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Question
People commonly search:
Is there open source Zoom recording software?
Usually they mean: “Can I self-host something that joins a Zoom meeting and produces a recording (or at least a transcript) without relying on Zoom’s built-in cloud recording?”
Answer: Is there “open source Zoom recording software”?
There’s no official open source Zoom recorder
Zoom does not publish an official open source “record Zoom meetings” app that you can deploy as-is. Recording is supported through Zoom features and APIs, but the “recorder” itself is not an open source component you can drop into your stack.
Recording a Zoom meeting programmatically has a few real paths
Option 1: Zoom Cloud Recording (post-meeting files)
If the meeting is recorded to the cloud, you can fetch the resulting files (MP4/MP3 and related artifacts) after Zoom finishes processing them, commonly driven by events like recording.completed. Retrieving recordings this way can take a significant amount of time though as recordings and transcripts must be processed after the call. To learn more about this method you can read the section on Zoom Cloud Recording API in our blog that walks through how to get recordings from Zoom meetings.
What you get: finished recordings after the meeting
What you don’t get: a self-hosted “bot recorder” or live media from this method
Option 2: Zoom Meeting SDK raw data (build your own recorder)
Zoom’s Meeting SDK can expose raw audio/video via “raw recording” or “raw streaming,” but access is controlled by meeting permissions. For example, Zoom documents that raw-data access for recording/streaming depends on the host granting the SDK participant the relevant permission (local recording permission for raw recording; live streaming permission for raw streaming). This approach requires that you build a Zoom app. You can use that Zoom app within your own workspace, but if you want to allow users external to your Zoom workspace to use the app, you must go through the Zoom app review process.
What you get: media you can encode/store yourself
What you don’t get: a simple, approval-free, headless “join any meeting and record” button
Option 3: Open source “meeting bot” via browser automation
Many “open source Zoom recording” projects are actually Zoom web-client automation bots that join as a participant and scrape captions to produce a live transcript or record audio. This can be a practical, open source-friendly approach when your real need is “capture what was said,” not “capture pristine, speaker separated audio/video.”
If you are interested in this approach you can read our guide on how to build a Zoom bot from scratch which includes a link to a repo that you can run on your own to get transcripts from meetings. This repo will not provide you with audio or video recordings, but serves as a great foundation to build it yourself.
What you get: live transcript text when captions are available
What you don’t get: guaranteed stability (web UI changes), or true audio/video capture from an official API in this approach
Things to consider if you decide to build a bot
If you decide to build a Zoom bot to join calls, it is important to note that your bot is just like any other participant. It can be removed from the call by the host. You must consider how to ensure it doesn't get stuck in the waiting room and how to make sure it leaves after the other participants have left so that you are not running a bot that will cost you a ton. Fundamentally though, the relationship of a bot is one thing you cannot work around. Bots are participants and Zoom centers the host in meetings, allowing the permissions of a host and host organization to determine the participant experience.
Final thoughts
If you mean open source Zoom recording software as in “a self-hosted recorder that joins meetings and outputs MP4/MP3,” the closest path is to expand on the Zoom bot to get transcripts so that you also get audio and video.
If you just want a record of what was said in the Zoom meeting, then an open source browser automation bot that scrapes captions is often the simplest path, with the tradeoff that it depends on the web client and caption availability.
If you want perfectly diarized transcripts, audio and video recording, breakout room support, etc, then Recall.ai's Zoom recording api is the only solution. No other API allows you to get perfectly diarized transcripts and support for breakout rooms. If you're still not sure what solution works for you, check out our piece on how to get recordings from Zoom.
