Fathom has the free tier the other two can't match: unlimited recordings, with the only real cap being five AI-generated summaries a month. Otter limits free users to 300 minutes; Fireflies caps total free storage at 800 minutes. For a lot of people, "record everything, get summaries for the meetings that matter" is genuinely enough, and that costs nothing on Fathom.
| Tool | Free tier | Entry paid | Strongest at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fathom | unlimited recordings, 5 summaries/mo | Team ~$15/user/mo | the free tier itself; clean summaries |
| Otter.ai | 300 min/mo | Pro ~$8.33/user/mo | live transcription, searchable archives |
| Fireflies.ai | 800 min total storage | comparable at business tier | CRM automation for sales |
Otter's Pro at $8.33/user is the lowest paid price here, but it delivers less team functionality than Fireflies does at a similar cost — Otter's strength is elsewhere. It's the best of the three for live, real-time transcription you're watching during the call, and for building a searchable archive you'll actually go back and mine later.
Fireflies is the sales pick. Its whole reason to exist over the other two is CRM automation — pushing call notes, action items and deal signals into Salesforce or [HubSpot](/entry/hubspot-vs-hootsuite-which-price-tag-fits-your-marketing-hustle) without anyone retyping them — plus the deepest integration list for post-meeting workflow.
So the decision is less about price than about what happens after the meeting ends. If summaries land in a doc and that's the end of it, start with Fathom's free tier and don't pay anything. If you're running a sales team and the notes need to become CRM records, Fireflies. If you want live captions during the call and a transcript archive you'll search for months, Otter — and its $8.33 is the cheapest way in if the free 300 minutes runs short.