These are the key points that I explored during the Otter AI vs Fathom clash:

• Fathom offers more accurate meeting transcriptions than Otter AI.
• Fathom has a better free plan than Otter AI.
• You can integrate Fathom with more apps and support more languages.
• Otter AI has a great AI chatbot feature that is included in the free plan.
• Otter AI is a cheaper note-taking app than Fathom.
• Both AI note-taking apps have a simple and user-friendly interface.

Key differences between Otter AI and Fathom

Here is a short overview of the key differences I found in the Otter AI vs Fathom showdown:

What is an AI meeting assistant?

An AI-powered meeting assistant is seamlessly integrated with your meeting platforms whenever you join video meetings. Whether you use Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Zoom, an AI meeting assistant will record, transcribe, and summarize the video calls for you. These note-taking apps use advanced AI algorithms and speaker identification to accurately transcribe meetings, allowing users to focus on the participants.

With these tools, you can forget about manual note-taking or human transcription services, and you can focus on the meeting participants. You do not need to worry anymore about whether you missed any details from an important voice conversation. However, they can do much more than just transcribe meetings!

AI meeting assistants offer additional features to streamline team collaboration and easily share or edit meeting notes. While some AI meeting assistants built more features ideal for individuals, others put emphasis on team collaboration features.

In short, AI note-taking apps will help you streamline meeting management processes and enhance productivity.

Now, it’s time to dig deeper into the comparison between Otter AI vs Fathom!

Comparison: Otter AI vs Fathom

First, I will show you the features of both AI note-taking apps one by one. After, I will guide you through their language and meeting platform support, integrations, pricing, and user interfaces. Finally, I collected the pros and cons that I discovered during the Otter AI vs Fathom comparison.

Features

Let’s begin with Otter AI’s features!

Otter AI’s features

See Otter AI overview

AI Meeting Transcription and Notes Assistant

See overview

Transcription

Otter AI is an okay transcription software. During my Otter AI review, I experienced around 85% transcription accuracy. Similarly to other AI note-taking apps, transcription accuracy highly depends on the audio quality and your accent.

Besides transcribing online meetings on Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meet, you can transcribe video and audio files. What is great is that Otter has no limits when it comes to the size of the audio or video files, so you can transcribe files of any size. The only limit is that if you transcribe files with the free plan, Otter AI will only transcribe 30 minutes per file or meeting. Also, you are only allowed to transcribe three video or audio files.

It is pretty useful that you can interact with the transcription. So, you can add reactions, highlight text, or add your comments.

Automated meeting summaries

Once the meeting is over, Otter AI will send the AI summaries to the meeting participants. The meeting summary includes a short overview of what happened, action items, and an outline. You can edit this summary and add additional points if you want.

Honestly, I found it quite basic compared to other AI meeting assistants’ meeting summaries. I missed that I can not customize them in more detail or use different meeting summary structures for different types of calls. For instance, one for interviews and another one for sales calls.

Otter AI chatbot

The chatbot is one of the best features of Otter AI. You can ask questions like what my action items are, deadlines, or just a short summary. It is also good news that they included this feature in the free plan. In short, this feature helps users better manage their meetings and events.

Meeting folders

With Otter AI, you can create folders for different types of meetings. You can easily access this tool under your “home” tab. I recommend using this feature, especially if you have multiple meetings in a day. It makes structuring and organizing your meetings much easier.

Collaboration features

As mentioned under the transcription feature, Otter AI allows you to add and assign action items, comments, and notes to your team members both during and after meetings. This is an excellent way to allocate tasks smoothly within your team.

Also, it has a slide capture feature, and Otter AI will automatically add slides or screen shares to the meeting notes. This feature can be useful for teams.

Furthermore, you can share the transcriptions and AI summaries with just a few clicks with your team members. This feature ensures easy knowledge sharing between team members without downloading and uploading files.

Otter AI also allows users to create channels where they can communicate with their team members. You can easily invite them after typing their email addresses. With this feature, you can create channels for direct messages with your team members or even channels for team communication.

Fathom’s features

See Fathom overview

A Simple AI Note-Taker With Extensive Free Plan

See overview

Let’s see Fathom’s features!

Transcription

When you join online meetings on Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet, you can let Fathom’s bot into the call, and it will automatically transcribe the meetings. But do not worry, you can customize this.

Just go to the settings menu, where you can decide if you want Fathom to auto-join and record all your internal or external meetings. It is also great that you can edit the name of your bot.

Based on my experience, the transcription accuracy is between 85% and 90%. While this also depends on the audio quality and your accent, I reached this accuracy with the built-in microphone of my PC.

Once the call is over, Fathom will send you the transcription. I love how Fathom designed its transcription feature. If you click on one part of the transcription, it will quickly jump into the recording to that point in the online meeting. Furthermore, it is super easy to trim and edit the transcript if Fathom is not accurate for some reason.

I recommend downloading Google extensions to join Google Meet calls more easily. Also, if you have Zoom calls, connecting Fathom with your Zoom account makes sense before the meeting.

Overall, Fathom’s transcription feature is accurate and easy to use to save time with your online meetings and focus on what matters.

If you want to try out Fathom, use this link to get FREE 3 months of premium features without an extra cost. This way, you can have 3X more time to test Fathom’s advanced features and decide whether to upgrade or stay with the free plan.

Recording

Fathom is an excellent tool for recording meetings. Based on your preferences, when you want Fathom to join your meetings, it will also auto-join. It offers a high-quality video recording you can easily share with your team members.

The video recording feature is quite useful for recruiting or customer success teams.

AI summary

If you do not want to go through the whole transcription or watch the recording, you can quickly review what happened using the automated meeting summaries. Fathom takes notes during the calls and prepares a summary after the meeting is over.

The AI summary shows the crucial points that were discussed during the online meeting. During this Fathom review, I discovered that the AI summary is shorter and follows a different structure compared to other AI note-takers. But hey, if you like simplicity and short meeting notes, this one can be great for you.

Ask Fathom

The Ask Fathom is Fathom’s AI assistant feature. Quite frankly, it works like ChatGPT or a personal assistant. With this feature, you can interact with your call recordings easily. For example, you can ask questions regarding a Zoom call or ask it to write a follow-up email.

Ultimately, it is a helpful feature that makes you more productive and saves time.

Clips

You can create short audio clips from different parts of the meeting to share with your team. This feature is awesome if you want to share the key moments from sales calls, for instance. If you integrate Fathom with Slack, the clips feature can work great, as you can easily drop the clip in a Slack message.

Meeting templates

If you subscribe to a team plan, you can access 14 templates designed for different types of online meetings, like customer success, stand-ups, or sales calls. Depending on the template you choose, Fathom will structure the AI summaries accordingly.

However, I would prefer that they implement the meeting templates in the Premium plan for people like me. You see, I have different types of meetings, and I do everything from client calls to collaboration requests without a team. So, the meeting templates would also be pretty helpful for me.

Overall, the meeting templates feature is awesome, but it would be great if I could also access it in the Premium plan.

Team collaboration features

Fathom offers some useful team features to improve collaboration when it comes to online meetings. You can organize your meeting notes and recordings into different folders that your team can access. Also, you can mention and add comments to the meeting notes.

If we look at the advanced team collaboration features, you can access the coaching feature and the deal view. Both of them are great for improving your sales process.

Language support

At round 2 of the Otter AI vs Fathom clash, let’s take a look at the language support of each AI note-taking app.

Otter AI’s language support

Otter AI supports meeting transcriptions in English, Spanish, and French. Compared to other AI meeting assistants, Otter AI supports way fewer languages.

Fathom’s language support

In contrast, Fathom has more extensive language support. Currently, it supports transcripts in 38 languages.

Meeting platforms and integrations

Otter AI’s supported meeting platforms and integrations

Otter AI can transcribe meetings on popular video conferencing platforms (Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams). It also has a mobile app, so you can record conversations and receive notifications on all your devices.

You can integrate Otter AI with some of the popular apps, like Slack or Google Docs. However, its integration capabilities are limited, as you can not connect it to Zapier.

Fathom’s supported meeting platforms and integrations

You can utilize Fathom for virtual meetings on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet.

Thanks to the Zapier integration, Fathom integrates with over 7000 apps. Nevertheless, using the Premium, you only have limited access to Zapier integrations. Besides the Zapier integration, you can connect Fathom with Asana, Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Close, and more.

Pricing

In round 3 of the Otter AI vs Fathom comparison, let’s take a look at the pricing structure of each AI note-taking app.

Otter AI’s pricing

Otter AI offers one free and three paid plans for individuals and teams. The Free plan covers 300 monthly transcription minutes 30 minutes per conversation, and you can transcribe three video or audio files. The free plan allows you to access features like AI meeting summaries, recordings, or the chatbot.

The Pro plan has 1200 monthly transcription minutes with a limit of 90 minutes per conversation. It allows you to transcribe 10 video or audio files monthly. If using the Pro plan, you can access collaboration and smart searching features.

The Business plan includes 6000 monthly transcription minutes with a limit of 4 hours per conversation. If you opt for the Business plan, you can import and transcribe unlimited audio or video files and access some admin features.

The Enterprise plan is for larger businesses. If you buy this license, you will have an organization-wide deployment and video replay for Zoom, Google Meet, and MS Teams meetings.

Ultimately, Otter AI has affordable pricing plans, but I do not like the fact that even the Business plan includes transcription limits.

Fathom’s pricing

Fathom has a free plan and three paid subscription plans. The free plan includes unlimited recordings, storage, and transcriptions. The free plan offers some integrations, and you can use some basic features like clips. Compared with other tools, Fathom’s free plan is outstanding thanks to the unlimited recordings, transcriptions, and storage capacity.

Ultimately, I recommend the free plan for those who do not want to use advanced features or unlimited Zapier integration.

The Premium plan is ideal for individuals who want to utilize more features. It has all the features in the free plan. However, you can use all the AI features with this plan.

The Team plan was designed for small teams. With this plan, you will access team collaboration features like folders, comments, mentions, and keyword alerts.

If you want powerful features like AI coaching and deal view, you have to pay for the Business plan. If you choose this plan, you will have unlimited integrations, advanced security controls, single sign-on integration, and custom data retention policies.

Overall, Fathom has a generous and outstanding free plan compared to other AI note-taking apps. The Premium Plan is also a good choice and offers much value for the money. The Team and Business plans have reasonable pricing and are ideal for small teams.

If you want to try out Fathom, use this link to get FREE 3 months of premium features without an extra cost. This way, you can have 3X more time to test Fathom’s advanced features and decide whether to upgrade or stay with the free plan.

User interface

Otter AI’s user interface

Otter AI has a simple user interface. You can find almost all the features on the homepage. Using the navigation panel on the left, you can find all the relevant stuff in one place. Otter AI also has a mobile version, so you can access your transcriptions on all your devices.

Fathom’s user interface

The first word that comes to my mind when I look at Fathom’s user interface is simplicity. Everything is in one place, and you can access all the features with one click.

On the homepage, you can find your previous recordings. If you click on one of your meetings, you will instantly see the meeting transcription, recording, and meeting notes.

Overall, Fathom has an intuitive and simple user interface with a short learning curve.

Related articles:

• Fireflies AI vs Otter AI: A Side-by-Side Comparison In 2026
• Fathom vs MeetGeek: A Side-by-Side Comparison In 2026
• Otter AI vs Tl;dv: A Side-by-Side Comparison In 2026
• MeetGeek vs Otter AI: A Side-by-Side Comparison In 2026
• Fathom vs MeetGeek: A Side-by-Side Comparison In 2026

Otter AI’s pros and cons

Now, I will show you Otter AI’s pros and cons I discovered.

Otter AI’s pros

It is great that the free plan includes the chatbot feature. It was pretty useful that I could get answers instantly regarding my online meetings.

Secondly, Otter AI has a simple user interface, making it easy to navigate.

Furthermore, Otter AI offers solid collaboration features for teams. You can create channels where you can discuss with your team members.

Lastly, Otter AI has an affordable pricing compared to other transcription tools.

Otter AI’s cons

When it comes to the cons, I experienced lower transcription accuracy when using Otter AI.

Also, you can connect Otter AI with limited third-party apps. This could be especially frustrating for teams. The limited integrations are true for the video conferencing platforms because you can use Otter AI only with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet.

Finally, it has limited language support. Most of the AI meeting assistants support way more languages than Otter AI.

Fathom’s pros and cons

Let’s continue with Fathom’s pros and cons!

Pros of Fathom

Cons of Fathom

If you want to try out Fathom, use this link to get FREE 3 months of premium features without an extra cost. This way, you can have 3X more time to test Fathom’s advanced features and decide whether to upgrade or stay with the free plan.

Alternatives to Otter AI and Fathom

Otter AI and Fathom are among the most popular AI meeting assistants. But if you want to try other alternatives, here are some:

Wrap-up: Otter AI vs Fathom

After a comprehensive comparison of Otter AI vs Fathom, I can safely say that the winner for me is Fathom.

It is a more reliable transcription software that offers a more generous free plan overall. Also, it is a more versatile tool, as Fathom integrates with way more third-party apps and supports more languages. The one concern for me when it comes to Fathom is that you can not transcribe audio and video files, only online meetings.

Otter AI is a powerful tool for your virtual meetings. I particularly loved that they included the chatbot feature in the free plan, which has many features to improve team efficiency. Moreover, it is a budget-friendly option for transcribing meetings.

Whether you go forward with Otter AI or Fathom, one thing is certain: they will save you time and streamline workflows before, during, and after your calls.

Related article:

• Best 6 AI-Note Takers | My Top Picks After +2 Years Testing (2026)
• Otter AI vs Fellow: My pick after +2 years testing (2026)
• Best 5 Otter AI Alternatives | 20+ Personally Tested Apps (2026)
• 6 Best Fathom Alternatives After Testing 20+ AI Note-Takers (2026)

I hope I was able to help you find the best AI meeting assistant, and I wish you productive online meetings!

Why you can trust our reviews

At thebusinessdive.com, our team tests, reviews, and compares hundreds of productivity apps every year — from project management tools to note-taking apps. We dive deep into real-world use cases to help you find the right tools that actually improve your workflow, not just add noise.

Our mission? No fluff, no shortcuts—just honest, hands-on insights from productivity pros.

Have a question or suggestion? I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out anytime at aronkantor@thebusinessdive.com.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Otter and Fathom?

Fathom has a better free plan than Otter AI, as it includes unlimited recordings, transcriptions, and storage capacity. Also, I experienced that Fathom is a more accurate transcription tool than Otter AI. Furthermore, Fathom integrates with Zapier, so you can connect it with more third-party apps.

However, Otter AI is a more budget-friendly app, as its paid plans start from $8.33 per month.

Is Otter.ai the best transcription service?

While it is a relatively cheap transcription software, several other AI meeting assistants, including Fathom, offer more reliable transcription than Otter AI, based on my experience. In the past 2 years, I tried almost all the AI note-taking apps, and I experienced the highest transcription accuracy with MeetGeek, Fireflies AI, tl;dv, and Fellow.

Does Fathom has the best free plan?

Fathom has one of the best free plans. It includes unlimited recordings, transcriptions, and storage capacity, which is rare in the AI meeting assistant market. Besides Fathom, tl;dv also has a great free plan.

Is Otter AI or Fathom better for customer success teams?

I think both Otter AI and Fathom are ideal for customer success teams. While Fathom is a more accurate transcription software, Otter AI has better team collaboration tools.

Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are our own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission. Read the full privacy policy here.

Aron Kantor

Hey there! I am Aron, the founder of Thebusinessdive. I have been testing productivity apps for almost three years now. I reach 25.000 -50.000 people monthly with the mission to help you find the perfect productivity apps. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, newsletter, and social media to hear more about the best productivity tools. Let’s dive in!

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