AI meeting transcription: Otter, Fireflies, Fathom

An AI assistant joins your meeting, records, transcribes and sends minutes before you have even hung up. The principle is now well established; the choice of tool, on the other hand, depends less on raw quality — it is close from one service to another — than on what you do with it next. Three tools come up systematically in comparisons: Otter, Fireflies and Fathom. Here is what really sets them apart.

Otter — transcription as the priority

Otter bets above all on the quality of the raw transcription, including for multi-voice exchanges or technical vocabulary. The free plan includes 300 minutes of transcription per month, with a cap of 30 minutes per conversation — enough to test the tool, a little short for regular use. The paid plans hover around $8 to $20 per user per month depending on commitment and volume.

Choose Otter if your priority is a faithful text above all, for example for interviews or technical meetings dense with vocabulary.

Fireflies — automation and integrations

Fireflies stands out for the number of possible connections to the rest of your tools (CRM, calendar, storage spaces) and for its multilingual handling. The free plan covers up to 800 minutes of storage, but provides only about twenty AI summaries per month — beyond that, the transcription stays available, the automatic synthesis does not. The paid plans start around $10 per user per month.

Choose Fireflies if you want to connect the meeting minutes to your other tools (CRM first) rather than read them in isolation.

Fathom — the most polished summary, for free

Fathom has the distinctive feature of an unlimited free plan on recordings, transcriptions and storage — the restriction is on the number of “advanced” AI summaries (about five per month). Its minutes, organised into key points, decisions and actions to take, are reputed to be among the best structured on the market. The paid plans start around $15 per user per month to lift this limit.

Choose Fathom if you want to start without paying and the structure of the minutes (decisions, actions) matters more than the volume of minutes.

The routing table

Your priority	Reflex
Maximum transcription fidelity	Otter
Automation to CRM and other tools	Fireflies
Start for free, well-structured summary	Fathom
Frequent multilingual meetings	Fireflies

A point of caution common to all three

These tools invite themselves into your meetings as a full participant: the other people present must be informed, and transcribing sensitive exchanges (HR, clients, contracts) raises the same confidentiality questions as any other use of AI at work. Before rolling the tool out to the whole team, reread our confidentiality habits for AI at work.

Key takeaway

All three tools do the essentials: transcribe and summarise a meeting. To fit them into a full method before, during and after the meeting, follow our dedicated guide. What should decide is your real use — Otter for text fidelity, Fireflies for automation to your other tools, Fathom to start for free with well-structured minutes. Test on a real meeting before rolling out: prices and free caps change regularly, check them on the official pages before choosing.