Google Meet vs Zoom: Which is Best for Video Conferencing?

Video conferencing platforms like Google Meet and Zoom unite remote and blended teams, improve collaboration with clients and external vendors, and cut down on endless in-house staff meetings.

While Zoom and Google Meet have long been some of the top web conferencing tools in the business communications space, which is right for your business?

This head-to-head Google Meet vs Zoom comparison of features, pricing and plans, user experience, and more will help choose the best fit.

An Overview of Google Meet vs Zoom

Here’s a quick overview of Google Meet vs Zoom.

Google Meet vs Zoom: Pricing and Plans

This section explores available plans and pricing associated with Google Meet and Zoom.

Google Meet Pricing

All Google account holders can download the Google Meet free plan, which lets up to 100 participants meet for 1-hour max. Closed captions, whiteboards, screen sharing, chat messaging, and two-step verification are all available in the free version.

Google Meet’s four paid plans automatically upgrade users to a Google Workspace account, which includes advanced Meet features and more Workspace tools (Google Docs, Sheets, etc.)

The below table provides details on Google Meet pricing and plans.

Zoom Pricing

Zoom One offers a free Basic Plan to account holders that lets up to 100 participants host and join an unlimited number of meetings of up to 40 minutes each. Free Zoom users can also access local recording, breakout rooms, screen sharing and remote screen control, chat, and whiteboarding.

Paid Zoom One pricing and plans–including those offering Zoom Phone–are outlined in the table below.

Google Meet vs Zoom: Feature Comparison

Below is a head-to-head comparison of Zoom vs Google Meet video conferencing features, with a clear winner declared for each functionality.

Google Meet Meeting Access

Google Meet lets users start an ad hoc instant video call or schedule an upcoming meeting in Google Calendar. Both instant and scheduled meetings can be accessed via a shareable meeting link.

To join a Google Meeting on desktop or mobile, users click the shareable link, join via Gmail/other emails, or click on the Google Calendar event page. Dial-in access, including via third-party tools like WebEx, is also available.

Zoom Meeting Access

Anyone with a Zoom account (including free plan users) can host, schedule, or join a meeting directly on the Zoom website, within the Zoom App for desktop and mobile users, by phone, or via shareable meeting links.

Hosts have a Personal Meeting ID that “reserves” a virtual web conferencing room for them at all times, or they can generate a random URL.

Instant, recurring, simultaneous, and scheduled meetings–along with meeting reminders and meeting templates–are also available.

Winner: Zoom

Zoom offers more detailed meeting scheduling options and integrates with numerous third-party tools.

Google Meet Audio and Video Quality

Meet has excellent audio quality and noise canceling features, but users cite a consistently low video quality–likely because Meet supports only up to 702p HD video streams, while the standard is 1080p.

Users can test and automatically or manually adjust audio and lighting levels, audio source, and video quality before or during meetings. Custom backgrounds and filters are available.

Google Meet doesn’t offer a standalone audio conference call solution, but users can turn off video streams.

Zoom Audio and Video Quality

Zoom Meetings has HD audio and video management, though the quality of both is also cited as inconsistent.

Users can test audio before and during a meeting, select speakers and microphones, switch to phone audio, or enable automatic audio adjustments and background noise suppression.

Audio-only conference is possible within the interface, and Zoom Meeting backgrounds and filters are available.

Zoom video quality is automatically set to 720p (the same as Google Meet) and paid users can upgrade to1080p video quality.

Winner: Google Meet

Google Meet is the winner here, as Meet users report fewer issues than Zoom users regarding dropped audio, frozen screens, and lag time.

Google Meet Whiteboarding

The Google Meet online whiteboard, (Jamboard) is easily Google Meet’s most exciting feature – and it’s included with the free plan.

Though Google users can co-edit in real-time with apps like Google Docs, the Google Jamboard takes team collaboration to the next level, allowing up to 50 simultaneous desktop and mobile board editors.

Jamboard users can:

• Search Google Images within the whiteboard
• Upload images via URL, Google Drive, desktop, or Google Photos
• Take/upload photos
• Add/edit color-coded sticky notes, text boxes, shape templates
• Access drawing tools like freehand pens, highlighters, erasers, laser pointers

Zoom Whiteboarding

Zoom Whiteboard users can access new or saved whiteboards in or outside of meetings, and share them via email or Zoom chat.

Additional Zoom Whiteboard features include:

• Leave/respond to comments
• Whiteboard version control
• Multicolor text/drawing tools
• Pre-set icon stamps
• Mouse (real-time editor pen) spotlight
• Clear or save whiteboards
• Eraser, undo, redo
• Whiteboard backgrounds

Winner: Google Meet

Though Zoom has some interesting upcoming features (like VR whiteboarding) Google’s Jamboard is tough to beat.

Google Meet Additional In-Meeting Collaboration Tools

Google Meet offers frustratingly basic in-meeting chat messaging, lacking private or small group channel creation, in-chat file uploads (though users can review individual Google Docs), and a way to view prior chat messages.

Hosts can create up to 100 randomized or pre-set breakout rooms per meeting for smaller discussions, and participants can use the Q&A tool to ask and upvote questions.

Zoom Additional In-Meeting Collaboration Tools

Zoom offers far more robust chat and team collaboration options than Google Meet.

They include:

• In-chat file sharing and file co-annotation
• Private and public chats
• Chats can be saved and shared post meetings
• Channel creation with titles and descriptions
• One-click video calling
• Screen sharing (entire screen, single app, browser)
• Remote screen control
• Virtual hand raising
• Up to 50 random or pre-assigned breakout rooms
• Polling
• Live closed captioning
• Real-time user presence

Winner: Zoom

Zoom takes the win here thanks to its advanced chat features and in-meeting file co-annotation.

Google Meet Meeting Recording and Transcription

Google Meet offers virtual conference audio, video, shared screens, and in-meeting chat recording on desktop devices only.

Recordings and transcriptions are automatically stored in Google Drive and shared with online meeting participants.

Zoom Meeting Recording and Transcription

Zoom offers on-demand or automatic meeting recording for video calls, including screen sharing and chat logs.

Local and cloud recording storage is available, and hosts can share and password-protect recordings. Recording transcripts are searchable via keyword, meeting date and time, and can be edited, shared, or saved as closed captions. Records/transcriptions can be automatically deleted or kept.

Winner: Zoom

Zoom wins with recording features like highlights, recording access control, and recording editing.

Google Meet Analytics

Google Meet offers basic analytics providing details about overall meeting quality, not  participant activity, including:

• Meeting date, time, duration, attendees
• User sign-in activity
• Internal attendee email/IP address country
• Livestream viewers
• Quality events like network congestion, jitter and latency, bandwidth usage, etc.

Zoom Analytics

Zoom’s reporting dashboard offers basic meeting analytics for user activity and meeting quality like:

• Device usage
• Participant locations
• Top users by meeting minutes, messages, department, etc.
• Meeting registration
• Meeting start time, Meeting ID, and meeting duration
• Real-time meeting quality monitoring (latency, jitter, etc.)
• Meeting attendee list

Winner: Draw

Both Google Meet and Zoom offer lackluster analytics when compared to competitors.

Google Meet Integrations

Integrations with third-party software is another place where Google Meet falls short.

As of this writing, there are no Meet APIs, and little compatibility with popular third-party tools–likely to force users to upgrade to a paid Google Worskaspce account.

Meet doesn’t even offer free integrations with key apps like Slack or Asana.

However, Google Apps like Google Calendar, Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Drive integrate with nearly every business software imaginable. Tools like Zapier can assist with some Meet connections.

Zoom Integrations

Zoom Apps lets users access more than 50  third-party tools directly in the Zoom Meeting interface.

Users can open multiple Zoom Apps at once, and admins can pre-approve apps. All integrated third-party applications and APIs are also available before and after meetings in the Zoom Meetings user dashboard.

Popular integrations include:

• Asana
• Google Workspace
• HubSpot
• Salesforce
• Slack
• Zapier
• Microsoft 365
• Dropbox
• Miro

Winner: Zoom

Zoom is the obvious winner here.

Google Meet vs Zoom: Security and Support

Google Meet

Google Meet has overall strong host control and security features like:

• Meeting passcode/PIN

• Add, remove, mute meeting participants
• Enable/disable screen sharing, chat messaging, and video
• End meeting for all participants
• Suspicious activity alerts powered by machine learning
• 2FA, E2EE, and SSO
• Audit logs
• HIPAA, GDPR, ISO/IEC 27018, SOC3 compliance
• Meeting analytics accessible to host only (still shareable)
• Custom retention policies

Google’s added Advanced Protection Plan offers a high level of threat analysis, responds to current cyber attack trends, and protects against phishing attacks.

Google Meet’s customer support is lacking when compared to its high security standards.

Free users only have access to community support forums and the online, self-help support knowledge base.

Workspace Individual users receive 24/7 Standard Support support, while Enterprise users get 24/7 Priority Support to guarantee a response in 4 hours or less. Enterprise users with 100 seats or more also have a Designated Google Advisor.

Google Customer Care Support package pricing and plans are shown below.

Zoom Meetings

Zoom doesn’t have the best reputation for security and user privacy thanks to frequent Zoombombings and reports of Zoom selling user data.

Zoom in-meeting host controls and security steps include:

• Waiting rooms, meeting passwords, meeting lock
• Approve/reject/remove/mute participants
• Unlimited meeting co-hosts

• Control participant video, audio, and screen control
• End meeting for all
• Real-time attendance updates
• Instant no-show reminders
• Breakout rooms
• Stream meetings on social media

While Zoom’s Trust Center provides user privacy documentation and files, it lacks a transparent explanation of Zoom’s data sharing and retention policies. However, Zoom has removed its infamous attendee attention tracking feature.

Additional Zoom certifications and security protocols include:

• Real-time security alerts
• E2EE
• Audit logs
• 2FA
• SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA, GDPR compliance
• Password-protected meeting recordings
• FEDRAMP, CSA STAR, and FERPA certification

Zoom offers 24/7 live website chat support with a real person for all plans, and offers omnichannel support even on social media.

The Zoom Community knowledge base is well-organized, and all paid users can create a support ticket request any time–but phone support is only available for the two most expensive plans.

The below images outline the available Developer and Tech Support Premier Plans, but pricing is unlisted for the latter.

Winner: Zoom

Both Google Meet and Zoom have had several past issues with user trust and overall data security –but Zoom has listened to and acted on user concerns.

Google Meet vs Zoom: User Experience

Who Should Use Google Meet?

Who Should Use Zoom?

Video Conferencing Alternatives To Google Meet And Zoom

Still can’t decide between Google Meet vs Zoom?

Another video conferencing software, like the below Meet and Zoom alternatives, may be a better fit.