:1 meetings on the same free plan run the full 30 hours. The cap is the group call, not the account.
Which free alternative has no time limit? Google Meet, for 1:1 and mobile calls. Group calls still stop at 60 minutes.
Do any of these record for free? Webex free does — local and unlimited cloud recording. Zoom free is local only, and Meet’s personal tier does not record at all.
Can I self-host instead of trusting a vendor’s cloud? Yes. Jitsi is the mature option, Apache-2.0, and the tool page lays out what you take on.
Plan details come from zoom.us/pricing, workspace.google.com/products/meet, microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/free and webex.com/pricing, checked in October 2026. We have not tested these meeting apps hands-on — our testing covers AI hardware and coding tools, and the comparison method explains what that means here.