Fathom vs Fireflies.ai
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Both sides assessedFathom compared with Fireflies.ai
Fireflies is the broader platform, with 100-plus languages, conversation intelligence, voice agents, an email assistant, and 200-plus integrations, but its free plan caps at 400 minutes of storage per team. Fathom's free plan is unlimited and its product is narrower and cleaner. Small teams that just want reliable notes should start with Fathom; teams that need multilingual coverage or want one vendor covering transcription, analytics, and automation should look at Fireflies.
Fireflies.ai compared with Fathom
Fathom's free tier includes unlimited recording and transcription with no minute cap, while Fireflies caps free storage at 400 minutes across the whole team. Fireflies answers with 100-plus languages against Fathom's 38, plus dialer capture, file upload, recruiting integrations, and voice agents. English-only startups optimizing for a free plan should take Fathom; multilingual or multi-department teams wanting one platform should take Fireflies.
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.
Choose Fireflies.ai if
Multilingual teams and startups that want one vendor covering transcription, conversation intelligence, task routing, and automation across sales, recruiting, and support, and who are willing to model minute and credit consumption rather than buying on the headline price.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Fathom | Fireflies.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Meeting Notes | Meeting Notes |
| Starting price | $0 (Free plan, unlimited recording and transcription) (free plan available) | $0 (Free), then $10 per user per month billed annually (Pro; $18 monthly) (free plan available) |
| 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. | Per-seat subscription across four tiers, metered on two axes: storage minutes and monthly AI credits. Annual billing is roughly 35 to 45 percent cheaper than monthly. |
| Free plan | Unlimited recordings and transcriptions, bot or bot-free capture, instant AI summaries, clips, playlists, and search, with no monthly minute cap. | Free forever with unlimited transcription and unlimited AI summaries, 400 minutes of storage per team, 20 AI credits, Zoom, Meet, and Teams support, 100-plus language transcription, real-time notes, search, AskFred, and audio or video upload. |
| Free trial | Free trial available on paid plans, plus a 90 day guarantee advertised across tiers | No fixed trial period published; the free-forever tier is the evaluation path |
| Best for | 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. | Multilingual teams and startups that want one vendor covering transcription, conversation intelligence, task routing, and automation across sales, recruiting, and support, and who are willing to model minute and credit consumption rather than buying on the headline price. |
| Setup time | 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. | Fifteen minutes for basic capture: connect a calendar, confirm which meetings the bot should join, and install the Chrome extension if you use Google Meet. Configuring CRM field mapping, AI Skills, and topic trackers adds a few hours. |
| Learning curve | 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. | Moderate, and higher than any other product in this set purely because of surface area. The transcription and summary layer is immediately obvious; AI Skills, conversation intelligence, the rules engine, and voice agents each need their own learning session. |
| Platforms | Web app, macOS and Windows desktop apps, iOS app, Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, Public API, MCP server | Web app, Desktop application, iOS and Android apps, Chrome extension for Google Meet, Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, Aircall and RingCentral dialers, MCP server |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR, Passed Zoom's vendor security review | SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, HIPAA (Enterprise tier), Zero data retention for AI training |
| Founded | 2020 | 2016 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Miami, Florida, United States (previously Pleasanton, California), with a distributed team across 20 countries and 47 cities |
| Ownership | Venture-backed | Venture-backed |
Strengths and limitations
Fathom
Strengths
- The free plan is genuinely unlimited on recording and transcription, which removes the usual notetaker adoption barrier entirely for early-stage teams.
- Three capture modes including two bot-free options, with speaker attribution preserved, gives real 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.
Fireflies.ai
Strengths
- The broadest capture coverage in the category: bots for the major platforms, email invitation, Chrome extension, mobile and desktop apps, dialer integrations, and file upload.
- More than 100 transcription languages with auto-detection, plus a multi-language mode for calls that switch mid-conversation, which no competitor here matches.
- Pro at $10 per seat annually is remarkable capability per dollar, including video recording, AI Skills, voice agents, and unlimited integrations.
- AskFred and unlimited AI summaries are available on the free tier, so the assistant is not held hostage to an upgrade.
Limitations
- Dual metering on storage minutes and AI credits makes real cost hard to forecast, and the free tier's 400-minute pool is shared across the entire team rather than per user.
- Bot-based capture only; there is no silent local-capture mode, so client-facing teams who object to a visible participant have no option here.
- Product sprawl is real: voice agents, an email assistant, a task manager, 200-plus AI Skills, and conversation intelligence in one subscription means an unavoidable navigation cost and inconsistent polish across surfaces.
- Customer-count claims are inconsistent across the vendor's own pages, more than 1 million companies on the homepage against more than 500,000 on the about page, which is not a great signal for a data-driven buyer.
Pricing compared
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.
Fireflies.ai
Per-seat subscription across four tiers, metered on two axes: storage minutes and monthly AI credits. Annual billing is roughly 35 to 45 percent cheaper than monthly.
- Free$0
- Pro$18
- Business$29
- Enterprise$39
On sticker price Fireflies is the cheapest capable product here: $10 per seat annually for video recording, an email assistant, voice agents, AI Skills, a task manager, and unlimited integrations undercuts everything except Granola's Business tier, and it does considerably more. The complication is the metering. Storage minutes and AI credits are two forecasting problems most buyers will not do properly, the 400-minute free pool is team-wide rather than per seat, and unlimited storage costs $19 a seat. Model your actual meeting hours before comparing this to a flat-fee rival; if your usage is modest and multilingual, Fireflies is outstanding value, and if it is heavy, price Business rather than Pro.
Editorial verdict on each
Fathom
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, two credible bot-free capture modes, 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 profileFireflies.ai
Category LeaderFireflies is the most capable product in this category and the hardest to price. Nothing else here captures from as many sources, transcribes as many languages, or ships as much adjacent machinery, and Pro at $10 a seat annually is genuinely startling value if your usage fits inside 8,000 minutes. But the twin meters on storage and AI credits, the team-wide 400-minute free pool, and the concentration of the analytics story on Business mean the headline price is not the price. Buy it for multilingual coverage, capture breadth, and one-vendor consolidation across sales, recruiting, and support, and do the usage arithmetic before you sign. Teams who want a small, elegant, unmetered tool will be happier with Granola, and teams who object to bots in customer calls should not shortlist Fireflies at all.
Read the full Fireflies.ai profileFathom profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Fireflies.ai last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.