Fathom vs Fireflies vs Otter 2026: Which Is Best?

The short answer: Fathom has the best free plan (unlimited recording, transcription and storage, with only the advanced AI summaries capped), Fireflies.ai is best for CRM and 100+ languages, and Otter.ai is best for live transcription and a searchable team archive. All three are cloud tools; Fathom and Otter train on de-identified meetings by default, Fireflies states it does not. If you want no bot and on-device transcription, Hedy is the alternative none of these three can match.

Most teams shopping for a cloud AI meeting assistant in 2026 end up comparing these three. They share a core feature set (a bot that joins your calls and turns audio into transcripts and AI summaries) but pick different lanes. Facts below were checked against each vendor’s documentation on October 14, 2026.

Head-to-head scorecards: Fathom vs Otter.ai, Fathom vs Fireflies.ai and Fireflies.ai vs Otter.ai.

At a glance

What each tool is built for

Fathom is built on the idea that the free plan should be useful. Free users get unlimited recording, transcription and storage; what moves to paid tiers is advanced summary templates, AI action items and account-wide Ask Fathom. It is a clean recorder with AI on top, not a platform. Fathom was acquired by Superhuman in September 2026; see what changes after the acquisition and our Fathom review.

Fireflies.ai is built around integrations. Its engineering goes into pushing meeting outcomes downstream into Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Notion and project trackers, with conversation analytics, cross-meeting search and AskFred on top. Advanced AI features draw on a metered AI credit pool, so the seat price is not the whole running cost.

Otter.ai is built around the meeting archive and the live experience. It offers real-time transcription, a voice-activated Meeting Agent, team workspaces and cross-meeting search. Its free plan is limited to 300 minutes a month and 30 minutes per conversation, and Pro caps minutes and call length.

Which one for which team

Pick Fathom if: you are an individual who wants a genuinely useful free plan, you prefer clean single-user playback, and you will use the training opt-out. It is the top pick in our free guide. Its bot-free capture is a Mac-only beta.

Pick Fireflies.ai if: your meetings need to flow into Salesforce, HubSpot or a similar CRM, you work in many languages, or you want a vendor that states it does not train on meeting content. Budget for AI credits.

Pick Otter.ai if: your team wants live transcription and a searchable shared archive and works mostly in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese or Chinese.

Data, training and risk

The three look similar on compliance but differ on defaults. Fathom and Otter both train on de-identified data unless you act (Fathom offers an opt-out in settings; Otter documents none). In August 2026 a federal court let a privacy class action against Otter proceed in part; see the ruling explained. Fireflies is named in Illinois biometric privacy (BIPA) litigation, with a motion to dismiss pending. None of these cases is a finding of wrongdoing. For the full list of who trains on what, see Do AI note takers train on your data?.

Switching checklist

If you are moving off one of these tools, check these before you cancel:

1. Export transcripts and recordings. Retention differs by plan.
2. List the integrations and automations you would need to rebuild.
3. Compare recording method: bot, bot-free, or system audio.
4. Compare where audio is processed and whether training is on by default.
5. Compare annual and monthly price per seat, plus any credit or add-on pricing.
6. Run both tools side by side on a few real meetings first.

Consider Hedy if the bot or the cloud is the problem

All three upload your conversations to a vendor’s servers and, by default, send a bot. If your meetings are confidential (legal, HR, regulated work) or you simply do not want a bot in the room, Hedy works differently. It captures system audio on your own device, so no bot joins and it works with any meeting app. Speech recognition runs on your device, and on supported hardware the AI does too, so nothing has to leave your machine. It does not train on your data, records in-person meetings from a phone or Apple Watch, and gives live coaching suggestions. It has no native CRM connector (Zapier, API, webhooks and MCP instead). See the privacy guide, Fathom alternatives and bot-free note takers compared.

Related: Otter.ai vs Fireflies.ai and tl;dv vs Fireflies.