Granola vs Fathom 2026: Bot-Free Notes or Free Recording?

Pick Granola if you want notes without a bot on the call and the cheapest paid seat: Business is $14 per user a month, billed monthly, and Granola deletes the audio after it transcribes. Pick Fathom if you want recordings you can replay for free: Fathom Free keeps unlimited recordings and transcripts, and Premium costs $16 a month billed annually. Prices read on both vendors' pricing pages on October 21, 2026.

Our view: the free plans and the paid plans point in opposite directions. Fathom gives away more at $0, because Granola Basic hides notes older than 30 days. Granola wins once you pay, because its single Business seat costs less than any Fathom paid plan and carries HubSpot, Notion, Zapier and API access.

The Granola link above is an affiliate link; the Fathom links are not. An AI note taker records or listens to a meeting and turns it into a transcript and a written recap. This pair splits on two questions: does a bot join the call, and is there a recording left afterward?

Toolradar data: on the transcription ranking of Toolradar, the software directory we run, 171 tools were evaluated as of October 2026, and Granola sits first with Fathom second. Fathom is listed as an alternative to 77 other tools in that category, fourth of 171, against 6 for Granola, so Fathom is the name buyers cross-shop far more often.

Granola vs Fathom at a glance

Prices from Granola's pricing page, Granola's billing guide and Fathom's pricing page, per user per month, read October 21, 2026.

Question	Granola	Fathom	Edge
Bot on the call	Never: it captures your device audio	Bot by default; bot-free capture in beta on Mac	Granola
Recording after the call	None, audio is deleted after transcription	Unlimited recordings, downloads and clips	Fathom
Free plan	AI notes, no daily transcription cap, 30 days of visible history	Unlimited recordings, transcripts and instant summaries	Fathom
Cheapest paid seat	Business, $14, monthly billing only	Premium, $16 billed annually or $20 monthly	Granola
Team seat	Business again, no minimum	Team, $15 billed annually, two-user minimum	Granola
Sales and CRM tier	Business includes HubSpot, Attio and Affinity	Business, $25 billed annually, with CRM field sync and coaching metrics	Fathom for sales coaching
Top tier	Enterprise, $35, SSO for 50+ users	Enterprise, price from sales	Granola on a published price
Where bot-free capture works	macOS and Windows desktops, iPhone and Android	Mac only; Windows announced	Granola

Read across the rows and the split is clear: Fathom owns the free tier and anything that needs a tape, while Granola owns the paid seat price and the no-bot promise on every device.

How much do Granola and Fathom cost?

Fathom sells both monthly and annual billing, and Granola sells Business month to month only (its billing guide reserves annual contracts for Enterprise). So the fair comparison is Granola's monthly price against both Fathom columns.

Plan	Monthly billing	Annual billing	What it includes
Granola Basic	$0	n/a	AI notes and chat, shared folders, templates, Slack, notes from the last 30 days visible
Granola Business	$14 per user	Not offered	Unlimited history, model selection in chat, HubSpot, Notion, Zapier, Attio, Affinity, API and MCP
Granola Enterprise	$35 per user, listed as the starting price	Through sales	SSO, SCIM, HIPAA workspaces, Salesforce, workspace-wide retention and training opt-out
Fathom Free	$0	$0	Unlimited recordings and transcripts, instant summaries, clips and playlists
Fathom Premium	$20	$16	Advanced summaries, AI action items, the meeting assistant, a custom bot
Fathom Team	$19 per user	$15 per user	Two-user minimum; global search across calls and shared playlists
Fathom Business	$34 per user	$25 per user	Two-user minimum; CRM field sync, deal view, coaching metrics, custom summaries
Fathom Enterprise	Talk to sales	Talk to sales	SSO, SCIM, custom data retention, a dedicated success manager

One quirk on Fathom: the Team seat costs a dollar less than Premium on each billing, but a solo buyer cannot use it because of the two-user minimum. Fathom shows a 90-day guarantee on its paid cards.

Both vendors run programs that can wipe out the first year. Granola gives 12 months of Business free to accepted startups and students and 50% off Business to registered nonprofits. Fathom offers up to two years of Team free for startups backed by selected VCs and accelerators, 10 free seats for nonprofits, and Business free for the rest of a Gong contract.

What does each cost one person and a team of five?

The yearly figures below are our arithmetic on the printed per-seat prices, with no program, coupon or promotion applied.

Scenario	Granola	Fathom, annual billing	Fathom, monthly billing
One person, first paid plan	$168 (Business)	$192 (Premium)	$240 (Premium)
Five people, team plan	$840 (Business)	$900 (Team)	$1,140 (Team)
Five people, CRM-focused plan	$840 (Business, HubSpot included)	$1,500 (Business)	$2,040 (Business)

For one person, Granola Business costs $24 a year less than annual Fathom Premium and $72 less than monthly Premium. A gap that small should not decide the purchase: whether you need a recording should.

For five people, the $60 a year between Granola and annual Fathom Team is close to noise. The big gap shows up when a team needs its CRM updated after calls: Granola puts HubSpot on the same $14 seat, while Fathom's CRM field sync sits on Business, which costs $660 more a year for five seats on annual billing. Fathom Business earns that premium only if the team will use deal view and coaching metrics, which Granola does not sell at any tier.

Both first paid plans sit under the $20 median entry price on our AI subscription prices page, which read 36 AI tools on October 10, 2026. For the full plan detail on each side, see our Granola pricing and Fathom pricing explainers.

Does a bot join the call?

Granola never sends a bot. Its transcription guide says it runs on your computer and transcribes your system audio and microphone, so it works on any call that plays through your machine, including VoIP apps with no calendar invite. The trade-off is that you must attend with Granola open, which rules it out for anyone who wants notes from a meeting they skip.

Fathom started as a bot and still defaults to one, but bot-free capture is now on every plan, including Free, as a beta on Mac. Its product update page lists three bot-free modes: video with audio (a limited beta), audio plus transcript, and transcript only. The same page says bot-free capture lets Fathom work in Slack Huddles, and that Windows support for bot-free mode is still coming.

So the bot question no longer splits the two cleanly. Granola is bot-free on macOS and Windows desktops plus its iPhone and Android apps, and Fathom is bot-free only for Mac users who opt into a beta. A Windows team that wants no bot today has one answer here, and it is Granola.

One caution applies to both. A note taker with no visible bot means the other people on the call may not know they are being transcribed. Granola's pricing page lists a per-user setting to let participants know, which Enterprise admins can enforce for the whole workspace. Check your own consent rules before switching the bot off.

Can you replay the meeting afterward?

Fathom keeps the tape. Its pricing page lists unlimited recordings, call storage, downloads and clips, plus playlists of highlights, so a manager can send a 40-second clip of a customer objection instead of a paragraph.

Granola keeps text only. Its pricing page marks "audio deleted after transcription" on every plan, Enterprise included. You get the transcript, the AI notes and a chat over your meetings, and nothing to play back. For a privacy-minded buyer that is the point; for a sales coach reviewing tone of voice, it rules Granola out.

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What do the free plans keep?

Fathom Free is the stronger free plan by a clear margin. It records and transcribes without a cap, writes an instant summary after each call, and keeps clips and search across your calls, so a solo consultant can run a whole year of client calls on it. Paying adds advanced summaries, action items and the conversational assistant, which matter more to people who run many calls a day.

Granola Basic also transcribes without a daily cap, but the app shows only the last month of notes. The billing guide says older notes are stored rather than deleted and come back when you upgrade, so nothing is lost, only out of reach. Integrations on Basic stop at Slack, which means HubSpot, Notion and the API all need Business. Granola's mobile apps (iOS, Apple Watch and Android) are free to use, a plus for anyone who takes face-to-face meetings.

A buyer who never plans to pay should start on Fathom Free. A buyer who expects to pay within a month can trial Granola Basic on real calls first, knowing the history window will force the decision soon.

Which works better for sales teams?

Fathom, if coaching is the job. Its Business plan adds CRM field sync that writes meeting insights into specific CRM fields, a deal view that gathers every call on one deal, coaching metrics with AI scorecards, and custom summary templates. Granola sells none of that coaching layer.

Granola, if the job is clean notes pushed into a CRM. Business connects HubSpot, Attio and Affinity on the same seat as everything else, and Salesforce needs Enterprise. A five-person team on HubSpot that wants notes in the record without a bot pays less on Granola.

For a wider shortlist, our best AI meeting assistants ranking and the sales-team version add Fireflies, Otter, Read AI and others. Our Fathom vs Fireflies comparison covers Fathom against the cheaper paid seat.

What changed at Fathom in 2026?

Fathom now belongs to Superhuman, which announced the acquisition on September 14, 2026. Fathom's own announcement page says nothing changes for users today: same app, same login, same product. The pricing page read on October 21, 2026 still lists the Free plan and the same four paid tiers.

The ownership change matters mostly for roadmap. Superhuman says it will bring Fathom's notes into its email, calendar and documents suite, and a Fathom connector already works inside Superhuman Go. A team that already pays for Superhuman gets the tighter fit; everyone else gets the same Fathom, for now.

Granola or Fathom: who should pick which?

Pick Granola if a bot on the guest list is the problem, if you work on Windows or on your phone, if you want HubSpot or an API on the cheapest paid seat here, or if you prefer that no audio of your meetings exists at all.

Pick Fathom if you want a capable free plan, if anyone needs to replay or clip the call, if a sales team needs deal view and coaching metrics, or if you want an annual invoice below the monthly rate.

Other angles live on their own pages: our Granola review and Fathom review cover each tool alone, Otter vs Granola covers the botless pick against a playback tool with a bot, and best free AI note takers ranks the $0 plans. For notes beyond meetings, see our best AI note-taking apps.

How we compared

Plan prices and features come from Granola's pricing page, billing guide and transcription guide, and from Fathom's pricing page, product update page and acquisition announcement, all read on October 21, 2026, with Superhuman's announcement for the deal date. Yearly totals are our arithmetic on printed per-seat prices. We did not test transcription or summary quality, so this page does not rank it. The Toolradar figures come from the transcription ranking and the Granola and Fathom profiles, October 2026.

AIpresso data: the audience file refreshed November 1, 2026 shows 28,000+ subscribers and a 31% average open rate.

Cite this: AIpresso, "Granola vs Fathom 2026: Bot-Free Notes or Free Recording?", November 2026. Prices verified on vendor pages, October 21, 2026.

FAQ

Is Granola or Fathom cheaper in 2026?

Granola is cheaper once you pay: Business costs $14 per user a month, billed monthly. Fathom's first paid plan, Premium, costs $16 a month billed annually or $20 monthly. Fathom is cheaper at $0, because its Free plan keeps unlimited recordings and transcripts.

Does Fathom work without a bot?

Yes, on Mac. Fathom offers bot-free capture on every plan as a beta for Mac users, with transcript-only, audio plus transcript, and a limited beta for video. Windows support for the bot-free mode is announced but not yet available.

Does Granola record audio?

No. Granola transcribes your device audio during the meeting and deletes the audio afterward on every plan. You keep the transcript and AI notes but cannot replay the call.

Is Fathom still free after the Superhuman acquisition?

Yes. Superhuman announced the deal on September 14, 2026, Fathom says nothing changes for users today, and the Free plan still lists unlimited recordings, transcripts and instant summaries.

Can one person buy Fathom Team?

No. Fathom Team ($15 per user billed annually) and Business ($25 per user billed annually) both require at least two users, so a solo buyer lands on Premium even though its seat costs more than Team. Granola Business has no seat minimum.

Which is better for a team that uses HubSpot?

Granola Business includes the HubSpot integration on its standard seat, with no higher tier needed. Fathom's CRM field sync is a Business feature at $25 per user billed annually, which suits teams that also want deal view and coaching metrics.

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