Granola vs Fathom: AI Meeting Notes Compared (2026)

Until recently the Granola vs Fathom decision was easy, because it was really a decision about the bot.

Fathom sent a participant into your call, kept the recording, and charged nothing for it. Granola sat on your laptop, listened to the computer's audio, threw the audio away, and charged $14 a month once your free history ran out. You picked based on whether you could stand a "Notetaker" tile on a client call.

Then Fathom added a mode called bot-free transcript only. Nobody joins the call and no audio is kept, which on paper is the Granola deal for free.

Every comparison I read before writing this one (Fireflies' own, plus write-ups from alfred_ and Kai) still frames the choice as bot against no bot. Fireflies mentions Fathom's botless test in a sentence and moves on. None of them works out what that mode leaves Granola to charge for on a Mac, where Fathom can now behave like Granola. Something is left. It's narrower than Granola's fans would like.

The short answer

	Granola	Fathom
Default capture	Your computer's audio, no visible participant	A bot that joins Zoom, Google Meet or Teams
Botless option	The whole product	Bot-free audio + transcript, or transcript only, live on Mac; bot-free video is a limited beta
Keeps the audio	No, deleted after transcription	Yes in bot and audio modes; transcript-only keeps none
Who shapes the note	You, by typing during the call	The AI, from the transcript
Free plan	30 days of history	Unlimited recordings and transcripts; AI action items and Ask Fathom are limited
Paid	Business $14 per user a month, Enterprise $35	Premium $20 a month or $16 billed yearly; Team $19 or $15 per user (two seats minimum); Business $34 or $25 per user
Platforms	Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android, Apple Watch	The bot works wherever your Zoom, Meet or Teams call does; bot-free capture is Mac only for now, and Fathom lists its in-person iOS app as "almost here"

Prices and features are from each company's pricing page and Fathom's What's New page, checked on October 28, 2026.

What Fathom's transcript-only mode actually changes

Quite a lot, if you're a Mac user who never typed notes anyway.

Fathom's What's New page lists four capture choices now: the bot with full video and audio, bot-free video in limited beta, bot-free audio plus transcript, and bot-free transcript only. That last one is the interesting one. It gives you the summary and the transcript with no participant in the call and no recording on file. Fathom also says its botless capture keeps speaker attribution, which is the part I'd test first. Granola's out-of-the-box "Me" and "Them" labels are its weakest feature, as I found out in the Granola vs Otter comparison, and if Fathom names speakers properly without a bot it beats Granola on attribution outright.

Price matters here too. Fathom's pricing page puts no history limit on its free plan. Granola's free plan shows you 30 days. So a freelancer on a MacBook who wants botless notes and won't pay for software now has a real free option that didn't exist before, and I'd tell that person to start with Fathom.

The free plan isn't everything, though. Fathom limits AI action items and its Ask Fathom assistant on the free tier, and the advanced summaries are a Premium feature. Free gets you the summary. Premium gets you the good summary.

What Granola still does that Fathom doesn't

Your typing.

That sounds small, and for some people it's the whole product. In Granola, the fragments I type during a call steer the finished note. Write "pricing ??" and pricing gets its own section, built from what was said about it. Type a number and Granola treats it as mine, so the transcription can't quietly overwrite it. That second habit came out of a scoping call where the AI note said a client's budget was $40,000 and the client had said $14,000. Granola had already deleted the audio, so there was nothing to replay. Typing figures by hand is now how I take every call, and it only works in a tool that respects what you typed.

Fathom's transcript-only mode has the same weakness I had that day, with none of the fix. No audio to check. No typed notes to anchor the numbers. The summary is the AI's reading of the transcript, and if the transcript heard "forty," the summary will say forty with total confidence.

Windows is the other gap, and it's simpler. Fathom lists bot-free capture as live on Mac, with Windows under "coming soon." Granola runs botless on both, plus phones. If half your team is on Windows laptops, the comparison ends here.

The bot is still Fathom's best feature

Odd thing to say in a piece about going botless.

If you run sales calls, the recording is worth more than the privacy. Fathom's Business plan ($25 per user a month billed yearly) adds CRM field sync and coaching metrics, neither of which Granola attempts. Granola's Business tier sends notes to HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, Notion and Zapier, with API and MCP access, and Salesforce waits for its $35 Enterprise plan. That's plumbing for notes. Fathom's is plumbing for a pipeline, and it runs on clips and replays that only exist when something recorded the call.

Our roundup of seven AI meeting note tools named Fathom the best free option, and that was in bot mode. Read it if recording is what you want and the only question left is which recorder. If you're weighing Fathom against the other bot-based tools, the Otter vs Fireflies vs Fathom head-to-head is the next stop.

Which one to install

Install Fathom if you want the recording (sales teams with a CRM, mostly) or botless notes on a Mac without paying anything. Try transcript-only mode on your next internal call and check whether the speaker names hold up. Pay for Premium ($16 billed yearly) only if the free summaries start to feel thin.

Install Granola if you take your own notes during calls and want them to come back better. Same answer if anyone on your team needs botless capture on Windows or a phone. Pay the $14. The free plan's 30-day window means last quarter's calls disappear, and that's usually the week people upgrade.

My pick is Granola, still, for one reason: it's the only one of the two where what I type during the call outranks what the AI heard. For a consultant who settles prices on calls, that's worth $168 a year. For anyone who doesn't type during meetings, it's worth nothing, and Fathom's free plan is the better product.

More head-to-heads like this one live in our comparisons index, and every guide on the site is in the full article library.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Granola or Fathom better?

Granola is better if you type notes during calls and want them rewritten into a finished document, or if you need botless capture on Windows or a phone. Fathom is better if you want a saved recording, sales features like CRM field sync, or free botless notes on a Mac.

Can Fathom record without a bot?

Yes. Fathom offers bot-free audio plus transcript and bot-free transcript only modes, which it lists as live on Mac, and bot-free video in a limited beta. Windows bot-free capture is listed as coming soon. The bot remains the default way Fathom joins Zoom, Google Meet and Teams calls.

Does Granola or Fathom keep meeting audio?

Granola deletes audio after transcription on every plan. Fathom keeps the recording in its bot and bot-free audio modes, and keeps no audio in its bot-free transcript only mode.

How much do Granola and Fathom cost in 2026?

Granola has a free Basic plan with 30 days of history, Business at $14 per user a month, and Enterprise at $35 per user a month. Fathom is free for unlimited recordings and transcripts, Premium is $20 a month or $16 billed yearly, Team is $19 or $15 per user with a two-user minimum, and Business is $34 or $25 per user.