{
    "title": "Fathom Alternatives 2027: 11 Paid, Free & Open-Source",
    "url": "https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/fathom/",
    "summary": "The best Fathom alternatives in 2027 are Fireflies.ai (best overall, $18/mo), tl;dv (best free plan: Unlimited recordings, 10 AI-note meetings) and Meetily (best open source, MIT). Fathom itself starts at $20/mo. Zekai checked these prices on vendor pages on 13 Nov 2026; 8 more are compared below, including 5 with a free plan and 2 open source.",
    "tool": {
        "name": "Fathom",
        "starting_price": "$20/mo",
        "free_plan": "Unlimited recordings and transcription, instant AI summaries",
        "price_checked": "2026-11-13",
        "pricing_url": "https://fathom.video/pricing"
    },
    "task": "AI meeting notetaker",
    "prices_checked": "2026-11-13",
    "date_modified": "2026-11-13",
    "alternatives": [
        {
            "name": "Fireflies.ai",
            "type": "Free plan + paid",
            "starting_price": "$18/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "Unlimited transcription, limited AI summaries, 400 mins storage per team, 20 AI credits, 2-hour recording cap",
            "best_for": "Teams wanting a bot plus CRM-style analytics",
            "difference": "Pro adds 8,000 minutes of storage per seat and a 2-hour recording cap on Free; Fathom's free plan lists unlimited recordings and no storage cap.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-13",
            "pricing_url": "https://fireflies.ai/pricing",
            "website": "https://fireflies.ai",
            "zekai_score": 9.3,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/fireflies/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Otter.ai",
            "type": "Free plan + paid",
            "starting_price": "$16.99/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "300 transcription minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation, 3 lifetime file imports",
            "best_for": "Live transcription for solo professionals",
            "difference": "Otter's Basic plan caps transcription at 300 monthly minutes and 30 minutes per conversation, while Pro raises that to 1,200 minutes and 90 minutes per meeting.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-13",
            "pricing_url": "https://otter.ai/pricing",
            "website": "https://otter.ai",
            "zekai_score": 8.6,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/otter-ai/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Granola",
            "type": "Free plan + paid",
            "starting_price": "$14/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "Basic: AI notes with 30 days of meeting history",
            "best_for": "Bot-free notes with a manual note pad",
            "difference": "Granola captures device audio with no meeting bot joining and keeps 30 days of history on Basic; Fathom's default is a visible bot, with bot-free still labelled beta.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-13",
            "pricing_url": "https://www.granola.ai/pricing",
            "website": "https://www.granola.ai",
            "zekai_score": 8.6,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/granola-ai/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Read AI",
            "type": "Free plan + paid",
            "starting_price": "$19.75/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "5 meeting transcripts a month with summaries and search",
            "best_for": "Meeting reports plus email and chat summaries",
            "difference": "Read AI also summarises email and messaging, and its Free plan stops at 5 meeting transcripts a month; Fathom Free has no meeting count limit.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-13",
            "pricing_url": "https://www.read.ai/pricing",
            "website": "https://www.read.ai",
            "zekai_score": 8.2,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/read-ai/"
        },
        {
            "name": "tl;dv",
            "type": "Free plan + paid",
            "starting_price": "$29/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "Unlimited video recordings and transcription in 100+ languages; AI notes on 10 meetings",
            "best_for": "Free recordings, paid AI notes and playbooks",
            "difference": "tl;dv's Free plan also gives unlimited recording and transcription in 100+ languages but limits AI notes to 10 meetings; Business adds AI playbook monitoring and objection handling.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-13",
            "pricing_url": "https://tldv.io/pricing/",
            "website": "https://tldv.io",
            "zekai_score": 8.8,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/tldv/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Tactiq",
            "type": "Free plan + paid",
            "starting_price": "$12/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "10 transcripts and 5 AI credits a month, 1 user",
            "best_for": "Chrome-extension transcripts without a bot",
            "difference": "Tactiq's Pro tier lists unlimited transcripts at $8 on yearly billing, and its Free plan allows 10 transcripts and 5 AI credits a month.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-13",
            "pricing_url": "https://tactiq.io/pricing",
            "website": "https://tactiq.io",
            "zekai_score": 7.9,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/tactiq/"
        },
        {
            "name": "MeetGeek",
            "type": "Free plan + paid",
            "starting_price": "$15.99/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "3 hours of transcription a month, 3 months of transcript storage, bot and bot-free recording",
            "best_for": "Automations through Zapier, Make and n8n",
            "difference": "MeetGeek's Free plan lists 3 hours of transcription a month and Pro 20 hours, with $0.50 per extra hour; Fathom lists no hourly cap.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-13",
            "pricing_url": "https://meetgeek.ai/pricing",
            "website": "https://meetgeek.ai",
            "zekai_score": 7.5,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/meetgeek/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Krisp",
            "type": "Paid",
            "starting_price": "$16/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "No free plan",
            "best_for": "Noise cancellation plus a bot-free note-taker",
            "difference": "Krisp bundles noise cancellation and 1 hour a day of accent conversion into Core, and runs its note-taker without a bot; Fathom has no audio-cleaning feature.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-13",
            "pricing_url": "https://krisp.ai/pricing/",
            "website": "https://krisp.ai",
            "zekai_score": 8.6,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/krisp/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Meetily",
            "type": "Open source",
            "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)",
            "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)",
            "licence": "MIT",
            "best_for": "Fully local, offline meeting notes",
            "difference": "Meetily processes audio and summaries on your own machine by default, with no joining bot; speaker identification, API and MCP sit in a separate paid Meetily PRO.",
            "website": "https://meetily.ai",
            "repository": "https://github.com/Zackriya-Solutions/meetily",
            "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/meetily/",
            "last_release": "2026-09-12",
            "zekai_score": 8.4,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/meetily/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Vexa",
            "type": "Open source",
            "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)",
            "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)",
            "licence": "Apache-2.0",
            "best_for": "Developers building meeting-bot pipelines",
            "difference": "Vexa is an API: a bot joins Google Meet, Teams or Zoom and streams speaker-attributed transcripts, with Markdown knowledge files in a git repo; Fathom is a finished app.",
            "website": "https://vexa.ai",
            "repository": "https://github.com/Vexa-ai/vexa",
            "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/vexa/",
            "last_release": "2026-10-09",
            "zekai_score": 7.8,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/vexa/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Muesli",
            "type": "Open source",
            "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)",
            "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)",
            "licence": "MIT",
            "best_for": "Mac users wanting local transcription",
            "difference": "Muesli runs on-device speech recognition on Apple Silicon Macs only, joins no bot, and lets you pick Ollama, LM Studio or hosted models for summaries; Fathom is hosted.",
            "website": "https://muesli.works",
            "repository": "https://github.com/Muesli-HQ/muesli",
            "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/muesli/",
            "last_release": "2026-11-08",
            "zekai_score": 6.8,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/muesli/"
        }
    ],
    "faq": [
        {
            "q": "What is the best alternative to Fathom in 2027?",
            "a": "Fireflies.ai is the best overall Fathom alternative on this page ($18/mo). For no cost, tl;dv has a free plan (Unlimited video recordings and transcription in 100+ languages; AI notes on 10 meetings). To self-host, Meetily is open source (MIT)."
        },
        {
            "q": "Is there a free version of Fathom?",
            "a": "Yes. Fathom has a free plan: Unlimited recordings and transcription, instant AI summaries. Paid plans start at $20/mo, checked on 13 Nov 2026."
        },
        {
            "q": "Is there a 100% free alternative to Fathom?",
            "a": "Yes. Meetily, Vexa, Muesli are open source and free to self-host. Fireflies.ai, Otter.ai, Granola, Read AI, tl;dv, Tactiq, MeetGeek have a free plan with limits, shown in the table."
        },
        {
            "q": "What is cheaper than Fathom?",
            "a": "Tactiq starts at $12/mo, against $20/mo for Fathom, as listed on each vendor's pricing page on 13 Nov 2026."
        },
        {
            "q": "How much do Fathom alternatives cost for a team of 5?",
            "a": "If each of 5 people buys the entry paid plan, at the prices Zekai checked on 13 Nov 2026, the monthly cost is Tactiq $60/mo, Granola $70/mo, MeetGeek $79.95/mo, against Fathom $100/mo for Fathom. Team and business plans can cost more per seat. The Zekai Cost Finder on this page recalculates for any team size."
        },
        {
            "q": "Which is better, Fireflies.ai or Fathom?",
            "a": "Pro adds 8,000 minutes of storage per seat and a 2-hour recording cap on Free; Fathom's free plan lists unlimited recordings and no storage cap. Choose Fireflies.ai if your team needs 100+ language transcription, a Chrome extension that records without a bot, and Business-tier talk-time analytics. Stay with Fathom if unlimited free-plan recording and a flat $15 per user Team price matter more than Fireflies' AI-credit system."
        },
        {
            "q": "Why are people leaving Fathom?",
            "a": "The documented reasons are: Fathom states it updated pricing and packaging as of August 2025: Team Edition Pro became Business and Team Edition Standard became Team (28 Aug 2025); Fathom's legacy-plan guide says free seats are not supported on the newer Team and Business plans, so free-seat members must be upgraded to paid seats or removed before a team moves over (19 Oct 2026). Each is sourced in the section above."
        },
        {
            "q": "What is better than Fathom?",
            "a": "It depends on the job. Fireflies.ai offers deeper team analytics, Granola captures audio without a meeting bot, and tl;dv has a free plan with unlimited recording in 100+ languages. For local processing, Meetily and Muesli are open source."
        }
    ],
    "publisher": "Zekai (zekaiwork.com) — independently reviewed; prices read on vendor pages on the dates shown.",
    "licence": "Free to quote with a link to https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/fathom/. Bulk copying or republishing the dataset is not permitted."
}