Otter vs Fathom 2026: Free Plans, Pricing and Which Wins

Fathom has the better free plan and Otter has the cheaper paid seat. Fathom Free records and transcribes without a minute cap; Otter Basic stops at 300 minutes a month and 30 minutes per conversation. Once you pay, Otter Pro costs $8.33 per user a month billed yearly against $16 for Fathom Premium. Prices read on both vendors' pricing pages on October 26, 2026.

Our take: a solo user who wants notes for free should pick Fathom and may never pay. A solo user who will pay anyway, and wants a live transcript on screen, gets the lower bill at Otter. Teams split on the plan: five Otter Pro seats cost about half of five Fathom Team seats, but Otter's seat limits and per-meeting caps are what push a growing team up a tier.

One corporate note for the Fathom side. Fathom now belongs to Superhuman, the company formerly called Grammarly, which announced the deal on September 14, 2026; Fathom's own announcement says the app, login and product stay as they are for now.

Toolradar data: on Toolradar, the software directory we run, Fathom and Otter.ai were the second and third most-compared transcription tools over the 30 days to late October 2026, with 164 and 154 compare-page visits, among 46 tools that drew 20 or more. Buyers shortlist these two together more than almost any other pair in the category.

Otter vs Fathom at a glance

Figures come from Otter's pricing page, Fathom's pricing page and Fathom's help article on Free versus Premium, read October 26, 2026. Per-user prices are monthly.

Question	Otter.ai	Fathom	Edge
Free plan	300 transcription minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation, 3 file imports for life	Unlimited recordings, transcripts and storage, instant summaries, 5 advanced summaries a month	Fathom
Cheapest paid plan, billed yearly	Pro, $8.33	Premium, $16	Otter
Cheapest paid plan, billed monthly	Pro, $16.99	Premium, $20	Otter
Team plan, billed yearly	Business, $19.99 (Pro allows up to 5 billed users)	Team, $15, two-user minimum	Depends on team size
Transcription languages	6 on Basic and Pro	38 on every plan	Fathom
Live transcript during the call	Yes, the product's core	No, summaries arrive after the call	Otter
Bot-free recording	Desktop app for Mac and Windows, Chrome extension for Google Meet	Beta on Mac	Otter
AI assistants	MCP server on every plan, Claude via MCP	ChatGPT and Claude integrations on every plan, public API and MCP	Tie

The pattern holds across the page. Otter wins on the paid price and on capture options; Fathom wins on everything the free plan includes and on languages.

What does each plan cost?

Both vendors discount yearly billing, Otter by 51% on Pro and 33% on Business, Fathom by 25% or more. Compare yearly against yearly, because the monthly gap is much smaller than the yearly one.

Plan	Monthly billing	Yearly billing	Who it is for
Otter Basic	$0	$0	Short meetings, a few hours a month
Otter Pro	$16.99 per user	$8.33 per user	Individuals and teams of up to 5 billed users
Otter Business	$30 per user	$19.99 per user	Teams of up to 25 billed users, unlimited minutes
Otter Enterprise	Schedule a demo	Schedule a demo	SSO, SCIM, API and webhooks, HIPAA add-on
Fathom Free	$0	$0	Anyone who wants unlimited recordings and a recap
Fathom Premium	$20	$16	One person who wants action items and Ask Fathom on every call
Fathom Team	$19 per user	$15 per user	Two or more users sharing folders, search and playlists
Fathom Business	$34 per user	$25 per user	Sales teams that sync CRM fields and track coaching metrics
Fathom Enterprise	Talk to sales	Talk to sales	SSO, SCIM, custom retention, onboarding program

Two details on the Otter page are not list prices. Otter shows a lower Pro figure for first-time subscribers and a 20% discount for three months on monthly Business, both limited-time offers, so the table uses the standard rates. Fathom shows a 90-day guarantee on each paid card and runs three programs worth a look: 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 when a team switches.

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Which free plan is better?

Fathom, for almost everyone, because its free plan has no meter. Fathom Free records, transcribes and stores every call with no limit, writes an instant summary of each one, and gives five advanced summaries a month before dropping back to the general template. Transcription runs in 38 languages on the free plan, the same list as the paid ones, and CRM sync to HubSpot, Salesforce or Close is included for up to three users per email domain.

Otter Basic is a sample, not a working plan. Its 300 minutes a month cover about ten half-hour meetings, and the 30-minute cap per conversation cuts off anything longer, so a one-hour customer call loses its second half. The plan keeps only the 25 most recent conversations, allows three file imports for the life of the account, and limits Otter AI Chat to 20 questions a month. What it does give you is a live transcript scrolling on screen, which Fathom's free plan does not.

Fathom's free plan has two real gaps. Advanced summaries stop after the fifth call each month, and the action items, follow-up emails and Ask Fathom across all your calls sit behind Premium. Fathom also gives new accounts a 30-day Premium preview, so the first month is not a fair read of what Free feels like. If the free tier is the whole decision, our best free AI note takers list adds Granola, tl;dv and others with the same free-plan lens.

What one person pays in a year

A solo buyer picks between Otter Pro and Fathom Premium. Our arithmetic on the printed per-month rates:

One person	Otter Pro	Fathom Premium
Billed yearly, per year	$99.96	$192
Billed monthly, per year	$203.88	$240

On yearly billing, Otter saves $92 a year, close to half the Fathom bill. On monthly billing the gap narrows to $36, so a buyer who refuses the annual commitment loses most of Otter's advantage.

Then weigh what the seat buys. Otter Pro raises the pool to 1,200 minutes a month and 90 minutes per conversation, allows 10 file imports a month, and unlocks exports to PDF, DOCX and SRT. A person in five hours of meetings a week records about 1,300 minutes a month and will run past the Pro pool; Otter's pricing explainer works through that ceiling. Fathom Premium has no minute pool at all. It adds unlimited advanced summaries, AI action items, follow-up emails, Ask Fathom across your calls and a custom bot name. The Fathom seat costs more because it removes the meter rather than raising it.

What a five-person team pays

Five people fit inside Otter Pro's seat cap, so the entry comparison is Otter Pro against Fathom Team. Our arithmetic for five seats over a year:

Five seats, per year	Otter.ai	Fathom
Entry team plan, billed yearly	$499.80 (Pro)	$900 (Team)
Entry team plan, billed monthly	$1,019.40 (Pro)	$1,140 (Team)
Upper tier, billed yearly	$1,199.40 (Business)	$1,500 (Business)
Upper tier, billed monthly	$1,800 (Business)	$2,040 (Business)

Otter leads every row, by $400 a year on the yearly entry plan. The catch is the sixth hire: Otter Pro stops at five billed users, so the sixth seat moves the whole team to Business at $19.99, and five people on Business cost more than five on Fathom Team. A team that expects to grow past five should compare Otter Business with Fathom Team, and at that point Fathom is the cheaper option by about $300 a year on yearly billing.

The per-meeting cap matters at the team level too. Otter Pro ends transcription at 90 minutes per conversation and Business at four hours, with Pro's 1,200 minutes counted per user. Fathom lists recordings, transcription and storage as unlimited on every plan, so a team that runs two-hour workshops or keeps every call has no reason to think about tiers. The yearly Fathom Team seat also undercuts a Premium seat by a dollar, which is why solo buyers who can rope in a second user often take Team instead; our Fathom pricing guide covers that quirk.

Languages, capture and integrations

Languages. Fathom's help center lists 38 transcription languages on Free and Premium alike. Otter's pricing page lists AI transcription in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese on Basic and Pro, six in total. A team that runs calls in Portuguese, Italian or Dutch has a Fathom option on day one and no Otter option below Enterprise.

Recording without a bot. Otter has the wider set of routes. Its desktop app for macOS and Windows records with no bot in the meeting, its Chrome extension captures Google Meet without one, and its iOS and Android apps record in the room. Fathom's bot-free capture is a beta on Mac, so Windows users get the bot. If the bot is the deciding factor, our Otter vs Granola and Granola vs Fathom comparisons cover the tool built around that idea.

Live transcript. Otter shows the transcript as people speak, with speaker names and live captioning for Google Meet and Zoom. Fathom delivers the transcript and summary after the call. Students, journalists and anyone who reads along during a meeting are Otter's buyers for that reason alone.

CRM and AI assistants. Otter's integrations page lists 31 entries, from Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho and Microsoft Dynamics to Notion, Jira, Snowflake and Amazon S3. The limits sit on the pricing page: synced notes to Salesforce or HubSpot cover 1 user on Pro and 5 on Business, Zapier starts at Pro, the Otter API and webhooks are Enterprise only, and the MCP server is on every plan. Fathom's integrations page is shorter, headlined as Zoom, Slack, HubSpot and 25-plus tools, but its ChatGPT and Claude integrations run on every plan including Free, and its pricing table lists a public API with MCP plus Zapier and Make. A team that already pays for one of those assistants gets meeting context inside it without an Enterprise contract; our Claude pricing and ChatGPT pricing pages list what those seats cost.

For the wider field, our best AI meeting assistants ranking adds Fireflies, Avoma and tl;dv, and the Otter.ai review and Fathom review go deeper on each tool. If you are weighing Fireflies as the third option, Fathom vs Fireflies and Fireflies vs Otter settle those pairs.

Who should pick Otter, and who should pick Fathom?

Pick Otter if you will pay and want the lowest seat price, if you need the transcript on screen while the meeting runs, or if your team records on Windows and wants no bot in the call.

Pick Fathom if you want a free plan you can use for real, if your calls run in a language outside Otter's six, if your team holds meetings longer than 90 minutes, or if you expect to pass five users and want a flat per-seat price with no minute pool.

To see where an Otter or Fathom seat lands against other AI tools, our AI subscription prices page lists the entry plans across categories.

How we compared

Plan prices, caps and feature lists come from Otter's pricing and integrations pages, Fathom's pricing and integrations pages, Fathom's help article on Free versus Premium, and the Superhuman and Fathom acquisition announcements, all read on October 26, 2026. Yearly and team totals are our arithmetic on the printed per-seat rates, with no promotion, student discount or startup program applied. The Toolradar figures come from the Otter.ai and Fathom profiles in the Toolradar catalog, October 2026. Transcription accuracy is not ranked here, because we run no test lab and only compare what the vendors publish.

AIpresso data: 29,000+ readers receive AIpresso, with an average open rate of 31% in the audience file refreshed November 8, 2026.

Cite this: AIpresso, "Otter vs Fathom 2026: Free Plans, Pricing and Which Wins", November 2026. Prices verified on vendor pages, October 26, 2026.

FAQ

Is Otter or Fathom better for free?

Fathom. Its free plan records, transcribes and stores every call without a cap and includes five advanced summaries a month, while Otter Basic allows 300 minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation and three file imports for life. Otter's free plan is the only one of the two with a live transcript.

Is Otter or Fathom cheaper to pay for?

Otter, on a single seat. Otter Pro is $8.33 per user a month billed yearly or $16.99 monthly, against $16 or $20 for Fathom Premium. Teams of six or more that need Otter Business pay more per seat than Fathom Team charges.

How many languages do Otter and Fathom transcribe?

Fathom lists 38 transcription languages on every plan, including Free. Otter lists six on Basic and Pro: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese.

Can Otter or Fathom record without a bot joining the meeting?

Both can, with different coverage. Otter's desktop app for Mac and Windows and its Chrome extension for Google Meet record without a bot. Fathom's bot-free capture is a beta on Mac only, and Windows users still get the bot.

Does Fathom still have a free plan after the Superhuman acquisition?

Yes. Superhuman announced the acquisition on September 14, 2026, and Fathom's pricing page still lists the Free plan with unlimited recordings and transcription. Fathom's announcement says the app and product continue unchanged for now.

Which one works with ChatGPT or Claude?

Both. Fathom lists ChatGPT and Claude integrations on every plan, plus a public API with MCP. Otter offers an MCP server on every plan, including Basic, and a Claude connection through it; the Otter API and webhooks are reserved for Enterprise.

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