Fathom vs Fireflies: Which AI Notetaker Fits Your Meetings?

Marcus leads a five-person sales team, and he has two browser tabs open: Fathom vs Fireflies. Fathom's pricing page says "Unlimited recordings" for free. Fireflies' says Pro is $10 a seat. Both notetakers join Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, both write summaries, and both have a free plan.

The difference is in what each one charges for. Fathom keeps every recording forever and holds back its better AI features for paid plans. Fireflies gives paid users unlimited AI summaries, then meters storage, recording length and a shared pool of AI credits. The right pick depends on how much you record, how long your meetings run, and where they happen.

This Fathom vs Fireflies comparison uses each vendor's own pricing page and help center, checked on September 29, 2026. You'll get the prices side by side, the limits that catch people, a year-one cost for three kinds of buyer, and a quick way to decide.

A disclosure: ParrotNotes publishes this blog and appears in one section near the end, for conversations that happen across a table rather than on a call. If that's most of your week, you can try ParrotNotes free at your next in-person meeting.

Fathom vs Fireflies at a glance

Fathom is the better pick if you want a generous free plan and unlimited storage for video calls. Fireflies is the better pick if you want the cheapest paid seat, more transcription languages, and an app that records in person today. Fathom starts at $16 a month billed annually for individuals. Fireflies Pro is $10 a seat billed annually, with storage and recording-length caps.

Sources: fathom.ai/pricing, Fathom's help center, fireflies.ai/pricing and Fireflies' help center, all read on 2026-09-29.

Fathom vs Fireflies pricing, side by side

Both price in USD, per seat, with an annual discount. Fathom's team plans need two users or more; Fireflies' Enterprise is annual only.

Prices from fathom.ai/pricing and fireflies.ai/pricing, both read on 2026-09-29. Fireflies' prices match what our Fireflies AI pricing guide recorded on 2026-09-27.

One note: Fathom's comparison page says Team starts at "$15 per user per month (Team, billed monthly)", but its pricing page shows $15 as the annual price and $19 monthly. We've used the pricing page.

Fathom adds features as you climb. Premium brings "Advanced call summaries", "AI-generated action items", a "Conversational meeting assistant" (Ask Fathom) and a custom bot name.

Team adds global search across calls, shared playlists, comments and folders. Business adds "CRM field sync", "Deal View" and "Coaching metrics & AI scorecards". Enterprise adds SSO, SCIM and custom data retention.

Fireflies adds room as you climb. Pro brings unlimited AI summaries, 8,000 minutes of storage per seat, video recording, downloads, AI Skills, the Personal Assistant and every integration. Business removes the storage cap, raises the recording limit to 3 hours, and adds Multi-language Mode, conversation intelligence and team analytics. Enterprise adds SSO, SCIM, audit logs and custom retention.

The limits that bite

These are the limits that decide whether a plan still works in month three.

The free plans are generous in opposite ways

Fathom's free plan keeps everything. Its help center says "Both Free and Premium users can store unlimited recordings in Fathom, forever!" The catch is the AI: Free includes "Advanced summaries for your first 5 calls each month", and after that you get the standard summary. AI action items, follow-up emails and Ask Fathom are Premium features (Fathom's Free vs Premium article).

Fireflies' free plan transcribes more freely but keeps less. The card says "Unlimited transcription*" and "400 mins of storage/team". That's under seven hours of meetings for the whole team, in total, not per month. Fireflies' help center adds that unlimited transcription depends on turning on Auto-join calendar meetings; with it off, the default is 3 transcriptions (checked for our Fireflies pricing guide on 2026-09-27).

In short: on Fathom Free you keep every call and lose the better AI after five. On Fireflies Free you get limited AI summaries and run out of room fast.

Recording length and storage

Fireflies caps each recording at 2 hours on Free and Pro, 3 hours on Business and 4 hours on Enterprise. Pro's 8,000 minutes of storage per seat is a total cap, not a monthly refill. A rep who records 15 hours of calls a month fills it in about nine months.

Fathom's plans all list unlimited recordings and storage. Its help center doesn't list a meeting-length cap, so a long quarterly review or workshop isn't a plan question on Fathom.

Gated features vs a credit meter

Fathom has no usage meter: a feature is on your plan or it isn't.

Fireflies runs advanced AI tools, such as AI Skills, the Personal Assistant, voice agents, Sales Assist and CRM autofill, on AI credits. According to Fireflies' AI credits article, the credits that come with a plan are "one-time", and they're "pooled at the team level", so five Pro seats share 20 credits. Extra bundles start at $5 a month for 50 credits ($4 billed annually), auto-renew unless paused, and paid users who run out are moved up to the next tier automatically. Standard transcription and summaries don't use credits.

Languages

Fathom supports transcripts in 38 languages and can translate summaries into Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian and Dutch.

Fireflies lists "Transcription in 100+ languages". Its pricing FAQ calls English the primary language, with Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian "and 100+ other languages in beta." For calls that switch languages midway, Fireflies' Multi-Language Mode is on Business and Enterprise only, in beta, covering 60+ languages, and writes the summary "in the dominant language spoken during the meeting."

Features that matter day to day

Summaries, action items and follow-up

Both write a summary after every call. On Fathom, the richer version (templates such as BANT and Sandler, action items, follow-up emails) needs Premium or higher, apart from five advanced summaries a month on Free. On Fireflies, every paid plan includes unlimited AI summaries and action items, and the task manager sits on Pro.

If you'd rather draft follow-ups yourself, our free meeting minutes generator turns rough notes or a transcript into a summary, decisions and action items.

Both have an AI assistant you can question: Ask Fathom (limited on Free, full on Premium; account-wide search is in beta) and Fireflies' AskFred (limited on Free).

CRM and sales features

Fathom's Free and Premium plans already sync to HubSpot, Salesforce and Close, "for up to 3 users per email domain". Business adds CRM field sync, which writes meeting insights into specific CRM fields, plus Deal View and AI scorecards.

Fireflies lists "Unlimited integrations" from Pro and conversation intelligence from Business. Its CRM autofill runs on AI credits, so heavy use means a credit bundle.

Bots and bot-free recording

Both tools join calls as a bot by default. Fathom now offers "Choice of bot-free (in beta) or bot capture", and its pricing table marks bot-free as a "Beta feature for Mac"; its comparison page says Windows is coming soon.

Fireflies' Chrome extension records "without Fireflies bot", and the desktop and mobile apps record without one too. When the bot does join, Fireflies' help center says it appears as "Fireflies.ai Notetaker" and can't be hidden.

In-person meetings

This is the clearest split. Fathom's help center says "In-person meeting capture is coming soon as part of Fathom for iOS!", and its iOS app page takes waitlist sign-ups. Its older workaround, starting a Zoom call on a laptop in the room, "cannot distinguish between multiple speakers in the same physical room" (Fathom help).

Fireflies' pricing table lists the Fireflies mobile app for Android and iOS with "Unlimited in-person recording".

What Fathom and Fireflies cost in year one

Here are three buyer shapes, priced with published numbers only. The five-person team records about 15 hours of calls per rep a month (900 minutes), the same assumption as our Fireflies pricing guide.

Computed from fathom.ai/pricing and fireflies.ai/pricing on 2026-09-29. Fireflies storage runway: 8,000 ÷ 900 = 8.9 months. 200 credits cost $16 a month billed annually, $192 a year.

Marcus's answer (he's a fictional composite): his team records every day and runs a two-and-a-half-hour workshop twice a year. Fireflies Pro at $600 looks cheapest, but the storage fills before the year ends and the workshop breaks the 2-hour cap. The honest comparison is Fathom Team at $900 against Fireflies Business at $1,140. He'd take Fathom Team unless someone on the team sells in two languages in the same call, which points to Fireflies Business.

Where do your meetings happen?

The cost table assumes every meeting has a link. Count last week's meetings and sort them first.

For more on the bot question, our guide to Fireflies alternatives that don't join your call covers every bot-free way to record.

For meetings across a table: ParrotNotes

Fathom and Fireflies are both built around the video call. Rosa, a fictional territory rep for a building-products distributor, has five site visits a day, no meeting links, and a contractor who switches between Spanish and English. She wants notes and a follow-up email before she starts the car.

That's the job ParrotNotes is built for. You open the app on the phone you already carry, tap record and set it on the table. When you stop, you get a transcript, a summary, the action items and a drafted follow-up email after the sales call.

Fathom and Fireflies facts from their pricing pages and help centers on 2026-09-29; ParrotNotes facts from parrotnotes.app/pricing.

ParrotNotes Free gives you 100 minutes of recording a month, an AI summary on every recording, and full AI insights on 5 recordings a month. ParrotNotes Pro is $19.99 a month, or $14.99 a month billed annually, with 3,000 minutes a month, recordings up to 3 hours, every AI feature, multilingual transcription and translation, speaker identification and MCP connectors.

Rosa's 20 visits a week, with a five-minute debrief after each, come to about 400 minutes a month, well inside Pro's 3,000. Many teams run a video notetaker for calls and ParrotNotes for the room. Our round-up of sales call recording software shows how that split works.

Selling in person this week? Download ParrotNotes free and record your next site visit.

The verdict on Fathom vs Fireflies

Choose Fathom if you live on video calls and want to keep every recording without watching a meter: Free for a tight budget, Premium or Team for action items, Business for CRM field sync. Choose Fireflies if you want the cheapest paid seat, more languages, or a mobile app for the occasional in-person meeting, and budget for Business if your meetings run past two hours or you record every day.

Check both pricing pages on the day you buy, because prices move. For a wider field, see our guides to the best AI note-taking app and the best free AI note takers.

And if your most important conversations happen across a table, not on a screen, download ParrotNotes free. You get 100 minutes a month with an AI summary on every recording, on the phone you already carry, with no bot to admit.