Fathom vs Fireflies: Free Tiers, Current Prices, and How to Leave Each

Fathom vs Fireflies: which one should you pick?

Pick based on which limit actually binds, not on brand recognition. Fathom's free plan gives you genuinely unlimited recordings and transcription, with no stated storage cap, per Fathom's pricing page verified 2026-07-16. Fireflies' free plan also gives unlimited transcription, per Fireflies' pricing page, but caps storage at 400 minutes for the whole team, roughly eight 50-minute meetings, after which older recordings become unreachable as new ones arrive.

The two free plans fail differently. Fathom's binding constraint is features: CRM sync and coaching metrics stay locked to paid tiers, but the recording and transcription job itself has no meter. Fireflies' binding constraint is storage, not transcription: you can transcribe as much as you want for free, you just cannot keep it all. If you record occasionally and rarely dig back through old meetings, either free tier works. Run more than about eight meetings a month and want to search your history, and Fireflies' free tier squeezes first.

Beyond the free tier, the split is about shape, not quality. Fathom fits solo users and small teams who want unlimited recording without a meter and no public API requirement. Fireflies fits teams who want live transcripts while a call is happening, a public API, and eight conferencing platforms rather than three. A widely cited comparison, last updated July 2025, lands on a similar split: pick Fathom "if you're an individual user looking for a straightforward AI note taker," and Fireflies for "a bigger team or organization" that needs broader reporting and templates.

What do Fathom and Fireflies actually cost right now?

Both companies publish exact numbers, verified live on 2026-07-16. Fathom Premium, for one person, is $20 a month, or $16 a month billed annually. Fathom Team is $19 a month, or $15 a user monthly billed annually, for 2 or more users. Fathom Business is $34 a month, or $25 a user monthly billed annually, and adds CRM sync and coaching metrics. Fathom Enterprise is custom. Every paid Fathom plan carries a 90-day guarantee, per its pricing page.

Fireflies Pro is $18 a seat monthly, or $10 a seat monthly billed annually, a swing of nearly 45% that only shows up if you commit to a year. Fireflies Business is $29 a seat monthly, or $19 a seat monthly billed annually. Fireflies Enterprise is $39 a seat monthly, billed annually only, with no monthly option. Fireflies' pricing page publishes no free trial and no refund guarantee anywhere on it.

	Fathom	Fireflies
Free	Unlimited recordings + transcription, no storage cap stated, bot or bot-free (beta) capture	Unlimited transcription + AI summaries, but 400 minutes of team storage, 2-hour recording cap
Entry paid	Premium: $20/mo, or $16/mo billed annually	Pro: $18/seat/mo, or $10/seat/mo billed annually
Team tier	Team: $19/mo, or $15/user/mo annually (2+ users)	Business: $29/seat/mo, or $19/seat/mo billed annually
Top tier	Business: $34/mo, or $25/user/mo annually	Enterprise: $39/seat/mo, billed annually only
Guarantee	90-day guarantee on every plan	None published

Treat any comparison post older than a few months with suspicion here. One major comparison, last updated July 2025, still prices Fathom Premium at $19 a month and lists "Team Standard" and "Team Pro" tiers at $29 and $39 a user. Neither tier name exists on Fathom's pricing page today, which now shows Team and Business at the prices above instead. The same post says Fireflies supports "60+ languages"; Fireflies' own pages claim 100+ today. A year-old comparison is currently wrong about both companies' tier structure, not just a stray number.

Why do the vendor comparison pages get this wrong?

Fathom publishes its own Fathom-vs-Fireflies comparison page. Per our policy on competing-content pages, we are naming it without linking to it. The page states zero pricing for either product anywhere on it, which is exactly the gap the table above closes. Its headline claim, "Fireflies captures calls. Fathom understands them," is rhetoric, not a sourced comparison.

The page's own numbers do not hold up under a second look. It prints Fireflies at "4.7/5 from 749 reviews" with no named source, while Fireflies' own homepage separately claims a G2 rating of 4.8/5. Its framing that "Fireflies shows what was said" is also contradicted by Fireflies' own published feature list: an AI assistant called AskFred, real-time Live Assist suggestions, and 200+ AI Skills, all listed on Fireflies' homepage. Whatever the two tools' relative strengths, "transcript only" is not an accurate description of a product with that feature set.

The page's stat for itself, "5/5 from 6,840 reviews," is the identical unsourced figure Fathom's separate vs-Otter comparison page uses elsewhere. Treat it as marketing copy, not an independent rating. One line on the page is worth taking at face value, because it is specific rather than vague: it offers switchers "seamless data migration" and "Fathom Business free until the remainder of your contract" to anyone leaving Fireflies. That offer is concrete, dated 2026-07-16, and real evidence these two compete head to head for the same buyer.

Does either one train AI on your data, and who actually gets HIPAA?

Fathom trains its own AI on de-identified customer data to improve its product, with an opt-out available in Settings, per Fathom's security FAQ. Its outside AI sub-processors, named as Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, do not train on user data, but Fathom itself does unless you turn that setting off. Team Edition organizations can disable the internal-training option account-wide, for every member at once.

Fireflies' homepage advertises "Zero Data Retention," stating customer data is not used to train its AI, without the internal-use carve-out Fathom discloses about itself.

HIPAA compliance is scoped very differently on the two sides, and the difference matters if you handle protected health information. Fathom's help center claims HIPAA compliance as a product-wide property, alongside SOC 2 Type II and GDPR. Fireflies' own pricing page lists HIPAA compliance and private storage as Enterprise-only features, despite a HIPAA badge appearing on its general homepage. If you need HIPAA on Fireflies, budget for Enterprise. On Fathom, per its own claim, you do not have to.

How do you leave Fathom, and how do you leave Fireflies?

To remove Fathom from a live call, per Fathom's help article on stopping a recording, click Cancel Recording as the meeting starts, click Stop Recording once it is already recording, pause or end an active recording, or manually remove the Fathom bot from the meeting room. The article does not document platform-specific steps the way Fireflies does below.

To remove Fireflies from a live call, per Fireflies' guide to removing it from a meeting, open the participant list in Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, find Fireflies Notetaker in the menu, and choose Remove, or click the stop icon on the live meeting banner in the Fireflies dashboard. If Fireflies is removed before 3 minutes have passed, no transcript or notes get created at all.

To stop either one from auto-joining future meetings: in Fireflies, set Auto-Join Settings to "Only when I invite," or build a Recording Rule that blocks a keyword, email address, or domain, per the same guide. Fathom's help articles do not document an equivalent auto-join toggle in the same level of detail.

Deleting a Fathom account is fast and final. Go to Settings, scroll to the bottom, and click Delete Account, per Fathom's account-deletion instructions. The request takes about 12 hours to process, and once it does, all account data is permanently deleted and cannot be recovered, per Fathom's security FAQ; backups are purged an additional 7 days after that. Team plan members cannot self-delete: the Delete button does not appear on their Settings page, and they have to ask their Fathom Team Admin instead.

Deleting a Fireflies account gives you a longer runway to change your mind. Go to Settings, then Account, scroll to the Delete Account section, click "Delete my account," pick a reason, and confirm, per Fireflies' guide to deleting your account. The account deactivates immediately, but your data stays recoverable by contacting support for 30 days, and is only permanently erased once that window closes.

Canceling a paid Fathom plan without deleting the account happens in Settings, under Premium Features: choose "Downgrade to Free," or cancel from the billing page instead, per Fathom's help center. The subscription runs through the current billing cycle, then the account reverts to free with no further charges. For an immediate cancellation instead of waiting out the cycle, email [email protected], or [email protected] on a Team plan.

The honest read: Fireflies gives you an undo window. Fathom deletes harder and faster, but gates Team users behind an admin.

Is Fathom or Fireflies right for capturing your own thoughts?

No, not for personal thought capture. Both are built for other people's meetings, not your own rambling ideas. Full disclosure: InstantOwl is our product, and this is our blog. It does not compete with Fathom or Fireflies on meeting transcription; it turns a recording of your own thinking into organized notes and tasks, not a meeting transcript. InstantOwl is currently free to use.

For a closer look at either product on its own, our Fireflies.ai review covers its pricing and offboarding in more depth, and our Otter vs Fireflies comparison puts a third notetaker into the mix.

If Fathom is the one you are leaning toward, our Otter vs Fathom breakdown covers the same ground from its side. For a wider list of tools sorted by the actual job you need done, not the brand name, see our roundup of alternatives by job.

Related reading

• Fireflies.ai: pricing, the free-tier catch, and how to turn it off: a full review of one side of this comparison.
• Otter vs Fathom: how Fathom stacks up against a third meeting notetaker.
• Otter.ai alternatives by what you actually need: meeting notetakers, cheap transcription, and personal capture tools, sorted by job.