Fathom vs Laxis
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
Editorial assessmentLaxis compared with Fathom
Fathom has the most generous free tier in the category, with unlimited recording and video playback, all captured by a bot. Laxis has a tight 300-minute free plan with 30-day history but can capture without a bot at all, and adds dictation and keyword tracking. Fathom for free-tier generosity and recorded call review; Laxis when a visible bot is sometimes unacceptable and you want one tool for meetings and voice input.
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 Laxis if
Solo professionals and small revenue teams who want one tool for meeting capture and voice dictation, who want to choose bot or bot-free per call, and who are comfortable with a minute meter and a very small vendor.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Fathom | Laxis |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Meeting Notes | Meeting Notes |
| Starting price | $0 (Free plan, unlimited recording and transcription) (free plan available) | $0 (Basic), then $15.99 per month (Premium) (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. | Subscription metered in transcription minutes per month, with conversation history length as a second limit on the free tier. Business removes the minute meter. |
| Free plan | Unlimited recordings and transcriptions, bot or bot-free capture, instant AI summaries, clips, playlists, and search, with no monthly minute cap. | 300 transcription minutes a month with only 30 days of conversation history, plus recording, basic summaries, search, export and sharing, folders, and voice-to-text. |
| Free trial | Free trial available on paid plans, plus a 90 day guarantee advertised across tiers | No fixed-length paid trial; the free Basic plan is the evaluation path and requires no credit card |
| 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. | Solo professionals and small revenue teams who want one tool for meeting capture and voice dictation, who want to choose bot or bot-free per call, and who are comfortable with a minute meter and a very small vendor. |
| 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. | Ten to fifteen minutes. Download the app, connect the calendar if you plan to use the assistant bot, and choose your default capture method. The dictation keyboard is a separate setup step on mobile. |
| 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. | Low for capture, moderate for the rest, because the product spans meetings, dictation, agent mode, and a knowledge base, and the boundaries between them are not always obvious in the interface. |
| Platforms | Web app, macOS and Windows desktop apps, iOS app, Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, Public API, MCP server | Web, macOS and Windows desktop, iOS and Android, Chrome extension, Laxis AI notetaking earbuds |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR, Passed Zoom's vendor security review | Not prominently published; request SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA documentation directly during evaluation |
| Founded | 2020 | 2021 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Indiana, United States |
| 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.
Laxis
Strengths
- The only product in this comparison that offers bot-free capture, an assistant bot, and file upload as equal first-class options, letting you choose per meeting.
- A voice dictation keyboard alongside the notetaker, which collapses two subscriptions into one for anyone who dictates.
- The assistant can be renamed on the Business tier, so a bot in a client call does not advertise a third-party vendor. Almost nobody else allows this.
- AI notetaking earbuds, a CES Innovation Award 2026 honoree and a WIRED pick, which extends capture to conversations that never involve a computer.
Limitations
- Roughly $1.5M raised makes this the smallest company in the comparison by a wide margin, and continuity risk should be priced into the decision.
- Compliance documentation is thin: SOC 2, HIPAA, data residency, and model-training policy are not published as prominently as MeetGeek, Bluedot, Otter, or Sembly publish theirs.
- The free plan keeps only 30 days of history, so it deletes as it goes and cannot be used to build an archive.
- Premium's 2,000 minutes is about half a busy calendar, pushing regular users to the $29.99 Business tier.
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.
Laxis
Subscription metered in transcription minutes per month, with conversation history length as a second limit on the free tier. Business removes the minute meter.
- Basic$0
- Premium$15.99
- Business$29.99
- EnterpriseCustom
Do the minute arithmetic first. Someone in 20 meetings a week at 45 minutes generates about 3,900 transcription minutes a month, which sails past the free plan's 300 and past Premium's 2,000, so that person needs Business at $29.99 a month, or about $24 a month on annual billing, roughly $288 a year. That is more than Otter Business, more than MeetGeek Business, and more than Granola, and Laxis is a much smaller company with thinner published compliance credentials. Where it earns the money is scope: nobody else gives you bot and bot-free capture in the same subscription, a voice dictation keyboard, keyword tracking, a renameable assistant, and hardware earbuds. If you would otherwise buy a notetaker and a dictation tool separately, the combined price is fair. If you only want meeting notes, MeetGeek gives you more for $17 and Granola gives you better notes for $14.
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 profileLaxis
Laxis is a genuinely interesting product from a genuinely small company, and both halves of that sentence matter. Nobody else lets you choose bot-free or bot capture per meeting, bundles a voice dictation keyboard with the notetaker, lets you rename the assistant so it does not advertise a vendor in your client's call, or sells award-winning notetaking earbuds for the conversations that happen away from a screen. If you would otherwise buy a notetaker and a dictation tool separately, Business at about $24 a month on annual billing is defensible. But the meter is tight below that tier, the free plan forgets everything after 30 days, the API and SSO are Enterprise-only, and the published compliance story is the thinnest here, with no stated model-training policy at all. Buy it for the capture flexibility and the voice layer, ask hard questions about data handling before you point it at client work, and keep your own exports.
Read the full Laxis profileFathom profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Laxis last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.