Fathom is for the
call you are on.
We are for the
room you are in.
Fathom captures online meetings without a bot in the call and is built around sales workflow. MeetNotes records meetings held in a room, and calls through its notetaker. What each is actually for.
Where MeetNotes wins: Blind-scored on a real 31-minute two-language call: MeetNotes 8.1, Fathom 5.7 — clearer speaker turns and the spoken language kept. Fathom got the speaker and company names right where we did not, and we publish that too. Plus meetings in a room, not only on a call.
Why MeetNotes,
not Fathom
Your meeting has no call to attach to. Fathom's capture starts from a computer in a video meeting; ours can start from a phone on a table.
You need a document at the end — a PDF or an editable Word file, in the meeting's language or another one, sendable to people who will never sign up for anything.
The room is multilingual. Code-switching mid-sentence is the normal case here rather than an edge case.
The differences that
actually decide it
Structural facts only — no feature-count scoreboard, and no prices, because prices change and a stale price is a false claim.
| Fathom | MeetNotes | |
|---|---|---|
| Capture point | The computer in the online meeting | The phone in the room, or a notetaker in the call |
| Bot appears in the meeting | No | Only if you send the notetaker — the phone adds no participant |
| In-person meeting with no call | Not what it is built for | What it is built for |
| Shape of the output | Call notes, CRM updates, coaching | Minutes: summary, decisions, action items with owners |
Same recording.
Both tools. Scored blind.
We put a 31-minute online call — three speakers, Hindi and English mixed within sentences — through both and had it scored blind, as Tool A and Tool B. MeetNotes scored higher on all seven criteria rated: 8.1 to 5.7 overall, with the widest gaps on speaker turns and on keeping the spoken language. Fathom's summary came closest, 7.5 to our 8.0.
- Speaker names: Fathom named all three speakers correctly, because it reads the names from the call. We put the wrong name on two of the three — a voice match overrode a speaker introducing themselves.
- Company names: Fathom had both right. Our summary misheard one and got wrong which side was presenting to which.
- Questions by side: Fathom listed the questions each side asked as their own section; our minutes for this call did not.
The judge's scorecard rated speaker attribution for consistency, not for names, so these losses are not in its numbers — we found them checking both outputs against the recording, and we publish them because names are the first thing a reader notices. Since this test, a voice match on call or uploaded audio is only a suggestion until you confirm it, and the minutes no longer say who presented to whom unless someone says so.
One meeting is one meeting: this is what happened to this recording on this day, not a general ranking and not a claim about your audio. Every score, the rubric, and which AI assistant judged the run are on the open challenge page.
When Fathom
still fits
Your meetings are online and you want them captured without a bot showing up as a participant — Fathom does that from a desktop app rather than by joining the call.
You are running a sales or customer-success motion and want the meeting to end in CRM updates, follow-ups and coaching review rather than in a document.
You want your meeting history queryable from the AI assistant you already use.
Where they fit: Fathom's bet — capture the call without putting a robot in it — is a good one, and their sales-workflow depth (scorecards, CRM sync, coaching review) is a product we simply do not build. For an online-meeting sales team, that is the comparison to run. And on the one call we scored side by side, Fathom named every speaker and both companies correctly, which we did not.
Record one meeting.
Run both. Let an AI
judge them blind.
A comparison page written by a vendor is worth nothing next to a test you run on your own audio. Ours is published in full: a protocol, a judge prompt that names no product, and a standing promise to publish the head-to-heads we lose.
- Bot-free capture, desktop app, AI scorecards, CRM sync, and an "Ask Fathom" assistant — fathom.ai — product overview, checked 25 August 2026
Product names are the trademarks of their owners, used here to identify the products compared. If we have got something wrong about Fathom, write to support@getmeetnotes.com and we will correct it on this page.
The only comparison that counts is yours
100 minutes free. Record your next real meeting on both and see.
