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

Fathom vs Otter is mostly a question of whether you will pay. Fathom's free plan records and transcribes with no monthly minute cap, which no Otter plan below Business does. Otter's paid plan is the cheaper one, at $8.33 a month on annual billing against $16 for Fathom Premium. 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 Otter vs Fathom, the answer is the same.

Prices and plan limits come from Fathom's pricing page and Otter's pricing page, both checked on 2 November 2026. The rest comes from each company's help center and privacy pages. For the full plan breakdowns, see Fathom pricing and Otter.ai pricing.

Fathom vs Otter at a glance

	Fathom	Otter
Free plan	Unlimited recording and transcription; advanced summaries on 5 calls a month	300 minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation
Cheapest paid plan, billed monthly	Premium, $20 a month	Pro, $16.99 per user a month
Cheapest paid plan, billed annually	Premium, $16 a month	Pro, $8.33 per user a month
Team plans	Team $19 or $15 annually; Business $34 or $25; 2-user minimum	Business $30 or $19.99 annually
Enterprise	$35 per user a month, annual only	Quote from sales
Monthly transcription on the first paid plan	No cap listed	1,200 minutes, 90 minutes per meeting
Bot name	"(Name)'s Fathom Notetaker"	"[Your Name]'s Notetaker (Otter.ai)"
Bot joins without you	No	Yes
Recording without a bot	Mac only, in beta	Mac and Windows desktop app
Live during the call	Live summary (Fathom 3.0, Mac)	Live transcript
Phone apps	iOS	iOS and Android
Trains its own AI on your meetings	May, de-identified, with an opt-out	Yes, de-identified
HIPAA	Standard BAA on Team and Business; Enterprise eligible for a custom BAA	Enterprise add-on

Fathom vs Otter pricing

For one person, the free tiers favour Fathom and the paid tiers favour Otter.

What you buy	Fathom, per year	Otter, per year
1 person, cheapest paid plan, annual billing	$192 (Premium)	$99.96 (Pro)
1 person, cheapest paid plan, monthly billing	$240 (Premium)	$203.88 (Pro)
2 people, annual billing	$360 (Team, 2-user minimum)	$199.92 (Pro)
5 people, team plan, annual billing	$900 (Team) or $1,500 (Business)	$499.80 (Pro) or $1,199.40 (Business)
5 people, team plan, monthly billing	$1,140 (Team) or $2,040 (Business)	$1,019.40 (Pro) or $1,800 (Business)

The cheaper price has a limit attached. Otter Pro gives each user 1,200 transcription minutes a month, which is 20 hours, and stops at 90 minutes per conversation. A Pro workspace holds at most 5 billed users. Fathom's pricing page lists unlimited recordings and transcription on every plan and shows no monthly minute cap. If you record more than about an hour a day, or your workshops run past 90 minutes, Otter Pro runs out and the comparison becomes Fathom Team at $15 against Otter Business at $19.99.

Otter's monthly Business price shows $24 for the first 3 months, for first-time subscribers only. Fathom lists a 90-day guarantee on every paid plan.

The free plans

Fathom calls its plan for individuals "Free forever." The card lists unlimited recordings and transcriptions, instant AI summaries, clips and search across your calls. Fathom's help center article "Free vs. Premium for Individuals" gives the catch: advanced summaries are limited to your first 5 calls each month, and after that you get the General/Enhanced template. AI action items and AI follow-up emails start on Premium, and you can't rename the bot or turn off the in-meeting banner on Free. New accounts get a 30-day preview of Premium features, then drop to Free with no charge.

Otter Basic is free with no end date, and it is metered. You get 300 minutes a month across meetings and recordings, 30 minutes per conversation, 3 file imports for the life of the account, and access to your 25 most recent conversations. AI Chat is capped at 20 questions a month. A one-hour call on Basic gives you half a transcript. Fathom Free lists no monthly or per-call minute limit.

Do Fathom and Otter 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 Fathom 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.

Otter's bot works differently. The Otter Notetaker overview says it joins as "[Your Name]'s Notetaker (Otter.ai)" and that you can send it to a meeting you can't attend. It cannot join anonymously or without other participants seeing it. It leaves after 12 minutes of silence.

Otter can cover a meeting you skip. Fathom only records meetings you attend. If people on your calls dislike a notetaker turning up with nobody behind it, Fathom's rule helps you.

The bot comes up in Reddit threads about these two. In an r/SaaS thread, someone who tested both for customer interviews wrote that with Otter "participants noticed the bot joining customer calls. one interviewee asked if their feedback was being shared with engineering. they clammed up for the rest of the call." They liked Fathom's free tier and hit the "same bot issue for customer interviews."

Can you use Fathom or Otter without the bot?

Otter, yes, on both Mac and Windows. Its desktop app records Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, Slack huddles, phone dialers and messaging apps without the bot. The desktop help article, updated 28 October 2026, says it needs macOS 12.3 or Windows 10 or later. In Teams it can post "I am using Otter to record this meeting." in the chat.

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 the 20 languages enabled for 3.0. Windows bot-free recording is a limited Microsoft Teams alpha. Before each meeting you pick a capture mode: Transcript Only, Audio Only, or Audio & Video, which sends the bot. Fathom's Teams setup article says Teams calls are still recorded by the bot.

Skipping the bot doesn't keep the call on your computer with either tool. Otter's desktop help says that if your connection drops, it will "automatically start uploading and transcribing the file once a connection is detected." Fathom's Audio Only mode captures audio on your device, and the transcript and summary still end up in your Fathom account, which is how teammates you @mention get access.

With no bot in the participant list, consent is your job. Both companies say so. Fathom can post "Fathom is recording and taking notes, and you consent by continuing." in the meeting chat if you turn on Recording Notice. 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

The two training policies are close.

Otter's privacy and security page says Otter "uses a proprietary method to de-identify user data before training our models," with no human review of the audio or transcripts. Its outside AI providers do not train on customer data. I found no opt-out on that page.

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 authorize third parties such as OpenAI, Anthropic or Google to train on your meetings.

Fathom documents an opt-out and Otter's page does not. If you use Fathom and don't want your calls used this way, find that setting on day one.

Both store recordings in their cloud. Otter uses AWS S3 with AES-256 server-side encryption, and deleted conversations sit in Trash for 30 days. Fathom's pricing table lists unlimited call storage on every plan. Both say they hold a SOC 2 Type II report. For health data, Fathom lists a "Standard BAA" on Team and Business, and Otter sells HIPAA compliance as an Enterprise add-on. More in which AI notetakers are HIPAA compliant.

Who owns them, and who is being sued

Fathom changed hands this autumn. On 14 September 2026, Superhuman announced it had acquired Fathom and plans to bring Fathom's notetaking into its email, calendar and document apps and its Go assistant. Fathom's pricing page still showed the 21 October prices on 5 November, except that Enterprise now has a published price of $35 per user a month, billed annually. If you are signing a contract, the company on the other side is now part of Superhuman.

Otter is defending a proposed class action over its bot. In re Otter.AI Privacy Litigation, No. 5:25-cv-06911 in the Northern District of California, survived Otter's motion to dismiss in part on 13 August 2026. Otter answered on 17 September and filed an amended answer on 29 October 2026. These are allegations, and no court has found Otter liable. Our Otter safety post explains the claims. I found no privacy lawsuit against Fathom in a CourtListener search on 2 November 2026.

Where they differ on features

Otter shows a live transcript during the call, on every plan. Fathom 3.0 shows a live summary during the meeting on a Mac, and the full transcript arrives when the call ends.

Otter lists six transcription languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese. Fathom's own pages disagree with each other. Its help center 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 Korean, Japanese or Arabic, test Fathom on a real call before you rely on it.

For in-person conversations, Otter has iOS and Android apps on every plan. Fathom has an iOS app, and I found no Android app on its site.

Otter can import audio files: 3 for the life of a free account, 10 a month on Pro, and no file-count limit on Business, which caps imported audio at 6,000 minutes a month. Fathom is built around meetings and doesn't list file imports on its pricing page.

For sales teams, Fathom Business adds CRM field sync, deal views and AI scorecards at $25 a user on annual billing. Otter syncs notes to Salesforce or HubSpot for 1 user on Pro and 5 on Business. Fathom's CRM sync on Free, Premium and Team is capped at 3 users per domain.

Neither company publishes an error rate, and I haven't run a controlled test of both, so I'm not ranking them on accuracy. The r/SaaS poster above called Fathom's transcription quality "solid." Record the same call with 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. Nothing else in this comparison records without a minute cap for $0.

If you will pay, work alone, and your meetings fit in 90 minutes, Otter Pro on annual billing is about $100 a year, roughly half the price of Fathom Premium.

If you want a bot to cover meetings you skip, or you need a live transcript or an Android app, pick Otter.

If you are a small sales team that wants CRM fields filled in after each call, Fathom Business is the more complete plan.

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

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. 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 Otter. The alternatives pages for Fathom and Otter 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 and the BAA rows from fathom.ai/pricing, rechecked 5 November 2026. 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. iOS app from fathom.ai/overview and Fathom's release notes. Training statement from Fathom's privacy policy, last updated 16 August 2026. SOC 2 from fathom.ai/overview. Acquisition from Superhuman's announcement of 14 September 2026. Otter prices, limits, workspace sizes, languages, imports, AI Chat limits, CRM sync, Enterprise and HIPAA from otter.ai/pricing. Otter bot behaviour from "Otter Notetaker Overview." Otter desktop app from otter.ai/desktop and "Otter Desktop App (Mac & Windows)," updated 28 October 2026. Otter training, storage and deletion from otter.ai/privacy-security. Court filings from the CourtListener docket for No. 5:25-cv-06911 (N.D. Cal.). Reddit quote from r/SaaS. All checked 2 November 2026. Plans change.