Otter vs Fathom vs Granola vs Fireflies: AI notetakers

AI notetakers have become one of the most common uses of AI at work. All four tools in this comparison transcribe meetings and write summaries, so the differences lie elsewhere: whether a bot joins the call, how much of the work is automatic, what happens to notes afterwards, and how the free tier compares with the paid plans.

The short answer

• Choose Granola if you want notes that build on what you type yourself, with no bot in the meeting.
• Choose Fathom if you want instant summaries after every call, with a choice between a bot and bot-free capture.
• Choose Otter if you need live transcription, searchable meeting knowledge and CRM updates for a sales team.
• Choose Fireflies if your conversations happen across video calls, phone dialers, in person and uploaded recordings.

Side by side

Bot or no bot?

The most visible difference is whether an extra participant appears in your meetings. Fireflies and Otter traditionally send a notetaker into the call, which makes recording obvious to everyone but can feel intrusive in client meetings. Granola only listens to your computer’s audio, so nothing joins the call. Fathom offers both modes, with bot-free capture still labelled beta on Mac, and Otter can also record from the desktop without a bot.

Bot-free does not mean consent-free. Recording laws in many places require every participant to agree, and some organisations forbid recording entirely. Granola includes a way to let others know it is in use; whichever tool you pick, tell participants and follow your company’s policy.

Automatic notes or notes you write?

Otter, Fathom and Fireflies aim to remove note-taking altogether: you attend the meeting and receive a summary with action items. Granola takes a different view. You type rough notes during the call, and it combines them with the transcript, so the final document reflects what you judged important. People who think while writing often prefer this; people who want zero effort usually prefer the fully automatic tools.

After the meeting

For sales teams, the value is often in what happens next. Otter and Fathom can push call notes into CRM fields, and Otter’s AI Chat answers questions across many meetings. Fathom makes meeting data available inside assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude. Fireflies stands out for breadth of sources, handling phone dialers and recorded files alongside video meetings, while Granola focuses on clean notes that move into tools such as Notion or HubSpot.

How to decide

1. List where your conversations happen: video calls, phone, in person or recordings.
2. Decide whether a visible bot is acceptable for your clients and colleagues.
3. Run each candidate’s free tier on the same three meetings and compare the summaries with what actually mattered.
4. Check the integration that matters most to you, such as your CRM or note app, on the plan you would buy.
5. Review retention, sharing and model-training settings before rolling the tool out to a team.

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