Fathom

Fathom is a free-forever AI notetaker that records your Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls, generates instant summaries, and now captures conversations bot-free via its new desktop app. We rate it 88/100 — the best free tier in the AI meeting category, with paid plans that make sense only if you live inside a sales pipeline.

What is Fathom?

Fathom is an AI meeting assistant built by Richard White — previously the founder of UserVoice — and incubated in the Y Combinator W21 batch. The company emerged from stealth on January 24, 2022 with $4.7M in seed funding backed by early Zoom investors, and closed a $17M Series A led by Telescope Partners in September 2024 — roughly $2M of which came directly from Fathom users via a Wefunder crowdfunding round.

The core product records a meeting, transcribes it with diarization, and produces a structured summary with timestamped highlights, auto-generated action items, and shareable clips — then ships it to Slack, Notion, Salesforce or HubSpot the moment the call ends. The 2026 refresh adds ChatGPT and Claude integrations, a native desktop app, and the ability to capture meetings without a visible bot joining the call — solving one of the loudest long-standing complaints about Fathom and its category.

Key Features of Fathom

• Unlimited recording + transcription on the free plan: The free forever tier includes unlimited meetings, unlimited transcripts, unlimited AI summaries, unlimited storage, and unlimited clips — no meeting cap, no minute cap, no 30-day retention trick. This is genuinely rare; Otter, Grain, Fireflies and tl;dv all gate the free plan on meeting minutes or monthly recordings.
• Bot-free desktop capture (2026): The new Fathom desktop app records natively on macOS and Windows without sending a labeled bot into the call. For sales teams selling to enterprise buyers who object to visible recording bots, this is the single biggest quality-of-life change Fathom has shipped.
• "Ask Fathom" across your whole meeting library: A conversational search layer built on top of every transcript you've ever captured. Ask "what did the customer say about pricing last week?" and it returns the clip plus a written answer with citations.
• ChatGPT and Claude integrations: You can push any meeting's transcript, summary or action items directly into ChatGPT or Claude for deeper analysis, follow-up drafting, or pipeline-wide trend spotting — without copy-pasting.
• Deep CRM sync (Team/Business): Salesforce, HubSpot, Close and Pipedrive get auto-populated fields, call outcomes and call notes on the right contact or deal record. Fathom claims this saves sales reps ~20 minutes of post-call admin on average, and the feature is the single most-praised item in G2 reviews.
• AI Scorecards for coaching: Business-tier managers can grade calls against repeatable scorecards (talk-time ratios, MEDDIC/MEDDPICC fields, discovery quality) automatically across every rep's calls.
• Security posture that matters to buyers: SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and HIPAA-compliant deployments are available on paid tiers, and the bot-free mode removes the attack surface of a third-party participant in your calls.

What Users Say About Fathom

Across G2, Capterra, Hacker News and the r/sales subreddit, Fathom's reputation is unusually consistent: it's the AI notetaker most users actually stick with after the free trial runs out, and the free plan is genuinely useful on its own.

What people love: Transcript accuracy is rated higher than Otter AI in head-to-head threads, the summary format lands closer to "sendable to the customer" out of the box than tl;dv or Grain, and the HubSpot/Salesforce auto-sync is the single most-mentioned time saver among sales reps — roughly 20 minutes of data entry per call, multiplied across 8–10 calls a day.

What people complain about: Reddit users describe the default recording bot as "loud" — join/leave announcements that draw attention on enterprise client calls, which the new bot-free mode finally addresses. One Capterra reviewer reported timestamp drift on long multi-hour Zoom calls. A recurring Hacker News thread argues that Fireflies Pro at ~$10/user/month covers most of the same sales features at roughly half the cost of Fathom's Business plan.

Fathom Pricing

Billed at current published rates on fathom.ai/pricing:

Plan	Price	Key Limits / Includes
Free	$0/month	Unlimited recordings, transcripts, AI summaries, clips, playlists, and search. No meeting cap.
Premium (Individual)	$20/month ($16/mo annually)	Everything in Free + 15+ advanced summary templates, AI action items, conversational meeting assistant, custom meeting bot.
Team	$19/user/month ($15/user annually, 2-user min)	Everything in Premium + global search across shared calls, team playlists, comments, folders, keyword alerts, custom vocabulary, SSO.
Business	$34/user/month ($25/user annually, 2-user min)	Everything in Team + CRM field sync, Deal View, AI scorecards, custom data retention, professional services.

All paid plans come with a 90-day money-back guarantee.

Who Should Use Fathom?

Best for: Solo founders, consultants, customer success teams, and SMB sales teams who want a no-friction AI notetaker without paying anything. Also best for SDRs and AEs running 6+ calls a day on HubSpot or Salesforce — Fathom's CRM sync pays for itself inside a week of use.

Not ideal for: Teams that already live inside Gong or Chorus for revenue intelligence (Fathom has coaching but not the same deal-level analytics depth), or privacy-sensitive orgs that prefer fully self-hosted notetakers — for that, look at open-source options like Meetily.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• The most generous free tier in the AI notetaker category — unlimited meetings, unlimited transcripts, no expiring recordings.
• Setup takes under 3 minutes: sign up, install the Chrome extension or desktop app, and Fathom auto-joins your next meeting.
• Bot-free desktop capture (new in 2026) removes the #1 historical complaint.
• Native ChatGPT and Claude integrations make the transcript useful well beyond the post-meeting summary.
• CRM auto-sync is deeply implemented for HubSpot and Salesforce, not a surface-level Zapier hack.

Cons:

• The Business tier at $34/user/month is on the expensive end for small teams — Fireflies Pro covers 80% of the features at around half the price.
• AI scorecards and deal-level coaching are weaker than dedicated revenue-intelligence tools like Gong or Chorus.
• No self-hosted option — if you have strict data residency requirements, Fathom is not for you.
• Mobile experience is limited; there is no first-class iOS or Android app for reviewing summaries on the go.

Alternatives to Fathom

tl;dv — similar free tier with a sharper focus on sales coaching, multi-meeting intelligence, and a bot-free desktop recorder that has been shipping longer than Fathom's. Often cheaper on paid plans. Otter AI — older and with broader education/note-taking positioning, but thinner CRM integration and stricter free-plan caps. Fireflies.ai — Pro is ~$10/user/month and covers most sales-team use cases at roughly half the cost of Fathom Business. Grain — best for customer-success teams who spend a lot of time cutting video highlights from calls.

Verdict: Is Fathom Worth It?

If you've never used an AI notetaker before, Fathom is the default we'd recommend — the free plan is genuinely useful, the summaries are good enough to send to a customer without editing, and the 2026 bot-free desktop app solves the one thing that made people uncomfortable about it. Paid plans are worth it for sales teams who want Salesforce or HubSpot fields populated automatically; for everyone else, the free tier is more than enough. Rating: 88/100.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Fathom free?

Yes. Fathom's free plan includes unlimited meeting recordings, unlimited transcripts, unlimited AI summaries, unlimited clips, and unlimited storage with no meeting cap. Paid plans start at $20/month for Premium or $15/user/month annually for Team.

What platforms does Fathom support?

Fathom works with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. It offers a Chrome extension, a native macOS and Windows desktop app (with bot-free capture), and integrates with Gmail, Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Notion and Asana.

How does Fathom compare to Otter AI?

Fathom has a more generous free plan (unlimited recordings vs. Otter's monthly minute cap), more accurate transcripts per head-to-head reviews, and stronger CRM sync. Otter is cheaper on paid plans and better for general note-taking beyond meetings.

Is Fathom open source?

No. Fathom is a proprietary SaaS product hosted by the company, with SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and HIPAA compliance available on paid plans.

Can Fathom record meetings without a bot?

Yes. As of the 2026 update, the Fathom desktop app for macOS and Windows can capture meetings natively without a visible bot joining the call — useful for enterprise sales calls where customers are sensitive to third-party recording participants.