Compare · Fathom
GetNotes vs Fathom: which fits your meetings?
Fathom's own documentation says it cannot tell apart several people sharing one physical room — which is precisely the meeting GetNotes was built for.
Side by side
In-person meetings
Fathom: Not supported as of July 2026. Fathom's help centre says in-person capture is coming soon as part of Fathom for iOS; today the workaround is starting a video call and pointing a laptop at the room.
GetNotes: The only thing GetNotes does. Open the browser on a phone, press record, put it on the table.
Several people around one table
Fathom: Fathom's documentation states it cannot distinguish between multiple speakers in the same physical room and attributes the audio to the account holder.
GetNotes: Speaker diarization is applied to that single shared room mic, so each voice at the table is labelled separately.
Languages
Fathom: Around 30, described on their own marketing as 30-plus, as of July 2026.
GetNotes: 99 transcription languages, including Urdu, Hindi and Arabic, with mid-sentence code-switching kept in one transcript.
Price
Fathom: Free tier is unlimited for online calls with advanced AI summaries capped; Premium is $20 billed monthly, $16 a month annually, Team $19 monthly for two or more seats.
GetNotes: One free meeting up to 30 minutes, then $19 a month billed monthly — unlimited meetings, three hours per recording, fair-use 25 hours a month.
Where Fathom is the better pick
Pick Fathom if every meeting you care about happens on Zoom, Google Meet or Teams, everyone dials in separately, and you would rather not pay anything. Nothing else here gives you unlimited recording and transcription of online calls for free, and if your calls are English-language and remote-first, that free tier is the strongest offer in the market.
Comparison based on publicly available information, checked July 2026. Products change — check their site for current details.
Fathom has the most generous free tier in this category and it is not close: unlimited recordings, unlimited transcriptions and unlimited storage of online calls at $0, with no card. Advanced AI summaries are capped on free — widely reported at five calls a month, though the pricing page does not state a figure — but if your meetings live on Zoom, Google Meet or Teams and your budget is nothing, that offer is hard to argue with.
The line it does not cross is the physical room. Fathom's bot joins Zoom, Google Meet and Teams only, and as of July 2026 its own help centre says in-person meeting capture is coming soon as part of Fathom for iOS. The current workaround is to start a video call and point the laptop at the table — and Fathom's documentation is candid that it cannot distinguish between multiple speakers in the same physical room, attributing everything to the account holder. Both of those are things a shipping release could change, so check their site before relying on either.
GetNotes exists for that gap. It records the room from a phone browser and produces speaker labels from that single shared microphone, so a five-person table becomes five attributed voices rather than one long monologue credited to whoever pressed record. It also covers 99 transcription languages against Fathom's stated 30-plus, which matters as soon as a meeting stops being conducted entirely in English.
Where it earns its keep
Four people in a meeting room, one laptop on the table
The workaround Fathom's own docs describe: open a call, let the bot in, point the laptop at the room. It records, but Fathom states it cannot separate speakers sharing one physical space, so the decisions and the objections all end up credited to whoever owns the account. GetNotes labels each voice from that same single microphone.
A client meeting at their office, no laptop out
Taking a laptop out and starting a fake video call to satisfy a notetaker changes the tone of a room. GetNotes needs a phone laid face-down on the table and nothing else — no app install, no bot in the invite, no explaining what the software on your screen is doing halfway through the conversation.
You have outgrown the free AI summaries
Fathom's free plan records and transcribes without limit, but advanced AI summaries are capped — widely reported at five calls a month. Once your write-ups matter more than your recordings, that ceiling arrives quickly. GetNotes writes full minutes on every meeting on Pro, with summary, decisions and action items with owners.
How GetNotes works
- Record or upload. Hit record on your phone or laptop in the room — or drop in an audio file you already have. No bot joins anything.
- It writes it down. Every word transcribed, every speaker labelled, in 90+ languages including ones that switch mid-sentence.
- Share the minutes.Summary, decisions, and action items with owners — ready before everyone's back at their desk.
Questions, answered
Can Fathom record in-person meetings?
Not in the shipped product as of July 2026. Fathom's bot joins Zoom, Google Meet and Teams, and its help centre says in-person capture is coming soon as part of Fathom for iOS. Verify the current state on their site. GetNotes records in-person meetings from the browser on any phone, with no app, bot or calendar connection.
Does Fathom label individual speakers in a shared meeting room?
Fathom's own documentation says it cannot distinguish between multiple speakers in the same physical room and attributes the audio to the account holder. GetNotes is built around that exact case: it applies speaker diarization to a single shared room microphone, so a five-person table produces five labelled voices in the transcript and in the minutes.
Is GetNotes worth paying for when Fathom is free?
Only if your meetings are in person. Fathom's free tier — unlimited recording, transcription and storage of online calls — is the most generous here and GetNotes does not compete with it for remote calls. GetNotes charges $19 a month for something Fathom does not currently do: capturing a physical room, separating the voices in it and writing the minutes.
How many languages does Fathom support compared with GetNotes?
Fathom's marketing states 30-plus transcription languages as of July 2026, with sources varying between roughly 28 and 38. GetNotes transcribes 99, including Urdu, Hindi and Arabic, and handles meetings where speakers switch language mid-sentence without splitting the record. If your meetings are English-only, that difference will not decide anything.
Other comparisons
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