Fathom vs Otter vs Fireflies: best AI meeting note taker for freelancers (2026)

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Pricing side by side

Prices are in US dollars per user per month, taken from fathom.ai/pricing, otter.ai/pricing and fireflies.ai/pricing on 22 October 2026. Taxes such as UK VAT may be added. Otter also advertises a first-time-subscriber discount on Pro, which we've left out because it doesn't last, so check the price shown at checkout.

What one seat costs over a year

These are our own sums from the published prices above, for one person, before tax.

• Otter Pro: about $100 a year billed yearly ($8.33 × 12), or about $204 paying monthly.
• Fireflies Pro: $120 a year billed yearly, or $216 paying monthly.
• Fathom Premium: $192 a year billed yearly, or $240 paying monthly.

Fathom has the dearest paid plan of the three, but it's also the one you're least likely to need to pay for, because its free plan doesn't cap recordings or transcripts. Otter and Fireflies are cheaper to upgrade to, but their free plans run out sooner. So the real question is how many calls you take and which limit you'd hit first.

How far each free plan goes

Fathom Free

Fathom's free plan is built for individuals and includes unlimited recordings and transcriptions, instant AI call summaries, clips, playlists and search across your calls. You can choose a meeting bot or, on Mac, bot-free capture (in beta). What you give up: advanced summary templates, AI-generated action items, the conversational meeting assistant and a custom bot name are on Premium. For a freelancer who mostly wants a reliable record of what the client said, the free plan may be all you need.

Otter Basic

Otter's free Basic plan joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, transcribes live, identifies speakers and includes AI chat across meetings. The limits are tight for client work: 300 transcription minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation, one meeting at a time, three audio or video file imports for the lifetime of the account, and only your 25 most recent conversations kept in history. A typical hour-long discovery call won't fit in one free conversation.

Fireflies Free

Fireflies' free plan lists unlimited transcription (with a footnote), limited AI summaries, 20 AI credits and 400 minutes of storage per team. The storage cap is the one to watch: 400 minutes is under seven hours, or about thirteen 30-minute calls, kept at any one time. It also includes AskFred, its AI assistant, plus desktop, mobile and Chrome extension apps.

Where each one is strongest

Fathom: the best free plan for client calls

Fathom's pitch is simple: record every call for free and get a summary the moment it ends. Clips and playlists let you pull out the bit where a client explained what they want and share it later. It also integrates with Zapier and Make for automation, offers Claude and ChatGPT integrations so you can bring meeting context into your AI assistant, and has a public API. Fathom also lists CRM syncs that push summaries into your CRM, with automatic CRM field sync on the Business plan, so check which plan includes the sync you want before relying on it.

Otter: cheapest upgrade, strong live transcription

Otter is the long-standing transcription app, with live transcription, speaker identification and apps on iOS and Android, which suits freelancers who record workshops or in-person meetings as well as video calls. Pro lifts you to 1,200 minutes a month and 90 minutes per meeting for $8.33 a month billed yearly, and adds advanced meeting templates, custom vocabulary for client names and jargon, and Salesforce, HubSpot and Zapier integrations. Otter also offers an MCP server so AI assistants can read your meetings. Students and teachers with a .edu address get 20% off Pro.

Fireflies: search, integrations and AI extras

Fireflies leans into what happens after the call. Pro adds unlimited AI summaries, video recording, downloads of transcripts and recordings, a personal assistant, an email assistant, AI skills, action items and a task manager, and unlimited integrations. It supports transcription in more than 100 languages (English is the primary one, with others in beta), which matters if you work with clients abroad. Some features, such as AI skills and its personal assistant, use AI credits, which come in small monthly amounts (20 on Free and Pro).

Which one fits your kind of freelancing

• Designers, developers and writers with a few client calls a week: Fathom Free. Unlimited recordings means you never have to think about minutes.
• Consultants and coaches on long sessions: Fathom Free, or Otter Pro if you also record in-person sessions on your phone. Otter's free 30-minute cap rules it out for hour-long calls.
• Freelancers working across languages: Fireflies, for its 100+ language support, and test your languages on the free plan first.
• Anyone on a tight budget who needs a paid plan: Otter Pro, the cheapest of the three at about $100 a year billed yearly.
• Small agencies of two or more: compare Fathom Team ($15 per user a month billed yearly, 2-user minimum), Fireflies Business ($19 a seat) and Otter Business ($19.99 per user).

Turn meeting notes into follow-ups automatically

A note taker earns its keep when the summary turns into action without you copying and pasting. All three connect to Zapier, and Fathom also works with Make. A simple automation: when a call summary is ready, create a task in your project tool and draft a follow-up email. See Make vs Zapier for which automation tool is cheaper for one person. If you track clients in a CRM, all three list CRM integrations (Otter's start on Pro), so check the plan before you commit; our best AI tools for freelancers stack shows how a note taker fits alongside a CRM, proposals and booking.

Before you hit record, tell the client you're using a note taker and why, and keep only what you need. Recordings and transcripts that identify people are personal data under UK GDPR. This isn't legal advice, but a line in your discovery-call booking email saying the call is recorded for notes goes a long way.

Verdict

For most freelancers, Fathom is the one to install first: unlimited free recordings, transcripts and summaries cover the job without a monthly bill. Choose Otter if you need a paid plan at the lowest price or transcribe a lot of in-person conversations, and Fireflies if you want deep integrations, multi-language transcription and AI tools on top of your notes. All three have free plans, so try your next client call on the one that fits and only pay when you hit a limit.

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Sources: fathom.ai/pricing, otter.ai/pricing, fireflies.ai/pricing and fireflies.ai/affiliate, checked 22 October 2026. Yearly costs are our own arithmetic from those published prices, before tax. We haven't been paid by any of these companies for this comparison, and we haven't run our own long-term test of all three tools.