Bluedot vs Fathom
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
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The short answer
Editorial assessmentBluedot compared with Fathom
Fathom records video too and has a genuinely generous free tier, but it does it with a bot in the participant list. Bluedot has almost no free tier and a much smaller company behind it, but nothing appears in your client's call. If the bot is acceptable, Fathom is the better value; if it is not, Bluedot is the closest thing to Fathom's capability without one.
Choose Bluedot if
Recruiters, consultants, and client-facing teams who need a recording they can replay and clip but cannot put a bot in front of the person they are talking to, and privacy-sensitive buyers who want a written no-training guarantee rather than a data processing agreement they have to negotiate.
Choose Fathom if
Startups and small GTM teams that want a competent notetaker with zero budget on day one and a credible upgrade path to call coaching and CRM sync as the sales team grows past a couple of reps.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Bluedot | Fathom |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Meeting Notes | Meeting Notes |
| Starting price | $0 (Free, 5 meetings lifetime), then $14 per user per month billed annually (Basic) | $0 (Free plan, unlimited recording and transcription) |
| Pricing model | Per-user-per-month subscription with no minute or meeting meter on paid plans. Capability is tiered by recording type (audio versus video), recording length, template customisation, and integration depth. | Freemium, with individual plans and separate per-seat team plans (minimum two users); annual billing discounts run 20 to 26 percent depending on tier. |
| Free plan | Five meetings for the lifetime of the account, one hour maximum per recording, with the Chrome extension, desktop and mobile apps, and basic integrations including Slack, Notion, Zapier, and Make. | Unlimited recordings and transcriptions, bot capture (bot-free capture in beta on Mac), instant AI summaries, clips, playlists, and search, with no monthly minute cap. |
| Free trial | No fixed-length trial; the free plan's five lifetime meetings serve as the evaluation | Free trial available on paid plans, plus a 90 day guarantee advertised across tiers |
| Best for | Recruiters, consultants, and client-facing teams who need a recording they can replay and clip but cannot put a bot in front of the person they are talking to, and privacy-sensitive buyers who want a written no-training guarantee rather than a data processing agreement they have to negotiate. | Startups and small GTM teams that want a competent notetaker with zero budget on day one and a credible upgrade path to call coaching and CRM sync as the sales team grows past a couple of reps. |
| Setup time | Under ten minutes. Install the Chrome extension for browser calls or the desktop app for Zoom, Teams, and Slack, grant permissions, and record with one click. There is no calendar bot to configure. | Under ten minutes. Sign up, connect Google Calendar or Microsoft 365, install the desktop app if you want bot-free capture, and the next meeting on your calendar is covered. |
| Learning curve | Very low. The only thing worth deliberate attention is template design on the Pro tier, because the difference between a default summary and a template shaped for your meeting type is most of the perceived quality of the product. | Minimal for individual use. The Business features (CRM field mapping, scorecard rubrics, custom summary templates) need someone to think about the sales process for a few hours, but nothing here requires a specialist. |
| Platforms | Chrome extension, macOS desktop app, Windows desktop app, iOS and Android, Apple Watch, Web | Web app, macOS and Windows desktop apps, iOS app, Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, Public API, MCP server |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II (independently audited), GDPR-compliant data processing controls | SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA (signed BAA on Enterprise), GDPR, Passed Zoom's vendor security review |
| Founded | 2022 | 2020 |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom, with operations in Dusseldorf, Germany | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Ownership | Angel-funded | Venture-backed |
Strengths and limitations
Bluedot
Strengths
- Bot-free capture that still keeps the video, which is a combination Granola and Circleback deliberately do not offer and bot-based tools cannot offer without a participant in the room.
- The clearest published privacy position in the category: no training on customer data, no retention by AI providers, immediate deletion with backups cleared within thirty days, all stated on the security page rather than buried in a DPA.
- SOC 2 Type II with annual third-party penetration testing and AES-256 encryption, which is stronger assurance than most companies this size can show.
- No minute, meeting, or storage meter on paid plans, so the bill does not move with usage.
Limitations
- A twenty-person company with roughly 560,000 euros of angel funding. The product is good and the balance sheet is thin, which is a genuine continuity risk for anything you plan to depend on for years.
- The free plan is five meetings for the lifetime of the account, which is the stingiest free offer here by a wide margin.
- Basic at $14 is audio only with a one-hour cap, so the advertised advantage of the product costs $20 rather than $14.
- CRM and ATS integrations, SSO, and custom retention are all on the $32 Business tier, which is expensive relative to what larger vendors include lower down.
Fathom
Strengths
- The free plan is genuinely unlimited on recording and transcription, which removes the usual notetaker adoption barrier entirely for early-stage teams.
- Bot-free capture modes (in beta on Mac) alongside the bot, with speaker attribution preserved, give flexibility for client-facing work where a visible bot is a problem.
- Ask Fathom returns citations that link back to specific transcript moments, so answers are checkable rather than plausible-sounding summaries you have to trust.
- Team pricing at $15 to $19 per seat undercuts the individual Premium plan, an unusual structure that makes small-team adoption cheap.
Limitations
- 38 transcript languages is materially narrower than Fireflies or Circleback, both of which advertise 100-plus, so multilingual teams should verify their languages first.
- The features that make Fathom useful to a sales org (CRM field sync, Deal View, scorecards) all live on the Business tier, so the cheap reputation stops applying the moment you buy it for revenue reasons.
- Conversation intelligence depth is mid-tier: it will tell you talk-time ratios and score calls against a rubric, but it does not do pipeline-wide forecasting or deal-risk modelling.
- No published data residency options outside the US, which is a blocker for some EU buyers regardless of GDPR compliance statements.
Pricing compared
Bluedot
Per-user-per-month subscription with no minute or meeting meter on paid plans. Capability is tiered by recording type (audio versus video), recording length, template customisation, and integration depth.
- Free$0
- Basic$14
- Pro$20
- Business$32
Priced against what it uniquely does, Bluedot is fair. Someone in 20 meetings a week pays exactly the same as someone in two, because nothing is metered: $20 per seat per month billed annually on Pro, about $240 a year, for bot-free capture that keeps unlimited-length video, custom templates, unlimited storage, an API, and MCP. Granola at $14 is cheaper and keeps no recording. Krisp at $8 keeps recordings but caps storage at 10 GB and writes weaker notes. Circleback at $15 to $25 a seat billed annually is bot-free with better language coverage and now keeps video and audio playback. Bluedot is the only one of the four that lets you replay and clip a client call that had no bot in it, and $240 a year is a reasonable price for that specific capability. Where it is poor value is at the edges: $14 Basic withholds video and caps recordings at an hour, and $32 Business is a steep jump to get CRM writeback and SSO from a twenty-person company.
Fathom
Freemium, with individual plans and separate per-seat team plans (minimum two users); annual billing discounts run 20 to 26 percent depending on tier.
- Free$0
- Premium$20
- Team$19
- Business$34
- EnterpriseCustom
Nobody in this category matches Fathom's price-to-capability ratio at the bottom. Unlimited recording and transcription for zero dollars means the burden of proof is on every competitor charging for the same thing, and a two-person startup on the Team plan gets shared search and playlists for $30 a month. The economics get ordinary at the top: Business at $25 to $34 per seat is priced against real conversation intelligence tools, and the coaching and deal features, while decent, are lighter than a dedicated revenue intelligence platform. Buy Fathom for the free and Team tiers with clear eyes; evaluate Business on its merits rather than on brand loyalty earned downstream.
Editorial verdict on each
Bluedot
Bluedot occupies a gap nobody else fills cleanly: bot-free capture that keeps the video. Granola will not store the recording, and most tools that do keep video put a participant in your client's call to get it. If you are a recruiter, a consultant, or a customer success team who needs to replay and clip conversations that cannot have a bot in them, Bluedot at $20 a seat billed annually with unlimited storage, custom templates, an API, and MCP is the obvious answer, and its published no-training, immediate-deletion, SOC 2 Type II posture is the most straightforward privacy statement in the category. The two things to weigh honestly are the tiering, because $14 Basic withholds video and caps recordings at an hour and $32 Business is where CRM writeback and SSO live, and the company, because twenty people on angel funding is a real continuity risk. Buy it for what it uniquely does, on Pro, and keep your own copies through the API.
Read the full Bluedot profileFathom
Best ValueFathom won the bottom of this market by refusing to charge for the thing everyone else charges for, and the strategy still holds: unlimited free recording and transcription, bot-free capture in beta on Mac, and a Team tier that costs less per seat than the individual plan. For a startup choosing a notetaker this week, it is the default recommendation and the burden falls on rivals to justify their price. The picture is less commanding higher up: 38 languages is thin, the Business tier is priced against tools with deeper revenue intelligence, and there is no data residency story for EU buyers who need one. Start free, upgrade to Team when there are two of you, and evaluate Business on evidence rather than habit.
Read the full Fathom profileBluedot profile last reviewed 2026-09-27; Fathom last reviewed 2026-09-27. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.
The best in AI Meeting Note Takers
23 trackedAI meeting note takers join calls to record, transcribe, and summarize them, turning conversations into searchable notes, action items, and CRM updates without anyone typing.
The broadest platform in meeting AI: transcription, search, AI apps, and integrations that reach every corner of the small-business stack.
A free plan with unlimited recording and transcription that forced every paid notetaker in the category to justify its price.
A ten-person team out-writing the funded competition on note quality, then automating what the notes say.
Abandoned the meeting bot entirely for a local notepad that finishes what you type, a mechanism the rest of the category is now copying.
A five minute Chrome extension install with no bot to whitelist, and notes open automatically in a post-call tab the moment you hang up.
Frequently asked questions
6 questionsWhat is the difference between Bluedot and Fathom?
Fathom records video too and has a genuinely generous free tier, but it does it with a bot in the participant list. Bluedot has almost no free tier and a much smaller company behind it, but nothing appears in your client's call. If the bot is acceptable, Fathom is the better value; if it is not, Bluedot is the closest thing to Fathom's capability without one.
Is Bluedot or Fathom cheaper?
Bluedot starts at $0 (Free, 5 meetings lifetime), then $14 per user per month billed annually (Basic). Fathom starts at $0 (Free plan, unlimited recording and transcription). The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole cost. Bluedot pricing model: Per-user-per-month subscription with no minute or meeting meter on paid plans. Capability is tiered by recording type (audio versus video), recording length, template customisation, and integration depth. Fathom pricing model: Freemium, with individual plans and separate per-seat team plans (minimum two users); annual billing discounts run 20 to 26 percent depending on tier.
Does Bluedot or Fathom have a free plan?
Bluedot has a free plan. Five meetings for the lifetime of the account, one hour maximum per recording, with the Chrome extension, desktop and mobile apps, and basic integrations including Slack, Notion, Zapier, and Make. Trial terms: No fixed-length trial; the free plan's five lifetime meetings serve as the evaluation. Fathom has a free plan. Unlimited recordings and transcriptions, bot capture (bot-free capture in beta on Mac), instant AI summaries, clips, playlists, and search, with no monthly minute cap. Trial terms: Free trial available on paid plans, plus a 90 day guarantee advertised across tiers.
Who should choose Bluedot?
Recruiters, consultants, and client-facing teams who need a recording they can replay and clip but cannot put a bot in front of the person they are talking to, and privacy-sensitive buyers who want a written no-training guarantee rather than a data processing agreement they have to negotiate.
Who should choose Fathom?
Startups and small GTM teams that want a competent notetaker with zero budget on day one and a credible upgrade path to call coaching and CRM sync as the sales team grows past a couple of reps.
What are the best alternatives to Bluedot and Fathom?
SaaSTracker profiles 23 products in AI Meeting Note Takers. The Summer 2026 awards in the category went to Fireflies.ai (Category Leader), Circleback (Momentum), Granola (Innovation). Every profile is compiled from primary sources, so a shortlist can be built from pricing, limitations, and fit rather than from star ratings.
