Otter vs Fathom: Honest 2026 Comparison and Verdict
Otter vs Fathom compared on free plans, accuracy, languages, pricing, and privacy. Fathom wins on free recording and languages; Otter wins on live transcript and in-person. Plus our pick over both: Scribbl, where nothing joins the call.
Updated October 7, 2026
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If you are deciding between Otter and Fathom, here is the short answer. Of the two, Fathom is better for most people, mainly because its free plan records unlimited meetings while Otter's free plan caps you at 300 minutes a month. Otter is better for a specific buyer: anyone who needs a live transcript they read in real time, records in-person meetings from a phone, or leans on speaker analytics and live transcript editing. Both commonly join your call as a visible AI participant. Our pick over both is Scribbl: nothing joins the call, every meeting gets the video, a transcript with speaker names, AI notes and action items, and Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams work in one account, on a free plan with no credit card. Below we break down Otter vs Fathom row by row with current 2026 pricing and the trade-offs each page glosses over, with Scribbl alongside.
Otter vs Fathom at a glance
The two tools win different jobs, so the comparison below is organized around the decisions buyers actually make: free-plan generosity, AI summaries, collaboration, integrations, capture method, privacy posture, and price. Scribbl, the tool we make, is in the first column of both tables. Language support, the live transcript, and in-person capture, where Otter and Fathom differ most, are covered in the sections below the tables.
| Feature | Scribbl | Otter | Fathom |
|---|---|---|---|
| No bot joins the call | Yes | No | No |
| Free plan, no credit card | Yes | Limited | Yes |
| Google Meet | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Zoom | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Microsoft Teams | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Connects meetings to ChatGPT or Claude | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Video recording | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Full AI notes on the free plan | 10 meetings/mo | Within 300 min/mo | Advanced summaries on 5 calls/mo |
| CRM integrations | HubSpot, Pipedrive | Yes | Yes |
| Rating | 5.0 from 3,000 reviews on the Chrome Web Store | Varies | Varies |
| Decision factor | Scribbl | Otter | Fathom |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 10 meetings/month, each with the video, transcript, AI notes and action items; no credit card | 300 transcription min/month, 30 min per conversation | Unlimited recording and transcription; advanced AI summaries on your first 5 calls a month, action items need Premium |
| AI summaries | AI notes and action items on every meeting; note templates | Good; "OtterPilot" recaps and outline | Clean summaries and action items |
| Video-call support | Meet, Zoom, Teams (nothing joins the call) | Meet, Zoom, Teams (assistant joins the call) | Meet, Zoom, Teams (assistant joins the call) |
| Integrations | Automations: HubSpot, Pipedrive, Slack, Teams, Notion, Jira, Linear and more | Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot, calendar, Zoom | CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot), Slack, calendar |
| Capture method | Nothing joins the call: Chrome extension (Meet), Scribbl Desktop (Zoom, Teams) | Assistant bot joins the call | Assistant bot joins the call |
| Privacy note | No bot or outside account enters the call; no email to other attendees | Aug 2025 recording-consent class action, Brewer v. Otter.ai (allegation, not a ruling) | No comparable suit on record as of writing |
| Free month-to-month entry to paid | Pro $20/user/mo monthly ($13 billed annually) | Pro $16.99/user/mo monthly ($8.33 billed annually) | Premium $20/user/mo monthly ($16 billed annually) |
Free plan: the biggest real-world gap
This is the row that decides it for more buyers than any other, and most comparisons underplay it.
Fathom's free plan records and transcribes unlimited meetings. You can capture every call you take and keep the recordings and transcripts. Every call gets an AI summary, but advanced summaries cover only your first 5 calls each month (after that, calls get the general summary template), and AI action items, follow-up emails and Ask Fathom need Premium. For a solo user, a job seeker, a founder, or anyone who simply wants reliable notes without paying, Fathom free is genuinely usable as a daily driver.
Otter's free plan caps you at 300 transcription minutes per month, with a 30-minute limit per conversation. That is about ten 30-minute calls, or fewer if your meetings run long, before you hit the wall and have to upgrade. Otter free is fine for light, occasional use, but a normal week of meetings will exhaust it fast.
Between the two, Fathom's free tier goes much further, and this single difference is why so many independent reviews hand Fathom the win over Otter. Note what it still caps: advanced summaries on 5 calls a month, AI action items only on Premium, and an assistant in the call. Scribbl's free plan gives the video, transcript, AI notes and action items on all 10 of its monthly meetings, across Google Meet, Zoom and Teams, with nothing joining the call.
Accuracy
Most "vs" pages either skip accuracy or assert that one tool "is more accurate" with nothing behind it. Both tools degrade with crosstalk, strong accents, and bad microphones. No AI notetaker is immune, and no single accuracy number will predict what your specific meetings produce. Otter's standout is the live transcript, captions that appear as people talk, which Fathom is not built around.
Do not buy on any vendor's accuracy claim. Run each tool on two or three of your own real meetings, including one with multiple speakers and one with imperfect audio, and compare the transcripts and summaries side by side. That is the only benchmark that matters for your purchase.
Languages: Fathom wins decisively
If you run multilingual meetings, this row ends the debate. Fathom supports many more languages than Otter. Fathom markets up to 38 transcription languages, though some 2026 reviews count closer to 28; either figure dwarfs Otter's roughly 4 (English plus a small set including French and Spanish). For English-only teams the gap is irrelevant. For anyone capturing calls in German, Portuguese, Japanese, or most other languages, Otter simply will not cover you and Fathom will. Confirm the exact list for your languages on Fathom's site, since the published count has shifted.
Pricing: current 2026 tiers
Prices below were verified in June 2026 against each vendor's pricing page and current third-party reviews. Confirm on each vendor's page before buying, since plans shift frequently.
Scribbl
- Free: 10 meetings a month, each with the video, a transcript with speaker names, AI notes and action items; Google Meet, Zoom and Teams included; no credit card.
- Pro: $13 per user per month billed annually, or $20 monthly; adds asking Claude or ChatGPT about every meeting.
Otter
- Free: 300 transcription min/month, 30 min per conversation.
- Pro: $16.99/user/month month-to-month, or $8.33/user/month billed annually; raises the limit to about 1,200 minutes/month and adds advanced search, custom vocabulary, and bulk export.
- Business: $30/user/month month-to-month, or $19.99/user/month billed annually; admin controls, more minutes, and usage analytics.
- Enterprise: custom pricing with SSO, advanced security, and org controls.
Fathom
- Free: unlimited recordings, transcripts and storage; an AI summary on every call, with advanced summaries on your first 5 calls a month; AI action items, follow-up emails and Ask Fathom need Premium.
- Premium: $20/user/month month-to-month, or $16/user/month billed annually; unlocks advanced summaries on every call, AI action items, Ask Fathom, and more.
- Team: $19/user/month month-to-month, or $15/user/month billed annually, 2-user minimum; adds team features and shared recordings.
- Business: $34/user/month month-to-month, or $25/user/month billed annually, 2-user minimum; adds CRM workflows and admin controls.
- Enterprise: talk to sales.
The headline between the two: Otter's paid entry is a little cheaper per seat (especially billed annually), and Fathom's free plan records far more. Scribbl's free plan already includes full AI notes on every meeting it records, on all three platforms, with nothing in the call.
Otter: live transcript and in-person capture
Alex: Let us lock the launch date before we move on.
Sam: I can have the assets ready by Thursday.
Otter is the tool you reach for when you want a running transcript you read live during the call, not just a recap afterward. It has a long history as a transcription product, it shows words on screen in real time, it lets you edit speakers and text as the meeting happens, and it surfaces speaker talk-time analytics. Crucially, Otter can record in-person meetings from its mobile app, capturing a room conversation with no video call at all, which Fathom does not do. For live reading, in-room capture, or speaker analytics, Otter is the stronger of the two.
Otter limitations to weigh: the free plan's 300-minute monthly cap is restrictive; language support is limited to about 4 languages; and in August 2025 a proposed class action (Brewer v. Otter.ai, filed in the Northern District of California) alleged that its assistant recorded conversations without all participants' consent and used captured audio to train its models. That is an allegation working through the courts, not a ruling, but it is a reason to read Otter's consent and data terms carefully. For a deeper look at how Otter compares to an analytics-first tool, see our Read AI vs Otter.ai breakdown.
Fathom: free recording and clean summaries
Recap: Team aligned on a Thursday asset deadline and a launch date to confirm.
- Sam: deliver launch assets by Thursday
- Alex: confirm and circulate the launch date
Fathom is built around speed and a genuinely free product. Its free plan records unlimited meetings. It supports many more languages than Otter, and clip-and-highlight sharing is a core strength for sending a short moment to a colleague. If your loop is record, summarize, and share, and you do not want to pay for the privilege, Fathom is the stronger of the two.
Fathom limitations to weigh: it is video-call only (no in-person mobile capture like Otter), it is built around post-call summaries rather than a live transcript you read mid-meeting, real-time transcript editing is limited, and on the free plan advanced summaries stop after your first 5 calls a month, with AI action items only on Premium.
The capture method both share, and our pick: Scribbl
Here is the trade-off neither Otter nor Fathom escapes: in their common setups, both join your meeting as a visible AI assistant. It shows up in the participant list, it may need to be admitted, and on a sales call or a sensitive internal conversation, a named bot on the roster is something people notice. If a clean participant list matters, it is the whole decision, and neither Otter nor Fathom solves it for you.
That is the trade Scribbl is built to remove. Nothing joins the call: the Chrome extension covers Google Meet and Scribbl Desktop (Mac with Apple silicon, and Windows) covers Zoom and Microsoft Teams, on every plan, so there is no extra participant, no admission step, nothing announced to your guests, and no email to other attendees. Every meeting gets the video, a transcript with speaker names, AI notes and action items. On Pro you can ask Claude or ChatGPT about every meeting, and Automations do the follow-up: draft the email, log notes in HubSpot or Pipedrive, post to Slack or Teams, or open a Jira or Linear ticket, asking before they change anything by default. The free plan covers 10 meetings a month with no credit card; Pro is $13 per user per month billed annually, or $20 monthly. We compare it directly in our Scribbl vs Otter and Scribbl vs Fathom breakdowns, and the botless AI notetaker explainer covers the category. You can try it free at extension.app.scribbl.co/signup.
Who should pick which
Pick Scribbl if you want notes with nothing added to the participant list. You get:
- The video, a transcript with speaker names, AI notes and action items for every meeting
- Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams in one account, free plan included
- Automations that draft the follow-up email, log notes in HubSpot or Pipedrive and post to Slack or Teams, asking before they change anything
- Smart Collections that sort your meetings by themselves into groups you describe in one sentence
- Claude or ChatGPT answers about every meeting on Pro
Between the other two, Fathom suits people who want unlimited free recording and broad language support, and Otter suits people who want a live transcript mid-meeting and can live with the 300-minute free cap.
Start free, no credit card, at extension.app.scribbl.co/signup.
Otter vs Fathom FAQ
Is Otter or Fathom better?
Between the two, Fathom suits most people because its free plan records unlimited meetings and its post-call AI summaries are clean, and Otter suits people who need a live transcript they read as people talk, in-person recording from a phone, or real-time transcript editing and speaker analytics. Both commonly join the call as a visible AI participant. Our pick over both is Scribbl: nothing joins the call, every meeting on Google Meet, Zoom or Microsoft Teams gets the video, a transcript with speaker names, AI notes and action items, and the free plan needs no credit card.
Which has the better free plan, Otter or Fathom?
Fathom, by a wide margin. Fathom's free plan records and transcribes unlimited meetings, and every call gets an AI summary; advanced summaries cover only your first 5 calls each month, and AI action items need Premium. Otter's free plan caps you at 300 transcription minutes per month and 30 minutes per conversation. For anyone with a normal meeting load, Fathom free outlasts Otter free almost immediately, which is the single biggest practical gap between the two.
How many languages do Otter and Fathom support?
Fathom supports far more languages than Otter. Fathom's marketing cites up to 38 transcription languages (some 2026 reviews count around 28), versus roughly 4 for Otter (English, French, Spanish, and a small set). Either way Fathom covers many more languages. If you run multilingual calls, Fathom covers far more of them than Otter. If you only meet in English, the language gap will not matter to you.
Is Otter or Fathom more accurate?
No single accuracy number will predict what your meetings produce. Otter's strength is its live transcript, which you read as people talk. Fathom is built around post-call summaries and action items. Every AI notetaker does worse with crosstalk, heavy accents, and poor microphones, so test each on your own meetings before committing.
Does Otter have a recording-consent lawsuit?
Yes. In August 2025 a proposed class action (Brewer v. Otter.ai, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California) alleged that Otter's assistant recorded conversations without all participants' consent and used captured audio to train its models. It is an allegation working through the courts, not a finding, but it is a reason many buyers now read recording-consent and data-handling terms closely before choosing any AI notetaker, Otter included.
Can I take notes without a bot joining the call?
Yes. Both Otter and Fathom commonly join the meeting as a visible AI participant. If you do not want a bot in the room, a botless tool like Scribbl captures Google Meet through a Chrome extension with nothing added to the roster, on a free plan with no credit card, and connects each meeting to ChatGPT or Claude so the follow-up gets done.
Try Scribbl
Let your meetings take their own notes.
Scribbl records, transcribes, and summarizes your Google Meet calls from your browser. No bot joins the call. Free forever for individuals.
Add to Chrome · It's free