Is Fathom Free? What the $0 AI Note Taker Includes and Limits

Yes. Fathom has a Free plan at $0 with no time limit, and it is generous exactly where most free note takers hold back: recordings, transcription, storage, call downloads and clips are all unlimited.^[1] The limits sit in the AI layer. Advanced AI summaries cover your first 5 calls each month, and later calls get the General/Enhanced template instead. Ask Fathom works in limited form, AI action items and follow-up emails need Premium, and there is no shared team workspace. For one person who mainly needs a searchable record of calls, Free is enough. Pay when you want the AI to do the after-call work.

What $0 buys, line by line

The unlimited rows carry the most weight. Free keeps every call you capture with audio or video until you delete it, transcribes in 38 languages, and lets you download recordings and cut clips into playlists. Capture runs through the Fathom Notetaker bot on Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, or through bot-free capture in the Mac desktop app, which is still a beta with a phased rollout. One nuance matters. A meeting captured in Transcript Only mode saves no recording, so there is nothing to play back or clip.

Search across your own calls, Slack, Asana, the public API and the MCP connection to ChatGPT and Claude are on Free as well, and so is the iPhone app for in-person meetings. Why so much at no cost? Fathom's help center says it will always keep a free version for individuals, and that the free app exists because it brings in leads for its team product. That explains the plan's shape. Folders, comments, team playlists, Trackers and team search all begin at Team. Sharing still works: people you send a link to can watch without an account.

Five advanced summaries, then a rationed assistant

This is where the unlimited label stops.^[2] Advanced AI summaries, including the 15-plus pre-built templates such as BANT and Sandler, apply to your first 5 calls each month. From the sixth call on, Fathom still summarizes every meeting, but only with its General/Enhanced template. Fathom does not publish the day the monthly count resets. Someone with three external calls a week uses up the allowance during the second week of the count, and every later call that month gets the standard summary.

Ask Fathom, the chat assistant that answers questions about a call, is marked limited use on Free, and Fathom publishes no quota for it. The account-wide version that searches across your history is a beta, and on Free it reaches only your own calls. Two things are simply absent. AI action items and AI follow-up email drafts start at Premium, so on Free you pull tasks out of the summary yourself. A custom bot name and hiding the in-meeting recording banner also need Premium, which means the bot shows up under its default name.

Automation is rationed the same way. Zapier and Make (the automation platform) are listed as limited use on Free and on Premium, and they open up in full only from Team. CRM sync with HubSpot, Salesforce or Close works on Free, but for at most 3 users per email domain, a cap that lifts only on Business. A solo seller can log call summaries to the CRM at no cost. A larger sales team on one company domain hits the ceiling after the third person.

Signing up, and the 30-day Premium preview

The sign-up gate has conditions worth knowing first. Fathom accepts sign-in only with a Google or Microsoft account; there is no separate password.^[3] A Google or Outlook calendar must be connected as well.^[4] New accounts on a consumer address such as gmail.com need a Zoom, Meet or Teams meeting scheduled within the next seven days, and a blocked user cannot open another free account with the same email. In practice, a work address with real meetings on the calendar is the smooth path in.

New accounts do not start on the bare Free plan. Every sign-up gets a Premium preview for 30 days, after which the account reverts to Free on its own. Arriving through a referral stretches the preview to 60 days, and the person who referred you earns 30 extra days of Premium; both rules apply to individual users only. Fathom does not publish whether a card is needed for the preview. Use the month deliberately. Compare the advanced summaries and action items with what you will get from the sixth call onward.

When the preview ends, nothing you recorded disappears. Free keeps storage unlimited, so the library stays searchable and playable. What goes away is the Premium layer: action items, follow-up drafts, advanced summaries beyond five calls a month and the custom bot name. Teams follow a separate path. The pricing page offers a Team trial for 2 or more users, but Fathom does not publish its length, and if it ends without a purchase the Team account goes inactive and team calls switch off for everyone on it.

When paying beats staying on Free

Start with a headcount. For one person, Premium is the cheapest paid plan at $16 per user per month billed annually or $20 per user per month billed monthly. Team costs $15 per user per month billed annually or $19 per user per month billed monthly, but it has a 2-user minimum. A solo buyer on Team pays for two seats: by our arithmetic, that is $360 a year billed annually ($180 per user a year for 2 users), against $192 per user a year billed annually for Premium. So one person upgrades to Premium, and the case is strongest past 5 calls a month.

The order flips at two people. By our arithmetic, two users on Premium cost $384 a year billed annually or $480 a year billed monthly ($192 or $240 per user a year), while two users on Team cost $360 a year billed annually or $456 a year billed monthly ($180 or $228 per user a year). Team is therefore $12 per user a year cheaper on either billing term, $24 a year for the two users. Team also unlocks the shared workspace, Trackers and team search. Nonprofits can apply for 10 free seats, and startups backed by investors in Fathom's Qualified Portfolio Program can get up to 2 years of Team at no cost.

The billing term deserves its own check. Fathom labels annual billing «save 25%+», but by our arithmetic Premium billed annually saves 20% against monthly billing. Also by our arithmetic, monthly billing stays cheaper if you would cancel within 9 months: nine months at $20 per user per month billed monthly is $180 per user, below the $192 per user a year billed annually, while ten months billed monthly reach $200 per user. Fathom advertises a 90-day money-back guarantee on paid plans but does not publish its conditions; its Terms of Service say fees are non-refundable. Cancelling drops the account back to Free, which keeps recording. Our Fathom pricing guide covers Business and Enterprise.

Free against Granola, Fireflies, Otter and Read AI

Most rival free tiers ration capture minutes or history, while Fathom rations AI depth. Granola's Basic plan is also free with no time limit and allows unlimited meetings, but the app shows only the last 30 days of meeting history, Slack is its only integration, and it has no API or follow-up emails. Granola never records audio, so there is nothing to play back. Fathom Free, by contrast, keeps playable recordings with no history window at all.

Fireflies' free plan caps storage at 400 minutes per team and allows no downloads and no integrations. Its accounts created from September 2026 get between 3 and 10 transcription credits depending on the sign-up route, with unlimited transcription only when calendar auto-join is on. Otter's Basic plan gives 300 transcription minutes per user a month, shows only the first 30 minutes of each conversation's transcript and keeps the 25 most recent conversations in view. Read AI's free plan allows 5 meeting reports a month, counts shared reports, ends meetings at one hour and deletes recordings after 180 days.

Fathom's free plan does not lead everywhere. It accepts no uploaded files, while Otter's Basic plan allows 3 lifetime imports. It has no Android app, and Granola, Fireflies and Otter each offer one. It records only live Zoom, Meet, Teams and Slack Huddle calls plus in-person iPhone meetings, with no phone calls. For a product-by-product look at where each rival fits better, see our Fathom alternatives guide.

The bottom line

Fathom Free is a working plan, not a trial. It records, transcribes, stores and lets you download your calls without a cap, and it has no time limit. What it withholds is the finishing work: advanced summaries after the fifth call each month, action items, follow-up drafts and team sharing. Stay on Free if you mainly need a searchable archive of your own meetings. Move to Premium as a solo user once AI drafting saves you real time, or to Team from the second seat. Our Fathom review weighs the product as a whole.