9 Best Video Conferencing Software of 2026

Zoom Workplace remains the meeting tool that the most people already know, which matters when a large share of your calls include clients, candidates or partners. The free Basic plan allows 100 participants for 40 minutes, enough for testing and short external calls. Pro, at $15.99 per user per month billed monthly or less on an annual plan, lifts meetings to 30 hours, adds 10 GB of cloud storage per user and includes unlimited AI meeting summaries and the My Notes note taker. Business raises the cap to 300 participants and adds single sign-on, managed domains and unlimited whiteboards. For bigger audiences, the Large Meeting add-on goes up to 5,000 participants, and Enterprise bundles webinars for 500 attendees, rooms and a full phone system. The catch is that the useful extras stack up as add-ons, so the real cost of standardizing on Zoom for webinars and large town halls is higher than the Pro price suggests.

Google Meet is the simplest meeting tool here for guests, because it runs in the browser and a calendar invite is all anyone needs. It comes as part of Google Workspace, so the price buys business email, Calendar, Drive and Docs as well. On the Flexible Plan, Business Starter costs $8.40 per user per month in the US and allows meetings of up to 100 participants. Business Standard raises that to 150 and adds recordings saved to Drive and Studio Sound noise cancellation, Business Plus adds attendance tracking for 500 participants, and Enterprise reaches 1,000 participants with in-domain live streaming. Gemini can summarize, translate and take notes in meetings on supported plans. The limits show when you need more than meetings: webinar registration and branded event pages are thinner than on Zoom or Webex, and recording is not part of the entry plan. For a Google-based company, Meet should be the default before buying anything else.

Microsoft Teams Essentials is the cheapest way on this list to give a whole team long, large meetings. For $4.00 per user per month paid yearly, each user can host meetings of up to 30 hours with up to 300 participants, record and transcribe them, and keep 10 GB of cloud storage. Unlimited chat with guest access means client conversations can continue between calls, and calendars connect with either Outlook or Google. Companies that later need Word, Excel and Exchange can move up to Microsoft 365 Business Basic at $7.00 per user per month paid yearly, which also includes Teams. The downsides are weight and scope. The Teams app does a lot and feels busier than Zoom or Whereby for a quick call, and webinar registration or a business phone number requires other Microsoft products such as Teams Phone. For an internal-first team that wants one predictable bill, it is hard to beat.

Webex is the strongest enterprise option on this list for teams that want meetings, calling and events from one vendor. The free plan allows unlimited meetings of up to 40 minutes with 100 attendees, plus whiteboards and local recording. Webex Meet, at $144 per user per year, or $12 per user per month, extends meetings to 24 hours with 200 attendees, adds 10 GB of AI-powered cloud recording, an AI Assistant, closed captions and live polling and Q&A by Slido. The Suite plan adds a business phone number and domestic calling, and Enterprise reaches 1,000 attendees with FedRAMP authorized security. Optional add-ons cover call-me audio and real-time translation into over 100 languages. Webex asks more of its users than Zoom or Meet: there are more settings, and the app is aimed at organizations with IT teams. Cisco also offers 6 months free when you buy 5 or more Meet licenses, which helps small teams test it properly.

Zoho Meeting is a sensible choice for teams that care most about price and do not need a large ecosystem. Its free plan allows up to 100 participants and meetings of up to 60 minutes, longer than the 40-minute limits on Zoom Basic and Webex Free, and it includes screen sharing, a whiteboard and moderator controls. Paid plans are priced per host and by participant tier, from 10 up to 250 participants. Standard adds 5 GB of cloud recording per host, meetings of up to 24 hours, a personal room, polls and remote control. Professional adds breakout rooms, a custom domain, embeddable meeting widgets, API access and recording transcripts. Zoho also sells separate webinar plans and toll-free numbers for more than 55 countries. The trade-off is reach: fewer clients will already have it installed, and integrations outside Zoho are thinner. Its pricing page showed us only euro and pound prices, so the USD figure is pending.

GoTo Meeting suits companies where a small group of people run most meetings, because it is priced per organizer and attendees join free. The Professional plan allows 150 participants and Business allows 250. Both plans now include unlimited cloud recording, transcription, AI meeting summaries, breakout rooms, polls and closed captioning, along with dial-in conference lines and keyboard and mouse sharing. Audio is a strength: toll-free numbers, call me dial out and an enhanced audio add-on help when attendees are on the road. GoTo lists HIPAA compliance, AES-256 encryption and SOC2 certified data centers. On the downside, there is no permanent free plan, the participant ceiling stops at 250, and webinars require GoTo Webinar or an add-on. At $12 per organizer per month billed annually, or $14 monthly, it costs less than Zoom Pro for each host.

Jitsi Meet is the free option on this list, and it is free in a stronger sense than a trial or a capped plan. The project describes it as fully encrypted and 100% open source, usable all day, every day, at no cost and with no account needed. Anyone can start a call on meet.jit.si and share a link, with desktop and presentation sharing, and IT teams can download the server and run their own installation, which keeps meeting traffic on infrastructure they control. That makes it a reasonable standard for budget-limited groups, privacy-focused teams and organizations that already run their own servers. The costs are elsewhere. There is no vendor support behind the free service, self-hosting means patching and scaling it yourself, and features that paid tools now include, such as AI summaries, webinar registration and phone numbers, are not part of the core app. For client-facing work, most teams will want a paid tool alongside it.

Whereby is built around a simple idea: each host gets permanent room links that anyone can open in a browser, with no download and no meeting IDs. That makes it a good fit for consultants, coaches and small agencies whose calls are mostly with clients. The free plan is a taster with one room, 4 attendees and 30-minute meetings. Pro costs $10.99 per month for one host and adds 3 room URLs, 100 attendees, no time limit, custom branding and unlimited recording. Business costs $13.99 per host per month with a minimum of 3 hosts and adds unlimited rooms, 200 attendees, shared and flex rooms and a custom subdomain. Integrations with Miro, Google Docs and Trello let people work together inside the call. What you give up is breadth. There is no chat workspace, no phone system and no webinar product, so larger companies will outgrow it as a single standard.

RingCentral RingEX is a business phone system first, and its meetings come bundled in. That is the reason to choose it: one app handles calls, team chat and video, and one bill covers them. The Core plan costs $20 per user per month paid annually, or $30 paid monthly, and includes unlimited domestic calling, on-demand call recording, 100 toll-free minutes and HD meetings for 300 participants. Advanced adds CRM integrations and multi-site support, and Ultra adds RingCentral Webinar, unlimited storage and 10,000 toll-free minutes. The AI Virtual Assistant is included on every plan. For a team that only needs meetings, this is the most expensive way to get them on this list, and the admin console is built for phone systems, which adds setup work. If you are replacing an office phone system anyway, though, folding meetings into the same contract can cost less than paying for two vendors.