Fireflies vs Otter vs Fathom in 2026: Pricing, Accuracy, and Which AI Meeting Assistant to Pick

By Patrick Breen, software engineer and AI Stack Guides researcher.

Quick answer: For most people in 2026, Fathom is the best place to start because its free plan records and transcribes unlimited meetings at $0, with paid Premium at $19/mo once you want unlimited AI summaries (Fathom pricing via 2026 trackers including tl;dv and Claap, accessed 2026-06-16). Fireflies is the cheapest paid option for a team that wants every meeting searchable, at $10/user/mo on its annual Pro plan (Fireflies pricing via 2026 trackers including CostBench and Lindy, 2026-06-16). Otter is the transcription-first pick for individuals at $8.33/user/mo on annual billing, though its 1,200-minute monthly cap on the Pro plan and a steady run of accuracy complaints in user reviews make it a weaker fit for heavy use (Otter pricing via 2026 trackers including Claap and Sonix, 2026-06-16). The headline trade-off: Fathom gives the most generous free tier and the strongest review signal at G2 5.0 from 6,833 reviews, while Fireflies and Otter bill per seat and return deeper search and integration depth across a team in exchange.

Searches like "fireflies vs otter," "fathom vs fireflies," and "best AI meeting assistant 2026" all circle the same decision: which notetaker should sit in your calls, write the recap, and push the action items somewhere useful, without quietly turning into a per-seat line item that outgrows the value. I pulled live 2026 pricing for the three tools that keep showing up on that shortlist, cross-checked the sticker prices against published pricing trackers, and read the G2 and Capterra review aggregates to separate the marketing from the track record. Fireflies, Otter, and Fathom all record, transcribe, and summarize meetings, and the gap between how they price that work is wider than the gap in what they record. What follows is the decision rules by use case, a tool-by-tool walk with where each one earns its price, a comparison table, a read on accuracy and review signal, the integration picture, the common buying mistakes, the FAQ, and the methodology behind the numbers.

Decision rules: which assistant for which situation

Start from how you work rather than the feature grid, because all three cover the basics and the right pick is usually decided by volume and team size.

If you are a solo user or a small team that mostly needs the recording and transcript with the occasional summary, Fathom Free is hard to beat, because it records and transcribes unlimited meetings at $0 and only caps the AI summaries at five per month (Fathom pricing via 2026 trackers, 2026-06-16). If you run a team and want every meeting searchable in one shared place with the lowest per-seat cost, Fireflies Pro at $10/user/mo on annual billing is the value pick (Fireflies pricing via 2026 trackers, 2026-06-16). If you want unlimited AI summaries and action items for yourself without a per-seat team plan, Fathom Premium at $19/mo is the single-price upgrade. If your work is transcription-first and you like Otter's live transcript and in-meeting chat, Otter Pro at $8.33/user/mo annual is the entry, with the caveat that the 1,200-minute monthly cap and the accuracy complaints below matter more the more you record (Otter pricing via 2026 trackers, 2026-06-16). For a larger team that needs unlimited storage and conversation intelligence across many reps, Fireflies Business at $19/user/mo and Otter Business at $20/user/mo are the comparable tiers to weigh.

Fathom: the free plan that anchors the category

Fathom changed what the free tier looks like for this category. The free plan records, transcribes, and stores unlimited meetings across Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, which is the part most rivals meter (Fathom plan details via 2026 trackers including tl;dv and ScreenApp, 2026-06-16). The limit that pushes people to pay is the AI: the free plan caps AI summaries, action items, and CRM sync at five meetings per month, so a heavy week of calls will hit the ceiling fast.

Paid Fathom is priced per user but reads like a personal upgrade at the bottom. Premium runs $19/mo, or about $15/mo on annual billing, and removes the AI summary cap while adding advanced AI actions and Zapier (Fathom pricing via 2026 trackers, 2026-06-16). Team Edition at $29/mo, or about $19/mo annual, and Team Edition Pro at $39/mo, or about $29/mo annual, add team collaboration and admin controls. The annual discount runs roughly 20 to 26 percent depending on tier.

The review signal is where Fathom stands apart. It carries a 5.0 rating from 6,833 verified reviews on G2 (G2 review aggregate for Fathom, n=6,833, 2026-06-16), it was named to G2's 2026 Best Software Awards Top 100, and HubSpot listed it as its 2025 Most Used App of the Year. A perfect star average at that review volume is unusual, and even read conservatively it points to a product people keep using. The honest caveat is that Fathom is built around being a fast, clean personal notetaker, so teams that need deep conversation analytics and revenue intelligence across many reps tend to outgrow it and look at Fireflies or a dedicated revenue-intelligence tool.

Fireflies: the cheapest paid AI search across a team

Fireflies is built for the case where a whole team's meetings should live in one searchable place. Its paid entry, Pro, is the cheapest real team tier of the three at $10/user/mo on annual billing, which rises to $18/user/mo if you pay monthly (Fireflies pricing via 2026 trackers including CostBench and Lindy, 2026-06-16). Pro gives unlimited transcription and 8,000 minutes of storage per seat, which is the plan most small teams settle on.

The free plan is real but tight. It stores only 800 minutes and ships a limited one-time pool of AI credits, so it works for a trial rather than ongoing use (Fireflies plan details via 2026 trackers, 2026-06-16). Business at $19/user/mo annual, or $29/user/mo monthly, lifts storage to unlimited and adds video recording, and Enterprise lists at $39/user/mo with custom terms for large teams.

Where Fireflies earns the per-seat cost is the AI layer on top of the transcript. The search across every recorded call, the topic and sentiment tracking, and the AskFred assistant that answers questions about past meetings are the features teams point to when they justify the bill. Fireflies holds a 4.7 rating from 746 reviews on G2 and a 4.9 on Capterra (G2 review aggregate for Fireflies, n=746; Capterra rating 4.9, 2026-06-16), which is strong, if below Fathom's volume. The thing to watch is that everything is billed per seat, so the total scales directly with headcount, and a 10-person team on Pro is $100/mo annual before anyone moves up a tier.

Otter: transcription-first, with accuracy caveats

Otter built its name on live transcription, and that is still the lens to judge it through. The Basic free plan gives 300 minutes a month with a 90-minute cap per meeting, which is the tightest free tier of the three for anyone who records often (Otter pricing via 2026 trackers including Claap and Sonix, 2026-06-16). Pro is the individual plan at $8.33/user/mo on annual billing, or $16.99/mo monthly, and lifts the allowance to 1,200 transcription minutes a month, roughly 20 hours, still with a 90-minute cap per conversation.

Business is the team tier at $20/user/mo annual, or $30/user/mo monthly, with 6,000 monthly transcription minutes per user and a longer four-hour cap per conversation (Otter pricing via 2026 trackers, 2026-06-16). Enterprise is custom priced and adds SSO, SOC 2 compliance, API access, and dedicated support.

Otter's review signal is the softest of the three. G2 aggregates land it around 4.3 to 4.4 from roughly 300 to 460 reviews depending on the snapshot, and Capterra shows about 4.4 from around 98 reviews (G2 and Capterra aggregates for Otter, 2026-06-16). Several 2026 reviews single out transcription accuracy on technical vocabulary and overlapping speakers as the recurring complaint. None of that makes Otter a bad tool, and its live transcript and in-meeting chat still suit note-heavy individuals and students. The point is that the minute caps and the accuracy reports both matter more as your volume climbs, which is why heavy users tend to land on Fathom or Fireflies instead.

Pricing compared at a glance

The table below lines up the entry and team tiers on annual billing, the basis each tool uses to meter usage, and the headline limit that pushes people to upgrade. Monthly billing runs higher on every paid tier.

Tool	Free plan	Entry paid (annual)	Team tier (annual)	Billing basis	Review signal
Fathom	Unlimited recording and transcription, 5 AI summaries/mo	$19/mo Premium (~$15/mo annual)	$29/mo Team (~$19/mo annual)	Per user, simple personal upgrade at the bottom	G2 5.0 (n=6,833)
Fireflies	800 min storage, limited one-time AI credits	$10/user/mo Pro	$19/user/mo Business	Per seat, scales with headcount	G2 4.7 (n=746), Capterra 4.9
Otter	300 min/mo, 90 min per meeting	$8.33/user/mo Pro (1,200 min/mo)	$20/user/mo Business (6,000 min/mo)	Per seat, metered by minutes	G2 ~4.3 (n~303), Capterra 4.4

Prices reflect 2026 pricing trackers accessed 2026-06-16. Plan names, minute caps, and AI gating change often, so confirm against the live vendor pricing page at your seat count and meeting volume before committing budget.

Where the AI is genuine and where it is a label

All three record and transcribe, so the AI that separates them sits one layer up, in what the tool does with the transcript after the call. The genuinely useful work is the post-meeting summary with a clean action-item list, and all three do this well enough that the differences come down to format and reliability rather than presence. Fathom's summaries are the most often praised for being readable without editing. Fireflies adds search and an assistant that answers questions across a library of past calls, which is real AI value once you have months of meetings stored. Otter's live transcript and its in-meeting chat that can answer questions mid-call are the features it leans on.

The softer claims are the analytics labels that sound heavier than they are. Sentiment tracking and topic trackers can be useful for a sales team reviewing many calls, but for a solo user or a small team they often go unused after the first week. The practical test before paying for a higher tier is to ask which specific decision the AI makes for you, then check whether you would actually act on it. If the honest answer is that you mostly want a recording and a recap you can trust, the cheaper tiers cover it.

Accuracy and the review-signal gap

Transcription accuracy is the quiet variable that decides whether any of this saves time. A summary built on a sloppy transcript inherits the errors, so the model that gets names, numbers, and overlapping speech right is doing the most important job. Across 2026 reviews, Fathom and Fireflies draw fewer accuracy complaints than Otter, and Otter's reviews more often flag misheard technical terms and trouble with crosstalk (G2 and Capterra review aggregates, 2026-06-16). That tracks with the raw review math: Fathom at 5.0 from 6,833 reviews and Fireflies at 4.7 from 746 carry both a higher average and, in Fathom's case, far more volume than Otter's roughly 4.3 from a few hundred.

Read these numbers as signal rather than proof. A 5.0 average always deserves a second look, and review populations skew toward people the product already won over. The useful takeaway is directional: the two tools with the better averages also draw fewer accuracy complaints, which lowers the risk that you spend the saved time correcting the transcript. Whichever you pick, run a week of your own real meetings through the free tier and read the transcripts before you pay, because your accent, your jargon, and your call quality matter more than any aggregate.

Integrations and where the notes actually land

A meeting assistant is only as useful as the place its output ends up, so the integration list matters as much as the transcript. All three connect to Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams for capture. Where they differ is the downstream push. Fireflies leans hardest into CRM and workflow sync, with connections to tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Slack plus a broad Zapier surface, which fits its team-search positioning. Fathom syncs to major CRMs and added Zapier on its paid tiers, which covers most small-team workflows without much setup. Otter pushes to Slack and common collaboration tools and exposes an API on Enterprise.

The buying question is whether the tool drops a clean recap into the system your team already opens every day. If your action items need to land as CRM tasks against the right deal, confirm that exact path on a trial before you commit, because a notetaker that records perfectly and then strands the notes in its own app creates a second step you will stop doing.

Common mistakes buyers make

The first mistake is paying for a team plan when a personal plan covers the work. Fathom's free tier and its $19/mo Premium handle a lot of solo and very small team use, and people sometimes jump to a per-seat team tier they do not need yet. The second is reading the monthly price and forgetting the per-seat math on Fireflies and Otter, where a small team multiplies the sticker quickly and a 10-seat Fireflies Pro plan is $100/mo annual before any upgrade. The third is ignoring the minute caps on Otter, where the 1,200-minute Pro allowance and the 90-minute per-meeting cap can bite anyone running long or frequent calls. The fourth is skipping the accuracy trial: the cheapest way to avoid buyer's regret is to record a real week on the free tier and read the transcripts, since accuracy on your specific meetings is the thing aggregate ratings cannot tell you. The fifth is overpaying for analytics tiers whose sentiment and topic dashboards look impressive in a demo and then go unopened in week two.

Frequently asked questions

The questions below come from the phrasings people search before choosing between these three AI meeting assistants.

Sources and methodology

Pricing for all three tools was compiled on 2026-06-16 from published 2026 pricing trackers and review aggregators, because vendor pages vary by billing region and seat count while the trackers report the tiered rates consistently. Fireflies figures (Free with 800 minutes of storage and a limited AI credit pool, Pro at $10/user/mo annual and $18/user/mo monthly with unlimited transcription and 8,000 minutes of storage, Business at $19/user/mo annual and $29/user/mo monthly with unlimited storage and video, Enterprise at $39/user/mo) come from CostBench, Lindy, and Outdoo 2026 pricing pages. Otter figures (Basic free at 300 minutes a month with a 90-minute meeting cap, Pro at $8.33/user/mo annual and $16.99/mo monthly with 1,200 minutes a month, Business at $20/user/mo annual and $30/user/mo monthly with 6,000 minutes a month and a four-hour conversation cap, Enterprise custom) come from Claap, Sonix, and tl;dv 2026 pricing pages. Fathom figures (Free with unlimited recording and transcription but five AI summaries a month, Premium at $19/mo or about $15/mo annual, Team Edition at $29/mo or about $19/mo annual, Team Edition Pro at $39/mo or about $29/mo annual) come from tl;dv, Claap, MeetGeek, and Capterra 2026 pricing pages. Review signal comes from G2 and Capterra aggregates accessed 2026-06-16: Fathom 5.0 from 6,833 G2 reviews plus G2's 2026 Best Software Top 100 listing and HubSpot's 2025 Most Used App of the Year award; Fireflies 4.7 from 746 G2 reviews and 4.9 on Capterra; Otter approximately 4.3 to 4.4 from roughly 300 to 460 G2 reviews and 4.4 from about 98 Capterra reviews. Prices, plan names, and AI feature gating change often, so verify against the live vendor pricing page at your seat count and meeting volume before committing budget.