Fathom vs Otter: Which is the Better AI Meeting Assistant?

In the world of AI meeting assistants, two of the most common apps you’ll hear about are Fathom and Otter AI. But how do they stack up against each other?

Both Fathom and Otter AI can join your meetings to transcribe, summarize, and record the call, giving you AI-powered meeting notes. Both sync up with video conferencing platforms like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom, both have compelling AI features, and both take away the burden of writing manual meeting notes.

But, as similar as Fathom and Otter AI are, there are still plenty of features and functionalities that set them apart.

Here, we’ll take a closer look at how Fathom and Otter stack up head-to-head, what each app is best used for, and an alternative if neither are quite right for you.

Fathom: An overview 

Fathom is an AI note taker and meeting assistant. It can join your calls — whether on Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams — and provide a recording, transcription, and AI summary. Essentially, it takes away the hard work of writing manual meeting notes.

Fathom is known as a lightweight option with a free plan that includes basic functionality, limited summaries and integrations, and none of the frills of competitors — if that’s all you need. That has made it ideal for freelancers or journalists whose primary goal is to create a basic summary and transcription. 

Otter AI: An overview

Otter AI didn’t begin as an AI note taker, but rather as an audio transcription service using AI – meaning it was not purpose-built for meetings. That made it a good option for quickly turning files like classroom lectures or interviews into full transcripts. 

Otter AI has since evolved to now integrate with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams to transcribe meetings and provide meetings notes, AI summaries, and recordings. 

Fathom vs Otter: Comparing key differences

On the surface, Fathom and Otter AI sound like fairly similar AI meeting assistants. Now, let's take a head-to-head look at the key differences and advanced features that set these two tools apart, from their AI features to their value.

AI transcription accuracy

For AI meeting assistants, transcription accuracy is a feature they absolutely must get right. It’s what influences the resulting AI summary and meeting notes, so if the transcription is wrong, all of the output is useless. 

‍Fathom doesn’t make any specific claims about its AI transcription accuracy on its website, but the accuracy is often praised in reviews on G2. “Even with previous tools that boasted these same features, I could not truly trust that the transcription would be accurate after the call. Fathom is spot on,” said one reviewer. However, others said Fathom can sometimes struggle with accurate speaker identification or with accents. Fathom also promises to have generated transcriptions within 30 seconds of a call ending and Ask Fathom is a built-in chatbot to easily search transcripts.

‍Otter AI has said that its AI transcription is most accurate when the Otter AI Pilot attends a call, which is what those looking for meeting notes will most often be doing. Similar to Fathom, reviews generally praise transcription accuracy, but others note issues with speaker identification, accents, or jargon. One aspect that sets Otter AI apart is that it is able to provide real-time transcription. Similar to Fathom, transcripts are queriable via Otter AI Chat.

Virtually all AI meeting assistants can be tripped up by poor internet connection or other issues and may experience difficulty with transcription accuracy. In the case of Fathom vs Otter, both AI meeting assistants are well-matched in terms of accuracy. If real-time, accurate transcription matters to you, then Otter AI takes the edge.

Integrations with other apps

Your tech stack works best when your tools can talk to each other, and AI meeting assistants are no exception. Ideally, your AI meeting assistant syncs up with your communication apps, your CMS, your project management tools, and any other tools that are part of your everyday workflow. Both Fathom and Otter AI integrate with Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, but what else can they do?

‍Fathom’s direct integrations are pretty sparse. All tiers of Fathom’s plans integrate with Slack as well as CRMs including HubSpot, Salesforce, and Close. Paid plans integrate with Zapier which, if you know how, opens up the integration potential of Fathom. However, CRM and Zapier integrations are limited unless you’re using Fathom’s Team Edition Pro — their most expensive plan.

‍Otter AI, on the other hand, has a much more robust list of integrations — from project management to dialers to analytics. For example, it integrates with Jira, Notion, Asana, Salesforce, HubSpot, Snowflake, Outreach, and more. Some of these integrations, such as auto-sharing to HubSpot and Salesforce, are behind a paywall, however.

If you need an AI meeting assistant that works seamlessly with your existing tech stack, Otter is the better option. However, if you don’t need these features, that should be taken into consideration when deciding if one of these tools is worth paying a monthly fee for.

Meeting workflow support

While having a tool to transcribe meetings is useful, an AI meeting assistant is even more useful if it can provide overall support to your meeting workflows. That comes down to how it helps you prepare for meetings, and how it ensures your meeting transcripts and meeting notes are actionable after the fact with collaboration features. So, let’s take a look at some of the advanced features of these two apps.

‍Fathom, as mentioned above, is a lightweight option, but the free plan does have a few productivity features. Fathom can provide AI action items, AI follow-up emails, and insights from Ask Fathom, but those are only unlimited with paid plans. All plans can create clips of key moments from meetings. Fathom does support a team-wide meeting library, but only on paid plans. 

‍Otter is more team-friendly with shared channels on all tiers, making it easier to gather insights across teams. You can also clip key moments to share with stakeholders. Like Fathom, Otter can also note action items and Otter AI Chat can assist with follow-up emails.

Frankly, neither option will make a marked difference on meeting workflow. Both lack key features such as meeting agendas and automated pre-meeting briefs. Just comparing the two, Otter has better tooling for searching and sharing meetings across teams, but if you truly want advanced features to improve your meeting workflow, you’ll have to look outside these two options.

Language support

Fathom and Otter AI were both developed in the United States, so they were both first designed to transcribe meetings in English. However, for companies located outside the US, or with offices or clients outside the US, just English won’t cut it. 

‍Fathom currently supports 28 languages, including Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Malay, and others. There are some notable languages missing, such as Chinese dialects.

‍Otter is even more limited and only supports transcription for US and British English, Spanish, and French.

Fathom definitely edges out Otter when it comes to language support, but both are still limited when compared to other AI meeting assistants on the market.

Pricing

One of the biggest deciding factors when adopting a new tool is cost and value. Which of these tools — Fathom vs Otter — provides the best value for their relative cost?

‍Fathom leans heavily into its generous free plan. Unlike many competitors, Fathom’s free plan has unlimited AI transcription, note taking, and summaries. Since AI meeting notes are the main driver of adopting an AI meeting assistant, this is a compelling feature. However, if you need an AI meeting assistant that can be used across a team or even a whole organization, you’ll need one of Fathom’s paid plans:

• Premium: $15 per user per month.
• Team Edition: $19 per user per month.
• Team Edition Pro: $29 per user per month.

‍Otter also has a free plan that comes with 300 monthly transcription minutes with up to 30 minutes per conversation, along with summaries. If you’re using it for all your work meetings, that likely won’t be adequate. Otter’s paid plans offer more recording time, support for multiple meetings at once, features for sales calls, and better security and integration features:

• Pro: $8.33 per user per month.
• Business: $20 per user per month.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing. 

If you don’t need advanced features, Fathom’s free plan is a no-brainer. But for teams or organizations, Otter’s plans offer more value per dollar.

Fathom vs Otter: The final verdict

Now that we’ve taken a closer look, you can see there’s a lot that sets Fathom and Otter AI apart. Both provide AI note taking for virtual meetings in Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom, so if that’s all you really need, the free plan of either will do. 

Beyond that, it comes down to how you’ll use the tool.

In our evaluation, Fathom is the best choice for freelancers who don’t have to worry about collaborating with other team members. Otter AI is best for pure transcription, such as creating an accurate transcription of a podcast episode.

If you need an AI meeting assistant that’s optimized for org-wide usage, we have a better option to recommend. 

A better AI assistant option: Fellow

If neither Otter AI or Fathom fulfill your needs, Fellow is a better option to use at work for teams and organizations. 

Like Fathom and Otter, Fellow integrates with Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams to provide accurate meeting transcriptions. But beyond that, it’s a meeting productivity tool with advanced integration capabilities, robust privacy and security features, and useful collaboration features.

Fellow’s features are comprehensive, making it an excellent choice for everyone from solopreneurs, to small teams, to enterprise use. For sales teams and customer success teams, Fellow’s integrations with HubSpot and Salesforce automatically sync data and make handing off accounts easier.

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Why Fellow excels over both Fathom and Otter AI:

• Pre-meeting support with collaborative agendas plus a meeting templates library
• Automated pre-meeting briefs and post-meeting recaps
• Pause/resume recording at anytime
• The ability to redact from meetings transcripts and summaries
• A centralized recording, summary, and transcription library and video recording at all tiers
• Highly-accurate transcription
• Support for 99+ languages
• More than 50 integrations, including AI suggestions for HubSpot
• Robust permissioning and security — your data is never used to train AI models

Fellow has a free version with paid plans starting at $7 per user per month — so it also provides better value than Fathom or Otter.

Give Fellow a try for yourself.

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