Fathom vs Fireflies (2026): which is cheaper, and what each does with your calls

Fathom vs Fireflies depends on how many people are paying. Fireflies is the cheaper paid plan for one person and for a team on Business. Fathom has the better free plan, the cheaper Enterprise seat, and since early November 2026 a standard HIPAA BAA from its Team plan up. Both send a bot into Zoom, Google Meet and Teams by default, both have a way to record without it, and both keep your calls in their cloud. If you searched for Fireflies vs Fathom, the answer is the same.

Prices and plan limits come from Fathom's pricing page and Fireflies' pricing page, both checked on 5 November 2026. The rest comes from each company's help center, security and privacy pages, and the court docket. For the full plan breakdowns, see Fathom pricing and Fireflies pricing.

Fathom vs Fireflies at a glance

	Fathom	Fireflies
Free plan	Unlimited recording and transcription; advanced summaries on 5 calls a month	3 meetings for new accounts, unlimited with Auto-join; 400 minutes of storage per team
Cheapest paid plan, billed monthly	Premium, $20 a month	Pro, $18 per seat a month
Cheapest paid plan, billed annually	Premium, $16 a month	Pro, $10 per seat a month
Team plans	Team $19 or $15 annually; Business $34 or $25; 2-user minimum	Business $29 or $19 annually
Enterprise	$35 per user a month, annual only	$39 per seat a month, annual only
Longest meeting	No per-meeting limit listed	2 hours on Free and Pro, 3 on Business, 4 on Enterprise
Bot	"(Name)'s Fathom Notetaker"	Fred (fred@fireflies.ai)
When the bot joins	Only calls you are on	Calendar meetings via Auto-join; a shared team bot covers teammates' meetings
Recording without a bot	Mac only, in beta	Mac and Windows desktop app, Chrome extension for Google Meet
Phone apps	iOS	iOS and Android
Upload audio files	Not listed	Yes, on every plan
Trains AI on your meetings	May, de-identified, with an opt-out	Says no
HIPAA BAA	Standard BAA on Team and Business; Enterprise eligible for a custom BAA	Enterprise with Private Storage

Fathom vs Fireflies pricing

Each company says it is the cheaper one. Fathom's Fathom vs Fireflies page answers "Is Fathom cheaper than Fireflies?" with "Yes," quoting its $15 Team seat and leaving out Fireflies Pro at $10. Fireflies' own comparison, dated 2 October 2026, says Fireflies is cheaper "at every comparable paid tier" and lists Fathom Enterprise as custom priced. On 5 November Fathom's pricing page shows Enterprise at $35 a user a month, so that is no longer true at the top.

Here is what each costs per year at list price.

What you buy	Fathom, per year	Fireflies, per year
1 person, cheapest paid plan, annual billing	$192 (Premium)	$120 (Pro)
1 person, cheapest paid plan, monthly billing	$240 (Premium)	$216 (Pro)
2 people, annual billing	$360 (Team, 2-user minimum)	$240 (Pro)
5 people, annual billing	$900 (Team) or $1,500 (Business)	$600 (Pro) or $1,140 (Business)
5 people, monthly billing	$1,140 (Team) or $2,040 (Business)	$1,080 (Pro) or $1,740 (Business)
1 Enterprise seat, annual billing	$420	$468

For one person or a small team, Fireflies costs less. Fireflies Pro on annual billing is $72 a year cheaper than Fathom Premium, and on annual billing Fireflies Business is $6 a seat a month cheaper than Fathom Business. A 50-seat Enterprise contract goes the other way: $2,400 a year less on Fathom at list price. Fireflies says it offers volume discounts above 50 members, so ask before you compare final quotes.

Fireflies has one cost Fathom doesn't. AI credits pay for extras such as AskFred during a live meeting, AI Skills and CRM autofill. Free and Pro come with 20 credits for the whole team, Business 30 and Enterprise 50. Our Fireflies pricing post has the credit prices. Fathom has no credit system. It limits some features by plan, for example advanced summaries on Free and CRM sync for at most 3 users per email domain below Business.

Fathom lists a 90-day guarantee on every paid plan. Fireflies offers a 7-day Business trial, and our pricing post covers its refund rules.

The free plans

Fathom calls its individual plan "Free forever." The pricing page lists unlimited recordings, transcription and storage, instant summaries, and clips and search across your calls. Fathom's help article "Free vs. Premium for Individuals" says advanced summaries are limited to your first 5 calls each month, after which you get the General/Enhanced template. AI action items and follow-up emails start on Premium. New accounts get a 30-day preview of Premium features and then drop to Free with no charge.

Fireflies Free changed for accounts created on or after 1 September 2026. The help article "Unlock Unlimited Transcriptions on the Fireflies Free Plan" says new free accounts get 3 meeting transcriptions by default. Turn on "Auto-join calendar meetings" and the cap goes away, which means Fred joins your calendar meetings. The setting "Only when I invite fred@fireflies.ai" doesn't count. Summaries and action items still depend on your AI credits. Storage on Free is 400 minutes for the whole team, recordings stop at 2 hours, and video recording and downloads start on Pro.

Fireflies' comparison post describes its own free plan as "800 minutes of storage per seat and 3 AI summaries a month." Its pricing page says 400 minutes per team. Go by the pricing page.

For one person who wants a free notetaker, Fathom Free is the better plan. It has no meeting cap, and the bot only goes to calls you join.

Do Fathom and Fireflies join as a bot?

Yes, by default. Fathom's bot appears as "(NAME)'s Fathom Notetaker" unless you rename it, which starts on Premium. Fathom's help article "Can the Fathom Notetaker join my calls without me?" says it can only record a Zoom, Teams or Google Meet call if you are on it too, and it leaves when the meeting ends. In Teams it joins as an anonymous participant, so the meeting policy has to allow that.

Fireflies' bot is Fred. You invite fred@fireflies.ai to a meeting, or Auto-join sends it to your calendar events. On a team workspace the shared bot can join meetings organised by anyone in the workspace, including meetings that are not on your calendar. Renaming Fred is a paid add-on on Pro and Business.

Fathom ties the bot to you being on the call. Fireflies sends Fred by calendar rule. If the people on your calls dislike a notetaker turning up with nobody behind it, Fathom's rule works in your favour.

Can you use Fathom or Fireflies without the bot?

Fireflies, yes, on Mac and Windows. Its desktop app runs on Windows 10 or later and macOS 12 or later and records without a bot. The page says "A Fireflies indicator will be present to let participants know when the notetaker is on." The pricing table also ticks "Record using Chrome extension without Fireflies bot" on every plan, which covers Google Meet.

Fathom, only on a Mac for now. Bot-free capture is part of Fathom 3.0, and the pricing page marks it "Beta feature for Mac." The help article "How to Upgrade to Fathom 3.0+" says that as of 30 October 2026 you need macOS 14.2 or newer, you have to be included in the rollout, and you must record in one of 20 enabled languages. Windows bot-free recording is a limited Microsoft Teams alpha. Before each meeting you pick a capture mode: Capture Off, Transcript Only, Audio Only, or Audio & Video, which sends the bot. Fathom can post "Fathom is recording and taking notes, and you consent by continuing." in the meeting chat if you turn on Recording Notice.

Skipping the bot doesn't keep the call on your computer with either tool. Fathom's Audio Only mode captures audio on your device, and the transcript and summary still end up in your Fathom account. Fireflies' desktop page doesn't say any processing happens on your computer. With no bot in the participant list, getting consent is up to you, and both companies say so. Our post on meeting recording consent laws lists the states where everyone on the call has to agree.

What each one does with the recording

On AI training they take opposite positions.

Fathom's privacy policy, last updated 16 August 2026, says: "Based on how you configure your account settings, we may use and create de-identified data generated from Meeting Content Information to improve our Service by training, improving, and customizing our in-house artificial intelligence models. You can opt out from this use of your data in your account settings." It also says it does not let third parties such as OpenAI, Anthropic or Google train on your meetings. If you use Fathom and don't want this, change the setting on day one.

Fireflies' pricing page says "Your data is never used for AI training or any purpose outside your direct business needs." Its security page says "We don't train on it by default" and describes a 0-day retention policy with its vendors. "By default" suggests there is a setting, but neither page describes one. Our post on whether Fireflies is safe goes through the rest of that page.

Both store your meetings in their cloud, and both say they hold a SOC 2 Type II report. Fathom lists unlimited call storage on every plan. Fireflies' storage depends on the plan, and it also lists ISO 42001.

The HIPAA picture changed in early November. On 2 November Fathom's pricing table showed "HIPAA: signed BAA" in the Enterprise column only. On 5 November the Team plan card reads "Team security controls & HIPAA compliance with a standard BAA," the table shows "Standard BAA" for Team and Business, and Enterprise is "Eligible for custom BAA." That "HIPAA compliance" row also has a tick for Free and Premium, with no BAA listed for them. Fireflies says its BAA is "available on Enterprise with Private Storage." For a small practice that needs a vendor BAA, Fathom Team at $15 a user on annual billing, with a 2-user minimum, is now the cheaper way to get one from these two. A BAA is a contract, so read it before you put patient calls into either service. More in which AI notetakers are HIPAA compliant.

Who owns them, and who is being sued

On 14 September 2026, Superhuman announced it had acquired Fathom and plans to bring Fathom's notetaking into its email, calendar and document apps. If you sign an annual contract, the company on the other side is now part of Superhuman. Fathom's prices for Free, Premium, Team and Business are the same as on 21 October. Enterprise and the BAA lines are what changed.

Fireflies faces Fricker v. Fireflies.AI Corp., No. 1:26-cv-02675 in the Northern District of Illinois, consolidated with a second case, Martinez. The complaint says that when a host turns Fireflies on, it records and stores the voiceprints of everyone in the meeting, including people who never created an account, without the written consent Illinois' biometric privacy law requires. Fireflies moved to dismiss on 15 July 2026 and briefing ended on 26 August. Discovery is on hold. CourtListener's copy of the docket, last updated 23 September, showed no ruling when I checked on 5 November 2026. These are allegations, and no court has found Fireflies liable. I found no privacy lawsuit against Fathom in a CourtListener search the same day.

Where they differ on features

Languages are the biggest gap. Fireflies advertises more than 100, but its pricing FAQ says English is the primary supported language and that it also supports "Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, and 100+ other languages in beta." Multi-language mode, for calls that switch language, is on Business and above. Fathom's own pages disagree with each other. Its help article on languages says it transcribes 38. The FAQ on its overview page says it "transcribes and summarizes meetings natively in seven languages." Bot-free capture covers English and 19 others. If you meet in something other than English, test both on a real call.

Fireflies has iOS and Android apps on every plan and lets you upload audio and video files for transcription, including on Free. Fathom has an iOS app for in-person conversations, and I found no Android app on its site. Fathom's own comparison page says Fireflies is the better pick if you want to "upload and transcribe audio or video files you already have" or record calls from a phone dialer.

For sales teams, Fathom Business adds CRM field sync, deal views and AI scorecards at $25 a user on annual billing. Fireflies lists unlimited integrations from Pro up, and conversation intelligence and team analytics on Business at $19. Fireflies puts CRM autofill behind AI credits.

Fireflies' comparison post claims 99% accuracy in English. Fathom publishes no figure, and its comparison page cites G2 ratings instead. I haven't run a controlled test of both, so I'm not ranking them on accuracy. Record the same call on both free plans and compare.

Which one I would pick

If you want a free notetaker for your own calls and don't mind a bot, use Fathom Free. Fireflies Free only gets past 3 meetings if Fred goes to your calendar meetings, and it keeps 400 minutes.

If you will pay and work alone, Fireflies Pro on annual billing is $120 a year, against $192 for Fathom Premium. It also adds Android, file uploads and more languages.

If you pay for a sales team that wants CRM fields filled in after each call, compare Fathom Business at $25 with Fireflies Business at $19 plus whatever AI credits you will need.

If you need a BAA for a small team, Fathom Team is the lower-priced plan that includes one. If you are buying Enterprise seats, Fathom's list price is $4 a seat a month lower.

Comparing a third tool? We have Fathom vs Otter, Otter vs Fireflies, Granola vs Fathom and Granola vs Fireflies.

If you want neither the bot nor the upload

I build Private Notetaker, so weigh this section accordingly. It captures the call audio on your own computer and writes the transcript, summary and action items there. Nothing joins the meeting and the audio stays on the device. It also works with Wi-Fi off. It runs on a Mac with Apple Silicon or a 64-bit Windows 10 or 11 PC. It is $15 a month or $149 once for a lifetime license. The 7-day trial needs no card, and purchases have a 30-day money-back guarantee.

It does much less than either of these. It is English only, has no team workspace, no video and no CRM sync, and it is less accurate on bad audio than a cloud model. Private Notetaker does not claim HIPAA certification. If you want free, Fathom is free and we can't beat that. If the issue is that the meeting shouldn't be on someone else's servers, see Private Notetaker vs Fathom and Private Notetaker vs Fireflies. The alternatives pages for Fathom and Fireflies list other options, and AI note takers that don't join your meeting explains why bot-free and local are different things.

Fathom prices, plan contents, the 90-day guarantee, the bot-free beta label, CRM sync caps, Enterprise price and the BAA lines from fathom.ai/pricing (compared with our 2 November snapshot). Free plan limits and the 30-day preview from "Free vs. Premium for Individuals." Bot presence rule from "Can the Fathom Notetaker join my calls without me?" Bot name from "Navigating the Organization Settings Page." Bot-free requirements, capture modes and Recording Notice from "How to Upgrade to Fathom 3.0+," as of 30 October 2026. Teams bot from "Set Up Fathom for Microsoft Teams." Languages from "What languages does Fathom support?" and fathom.ai/overview. Training statement from Fathom's privacy policy, last updated 16 August 2026. Fathom's price claim and file upload note from fathom.ai/vs/fireflies. Acquisition from Superhuman's announcement of 14 September 2026. Fireflies prices, storage, recording limits, AI credits, languages FAQ, volume discount FAQ, bot name add-on, bot-free Chrome extension row, file uploads, mobile apps, certifications and HIPAA from fireflies.ai/pricing. Free plan rules from "Unlock Unlimited Transcriptions on the Fireflies Free Plan." Training and retention statements from fireflies.ai/pricing and fireflies.ai/security. Desktop app from fireflies.ai/desktop. Fireflies' price, storage and accuracy claims from its 2 October 2026 comparison post. Court filings from the CourtListener docket for No. 1:26-cv-02675 (N.D. Ill.). All checked 5 November 2026. Plans change.