Alternatives
Fathom alternatives: when free isn't the question.
Fathom has the bot camp's most generous free tier — unlimited recordings and summaries — so the reasons to look elsewhere are never the price. Here's the field by published figures, and the trades each one makes. I make Snapbak, which appears below — read my card with extra suspicion.
What Fathom is
The free tier that leads the bot camp.
Fathom sends a bot into your calls and puts unlimited recordings and summaries on the free tier — the offer the others meter. Paid plans run $15–25 per user per month for team features, and the company has raised about $22M — modest against the billion‑dollar valuations elsewhere in this field. That shows in a product that grows by its free tier rather than its marketing. The capture trade is the camp's, though: a bot joins, and the cloud keeps the record.
- Bot participant in every recorded call.
- Free: unlimited recordings and summaries.
- Paid: $15–25 per user per month.
- About $22M raised — the independent in the field.
The field
What you'd trade it for.
Since Fathom's price isn't the problem, the alternatives are about the capture model, the retention, and what happens to the recording after.
No bot: Granola
The bot‑free leader listens to the meeting apps' audio instead of joining — 30 days of history free, Business at $14 per user per month. You trade Fathom's unlimited free recordings for a capture model nothing joins.
The incumbent: Otter
Otter's free tier meters transcription at 300 minutes a month and its AI sits behind $8.33 per user per month. You'd trade Fathom's generosity for Otter's installed base, search depth, and years of accumulated transcript history.
Already included: Zoom, Meet, Teams
The suites bundle recaps whose retention follows your admin's existing policies. Against a free tier this generous, the question isn't price — it's whether your recordings should live with the meetings instead of a third tool.
Stay local: Snapbak
Snapbak records your screen and writes automatic notes for every capture — title, summary, chapters, action items — on your Mac or with your own AI key. No bot, no meter, local‑first files; bot‑free meeting capture is planned for a later release.
The checklist
Four questions before you pick.
Asked and answered for Fathom — the retention question travels to every vendor on the list.
Is Fathom actually free?
Its free tier offers unlimited recordings and summaries — the most generous published offer in the bot camp (published pricing, October 2026). The paid plans at $15–25 per user per month buy the team features; what they don't change is the capture model, which is a bot joining your calls.
What's the catch with Fathom?
The same one as every bot tool: a participant joins the call, the cloud does the transcribing, and the recordings live on the vendor's servers. Free removes the price trade, not the capture trade — if the bot itself is the objection, the bot‑free camp ([Granola](/alternatives/granola/) leads it) is the answer.
Fathom vs Otter — which free tier wins?
On generosity, Fathom's: unlimited recordings and summaries against [Otter's](/alternatives/otter/) 300 transcription minutes a month. On incumbent weight, Otter's: it reported crossing $100M ARR in March 2025 and has the larger installed base. Both are bots, so the capture trade is identical — pick by the meter, or leave the camp.
How long does Fathom keep recordings?
That's not stated in our scan of its published pages, so ask before you commit — retention is the question most likely to matter later and the one least likely to be on the pricing page. It belongs on the same checklist as where audio is processed and who can search it.
Snapbak
The recording that stays yours.
Meeting capture is planned for a later release. Today, Snapbak records your screen with auto‑zoom and captions, takes redacted screenshots, does offline English dictation into any app, and writes AI notes on every capture — local‑first, free for the first 100 users.