Where Fathom is the better choice
Fathom is a genuinely good AI notetaker, and it’s generous — the free tier records and summarizes a lot without asking for a card. If you live inside Zoom, Google Meet and Teams, want CRM sync (HubSpot, Salesforce), and are happy for a bot to join and handle the call for you, Fathom is hard to beat. Its summaries and action items are fast and clean, and sharing a searchable recording with a distributed team is one click.
If that’s your workflow — cloud, cross-platform, hands-off — use Fathom.
Where MeetingRecorder wins
The trade-off is that a bot joins your meetings and your calls live on Fathom’s servers. MeetingRecorder takes the opposite stance and is built around the recording itself:
- Nothing joins the call. No “Fathom has joined” in the participant list. Disclosure stays your call, not the tool’s.
- You keep the actual audio file. The M4A is saved to a folder on your Mac — not just notes in a cloud you can lose access to. Replay it, re-transcribe it, archive it.
- Everything stays local unless you choose to transcribe. No account to create.
- It records any app’s audio, not just meetings — a webinar, an interview, a video.
You still get the part people want from Fathom — a clean transcript and a short summary with action items — produced locally, one click after the call.
Bottom line
Pick Fathom if you want cloud AI notes across Zoom/Meet/Teams with CRM sync and don’t mind the bot. Pick MeetingRecorder if you’re on a Mac and want both sides captured privately, the raw recording kept local, and no bot in the room. Download it here — no sign-up.
Looking at Otter too? See our Otter.ai alternative for Mac.