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Which AI meeting notetaker is cheapest at 25 seats on annual billing?

Fathom Team at $4,500 a year: 25 seats times $15.00 per user per month times 12 months. Fireflies Business is $5,700 a year, Otter Business is $5,997 a year, and Fathom Business is $7,500 a year. Fathom Team is $1,200 a year cheaper than Fireflies Business and $1,497 a year cheaper than Otter Business.

Does Fathom Free really include unlimited transcription?

Yes. Fathom Free costs $0 and includes unlimited recordings and transcriptions, a choice of bot-free capture (in beta) or bot capture, instant AI call summaries, and clips, playlists, and search across calls. The free tier has no minute cap; the limits arrive when the team needs shared folders, admin controls, or HIPAA coverage.

What happens when an Otter user exceeds the transcription minute cap?

The minutes do not roll over, and the cap is per user, not pooled across the team. Basic allows 300 minutes per user per month, Pro allows 1,200, and Business and Enterprise allow 6,000. A heavy user at 6,500 minutes on Business hits the ceiling while a colleague at 500 minutes leaves 5,500 unused.

Which tier carries SSO and SCIM provisioning?

Enterprise at all three. A 25-seat team that requires SSO pays $19.99 per user per month for Otter Business, $19.00 per seat per month for Fireflies Business, and $25.00 per user per month for Fathom Business and still does not get SSO on any of them; the published-price routes are Fireflies Enterprise at $39.00 and Fathom Enterprise at $35.00, both annual-only.

Which tier carries HIPAA compliance?

Otter treats HIPAA as an Enterprise add-on with a price the vendor does not publish. Fireflies makes it available on Enterprise, HIPAA-ready with a BAA. Fathom includes HIPAA compliance with a standard BAA on Business at $25.00 per user per month on annual billing, and custom BAA eligibility on Enterprise.

Software Reviews • 12 min read

Otter.ai vs Fireflies.ai vs Fathom: AI Meeting Notes Pricing, Minutes and the 5/25/100-Seat Playbook

Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai and Fathom all promise to end manual meeting notes, but they ration the work three different ways: Otter by transcription minutes, Fireflies by storage and AI credits, Fathom by admin control. This playbook prices all three from their own pricing pages, works the 5, 25 and 100-seat totals, and names the cap that will bite first.

By Enow A. Jovial • Published 2026-11-14

An AI meeting notetaker joins the call, records and transcribes it, and hands back a summary. Three B2B vendors dominate the category: Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, and Fathom. They sell the same outcome but price it three different ways. Otter rations transcription minutes per user per month: 300 on Basic, 1,200 on Pro, 6,000 on Business. Fireflies rations storage — 400 minutes per team on Free, 8,000 per seat on Pro, unlimited on Business — while transcription is unlimited on every paid tier. Fathom rations nothing: every tier, including Free at $0, includes unlimited recordings and transcriptions; the price buys admin controls, CRM sync, and compliance instead. None publishes a headline accuracy percentage, so the decision is which rationing model fits your team's minutes.

On annual billing, the business-tier price per seat per month is $19.99 for Otter Business, $19.00 for Fireflies Business, and $15.00 for Fathom Team — a $4.99 spread worth $1,497 a year at 25 seats and $5,988 a year at 100 seats. Fathom Business at $25.00 is the most expensive business tier: it bundles CRM field sync and HIPAA with a standard BAA. Buy minutes first: Otter's 6,000-minute cap is the only hard ceiling among the three business tiers.

How each vendor captures the meeting

Otter sends an AI Meeting Agent into Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet, joining as a visible participant and transcribing live. Fireflies sends Fred, its notetaker bot, the same way — but its Chrome extension can record without the bot joining. Fathom offers both: bot capture, or bot-free capture (in beta, for Mac), where a desktop app records locally and no extra participant appears. That matters where a bot's presence changes the conversation: a candidate interview, a board session, or a client call where a third participant named after a vendor reads as surveillance. All three return a transcript, an AI summary, and action items, and let the user search past meetings and ask questions — Otter AI Chat, AskFred, Ask Fathom.

Otter.ai: priced by the minute

Otter sells four tiers. Basic (free): 300 minutes per user per month, a 30-minute meeting cap, 3 lifetime file imports, live transcription, speaker identification. Pro ($16.99 monthly, $8.33 annual per user): 1,200 minutes, a 90-minute cap, 10 monthly imports, unlimited storage. Business ($30 monthly, $19.99 annual per user): 6,000 minutes, a 4-hour cap, Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zapier integrations, advanced AI workflows. Enterprise (custom): SSO, SCIM, Domain Capture, HIPAA as an add-on, the Otter API and webhooks, video replay. At access the page also showed a 50%-off promotional Pro price; figures here are standard list prices.

Labelled reproduction of the Otter.ai pricing tiers

The minute cap is the whole story at Otter: minutes do not roll over. A Pro user at 1,200 minutes has used the allowance exactly; at 1,201 minutes it is exceeded. The cap is per user, not pooled: a heavy user at 6,500 minutes on Business hits the ceiling while a colleague at 500 minutes leaves 5,500 unused. A team averaging 20 hour-long meetings per user per month needs 1,200 minutes — exactly Pro's cap; one extra call pushes the team into Business.

Fireflies.ai: priced by storage and AI credits

Fireflies sells four tiers, rationed by storage, not minutes. Free ($0): unlimited transcription with limited AI summaries, 400 minutes of team storage, 20 AI credits, 100+ languages, AskFred, file upload, API access. Pro ($18 monthly, $10 annual per seat): unlimited transcription and summaries, 8,000 minutes of storage per seat, 20 credits, video recording. Business ($29 monthly, $19 annual per seat): unlimited storage, 30 credits, multi-language mode, conversation intelligence. Enterprise ($39 annual-only per seat): 50 credits, rules engine, SSO and SCIM, audit logs, HIPAA-ready with a BAA, private storage, custom data retention.

Labelled reproduction of the Fireflies.ai pricing tiers

Fireflies' free tier looks the most generous — unlimited transcription at $0 — but the 400-minute team storage cap is the real constraint: five 60-minute meetings use 300 of its 400 minutes. The second constraint is AI credits — 20 on Free and Pro, 30 on Business, 50 on Enterprise — which gate summaries, AskFred answers, and AI apps, not transcription.

Fathom: priced by admin control, not minutes

Fathom sells five tiers; none rations minutes. Free ($0): unlimited recordings and transcriptions, bot-free (beta) or bot capture, instant AI summaries, clips and search. Premium ($20 monthly, $16 annual, individuals). Team ($19 monthly, $15 annual per user, 2-user minimum): team recordings, folders, comments, customer view. Business ($34 monthly, $25 annual per user, 2-user minimum): CRM field sync, Deal View, coaching metrics and AI scorecards, custom summaries, team security controls, HIPAA with a standard BAA. Enterprise ($35 annual-only per user): Launch Assist, custom summaries, SSO and SCIM, custom data retention and BAA, priority SLAs, dedicated Success Manager.

Labelled reproduction of the Fathom pricing tiers

Fathom charges nothing per minute, so its cost per transcribed minute is $0 on every tier. The price buys control, not capacity: Team $15 to Business $25 buys CRM field sync, Deal View, coaching metrics, and HIPAA with a standard BAA; Business $25 to Enterprise $35 buys SSO and SCIM, custom data retention, a custom BAA, and a dedicated Success Manager. A team that needs none of those controls pays $15 on Team and records without limit; a team that needs HIPAA pays $25 on Business.

The decision table

Factor	Otter.ai	Fireflies.ai	Fathom	Authority
Free-tier transcription	300 min / user / month	Unlimited, limited AI summaries	Unlimited	Vendor pricing pages
Business price, annual	$19.99 / user / month	$19.00 / seat / month	Team $15.00, Business $25.00	Vendor pricing pages
Business price, monthly	$30.00 / user / month	$29.00 / seat / month	Team $19.00, Business $34.00	Vendor pricing pages
Hard cap, business tier	6,000 min / user / month, no rollover	None	None	Vendor pricing pages
SSO and SCIM	Enterprise only	Enterprise only	Enterprise only	Vendor pricing pages
HIPAA	Enterprise add-on	Enterprise, with BAA	Business, standard BAA	Vendor pricing pages

The reproducible math: 5, 25, and 100 seats

Every total below is recomputed from the list price.

\text{Monthly cost} = \text{Seats} \times \text{Price per seat per month}

\text{Annual cost} = \text{Seats} \times \text{Price per seat per month} \times 12

\text{Annual saving} = \text{Seats} \times (\text{Monthly price} - \text{Annual price}) \times 12

\text{Cost per transcribed minute} = \frac{\text{Price per seat per month}}{\text{Minutes included per seat per month}}

— Scenario: 5 seats, annual billing. Otter Business 5 × $19.99 = $99.95 / month, $1,199.40 / year; Fireflies Business 5 × $19.00 = $95.00 / month, $1,140.00 / year; Fathom Team 5 × $15.00 = $75.00 / month, $900.00 / year; Fathom Business 5 × $25.00 = $125.00 / month, $1,500.00 / year.

— Scenario: 25 seats, annual billing. Otter Business: 25 × $19.99 = $499.75 per month; $499.75 × 12 = $5,997.00 per year. Fireflies Business: 25 × $19.00 = $475.00 per month; $475.00 × 12 = $5,700.00 per year. Fathom Team: 25 × $15.00 = $375.00 per month; $375.00 × 12 = $4,500.00 per year. Fathom Business: 25 × $25.00 = $625.00 per month; $625.00 × 12 = $7,500.00 per year.

— Scenario: 100 seats, annual billing. Otter Business 100 × $19.99 = $1,999.00 / month, $23,988.00 / year; Fireflies Business 100 × $19.00 = $1,900.00 / month, $22,800.00 / year; Fathom Team 100 × $15.00 = $1,500.00 / month, $18,000.00 / year; Fathom Business 100 × $25.00 = $2,500.00 / month, $30,000.00 / year.

Labelled reproduction of the worked 5, 25 and 100-seat cost table

Monthly billing costs more at every seat count. — Scenario: 25 seats, monthly billing. Otter Business: 25 × $30.00 = $750.00 / month, $9,000.00 / year — $3,003.00 more than annual. Fireflies Business: 25 × $29.00 = $725.00 / month, $8,700.00 / year — $3,000.00 more than annual. Fathom Team: 25 × $19.00 = $475.00 / month, $5,700.00 / year — $1,200.00 more than annual. Fathom Business: 25 × $34.00 = $850.00 / month, $10,200.00 / year — $2,700.00 more than annual.

The per-minute arithmetic exposes Otter's pricing logic. — Scenario: cost per transcribed minute at the cap, annual billing. Otter Pro: $8.33 ÷ 1,200 minutes = $0.00694 per minute, about $0.42 per transcribed hour. Otter Business: $19.99 ÷ 6,000 minutes = $0.00333 per minute, about $0.20 per transcribed hour. At 300 minutes a month, a Pro user pays $8.33 ÷ 300 = $0.0278 per minute — four times the at-cap rate. Light users overpay per minute on Otter; heavy users get the best rate.

Caps, failure modes, and the lock-in question

Every vendor's free tier has a tripwire. Otter Basic stops at 300 minutes per user per month with a 30-minute meeting cap, so one 45-minute call exceeds the per-meeting cap with the monthly allowance untouched. Fireflies Free stops at 400 minutes of team storage, so the seventh 60-minute meeting of the month has nowhere to live. Fathom Free has no minute tripwire — the wall arrives when the team needs shared folders, admin controls, or HIPAA coverage.

The failure mode is choosing on price and discovering the cap mid-quarter. An Otter Business team with one user at 6,500 minutes a month loses transcription on the overflow meetings, and the fix is an Enterprise conversation, not a settings change. A Fireflies Free team that fills its 400 minutes of team storage must delete recordings or upgrade — deleted recordings do not come back. A Fathom team building on bot-free capture in beta is building on a feature the vendor labels beta, and beta features change. The lock-in is the archive: months of transcripts and searchable history live inside one vendor's system, and none of the three prices an export-and-migrate path.

Integrations, security, and compliance

The security ladder is nearly identical, but the rung differs: SSO and SCIM sit on Enterprise at all three — so a 25-seat team that requires SSO pays $19.99 for Otter Business, $19.00 for Fireflies Business, and $25.00 for Fathom Business and still does not get it on any of them. The published-price routes are Fireflies Enterprise at $39.00 and Fathom Enterprise at $35.00, both annual-only. HIPAA follows the same pattern: an Enterprise add-on with no published price at Otter, Enterprise with a BAA at Fireflies, Business with a standard BAA at Fathom. A team that needs a BAA faces a custom Enterprise negotiation at Otter, a published $39.00 Enterprise tier at Fireflies, and a published $25.00 Business tier at Fathom. On data handling, Fireflies is the most explicit: its pricing page states SOC 2 Type II and GDPR compliance and that no meeting data is used to train models. Otter and Fathom do not state SOC 2 or GDPR positions on their pricing pages. All three are SaaS products that connect to Salesforce and HubSpot, with Zapier bridging the rest, and all three expose an API — Otter on Enterprise, Fireflies on every tier, Fathom as a public API with MCP support.

Accuracy: what the vendors actually claim

None of the three publishes a headline transcription accuracy percentage on its pricing page or homepage. Fathom's homepage calls its transcripts "shockingly accurate"; Otter's homepage carries a testimonial calling it "the most accurate app out there"; Fireflies' homepage makes no accuracy claim at all. Those are marketing sentences, not measurements, and this article reports no accuracy test of its own: no vendor supplied a word-error-rate figure, and no independent benchmark ran here. Settle accuracy with a pilot: run the same 60-minute call through all three free tiers, hand-count errors in a 5-minute sample, and compare — free on Fathom and Fireflies, 60 of Otter Basic's 300 minutes.

The buying protocol

Count minutes before counting dollars. Add up one month of meeting minutes per person: under 300 per user, Otter Basic is free; under 400 stored team minutes, Fireflies Free holds; unbounded, Fathom Free never caps.
Run the free-tier pilot on the same call. Record one 60-minute meeting through all three free tiers and hand-count errors in a 5-minute sample.
Price the seat count twice. Run the 5, 25, and 100-seat arithmetic above on annual and monthly billing, and note the annual saving.
Check the compliance rung. If the team needs SSO, SCIM, or a HIPAA BAA, confirm the tier — Enterprise at all three for SSO and SCIM, Business at Fathom for the BAA — and get the Enterprise price in writing.
Test bot-free capture on one sensitive call. Run one interview through Fathom's bot-free capture and one through Fireflies' Chrome extension.
Plan the archive exit before the archive grows. Export one transcript and summary from each vendor and confirm the format survives outside the system.

Who should not buy which

A solo operator should not buy Fathom Team — the 2-user minimum bars a single seat; Premium at $16.00 per month on annual billing is the solo route. A team whose heaviest user records over 6,000 minutes a month should not buy Otter Business — the cap is per user, no rollover, no published overflow price. A team that needs SSO at a published price should not choose any of the three business tiers — all three reserve SSO and SCIM for Enterprise.

Related reading: Slack vs Microsoft Teams vs Discord pricing and Zoom vs Google Meet vs Microsoft Teams pricing. Model the monthly cost in the Pricing Calculator before committing to a seat count.

Founder & CEO Insight — Enow A. Jovial

"The cheapest notetaker is the one whose cap you never hit. I have watched teams buy on the per-seat price and pay the real price in the third month, when the heavy user's minutes run out mid-quarter and the archive they built becomes a hostage. Count your minutes first, price the compliance rung second, and never let a free tier hold your company's memory without an exit plan."

— Enow A. Jovial, Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Execution checklist

[x] Count meeting minutes per person for one month before choosing a tier.
[x] Run one 60-minute call through all three free tiers; hand-count errors.
[x] Price 5, 25, and 100 seats on annual and monthly billing.
[x] Confirm the SSO, SCIM, and HIPAA BAA tier in writing.
[x] Test bot-free capture on one sensitive call before rollout.
[x] Export one transcript and summary per vendor.

Start every team on Fathom Free for the pilot week: unlimited transcription at $0, and the team learns its real minute volume before any vendor's cap can bite.