Fathom vs Fireflies for a Small Team: Free Plans, Limits and CRM Sync

For most small teams Fathom is the easier start, because its free plan lists unlimited recordings and transcripts with instant AI summaries. Fireflies wins on the cheapest paid seat, $10 a month on annual billing, but its free plan caps storage at 400 minutes and gives 20 AI credits. Both keep CRM field updates for their business tiers.

The two tools look alike from outside: a bot joins your call, records it, and sends a summary. Where they differ is what you are rationed on. Fathom rations features by plan; Fireflies rations storage and AI credits. That one difference decides which free plan survives a real month of meetings.

Follow me on Instagram@sagnikteaches

Free plans side by side

These are the lines on each vendor's pricing page in November 2026. Where a page was silent, I have said so rather than guessing.

Connect on LinkedInSagnik Bhattacharya

The big difference is the storage row. Fireflies' 400 minutes is about six and a half hours of meetings for the whole team, which a small firm can fill in a fortnight. After that you are deciding which old recordings to delete or whether to pay. Fathom's help centre says free users can store unlimited recordings, so the constraint you meet is a feature one: no shared workspace, no team-wide search, no action-item extraction beyond the basics.

Subscribe on YouTube@sagnikteaches

Fireflies' own pages disagree on two details, so read them carefully. The pricing page says 400 minutes per team, while its free plan guide and storage guide say 400 minutes per seat. The AI credits guide calls the 20 free credits a one-time sign-up allowance, while the free plan guide calls them monthly. The free plan guide also explains the "limited summaries" line: you get transcription credits on sign-up (3 through the website, 5 through the Chrome extension, 10 as a new mobile app user), and each one is spent when a meeting is summarised. Fathom's page gives no count of free summaries. Check both in your own account during a week of real meetings rather than assuming.

What 400 minutes means for a real team

Take an illustrative childcare nursery with four staff. They hold a weekly 45-minute management meeting, four parent consultations a week at 20 minutes, and a monthly 60-minute staff meeting. That is about 45 + 80 = 125 minutes a week, plus the monthly meeting. Over a month it comes to roughly 560 minutes.

The free allowance runs out in the third week, so this nursery would either delete recordings as it goes, which defeats the point of searchable history, or move to Pro, which lists 8,000 minutes of storage per seat. If your account follows the per-seat wording in Fireflies' guides instead, four seats hold 1,600 minutes and the nursery fills them in under three months rather than three weeks; either way the wall arrives. Fathom's free plan has no storage limit, so the same nursery would not hit a minutes wall, though it might hit a feature wall.

A team with fewer meetings, such as a two-person consultancy with six calls a week, could live on Fireflies Free for a couple of months. The sums are simple: multiply meetings by average length, and compare it to 400.

What Fireflies credits do, and why Fathom has no equivalent

Fireflies' 20 free credits are consumed by its advanced AI features, not by transcription. Its guide says transcription is not charged in credits. The features that use credits include AI Skills (templates such as BANT or interview feedback), soundbites, custom summary sections, Voice Agents, Sales Assist, the Slack assistant, CRM autofill and live questions. The guide says the allowance is one-time on the free plan and pooled across the team, that credits are charged per query (a complex request costs more than a simple one), and that a free user who runs out meets a paywall rather than a charge. The full mechanics are in the tutorial on Fireflies credits.

For a small team this matters because 20 credits, spread over a team, go quickly if someone enables a scheduled feature. Fathom's pricing page describes no credit system; its limits are tied to which plan you are on. Whether that is better depends on your temperament: a plan ladder is predictable, a credit meter is flexible but needs watching.

CRM sync: the feature that justifies the paid plans

If your sales conversations should land in a CRM, this is the section that decides.

Fathom. Its CRM integrations page lists HubSpot and Salesforce on every plan, Free included, for pushing the summary and action items onto the meeting record; the pricing page notes a "Max 3 users/domain" limit on CRM syncs below Business. Writing into named CRM fields is CRM field sync, which sits on Business with Deal View, coaching metrics and AI scorecards. Business is $25 a seat on annual billing ($34 monthly), with a two-user minimum.

Fireflies. Its free plan guide says all its integrations, CRMs included, are available on Free. Autofill CRM is the field-level feature: it fills HubSpot contact, company and deal properties, including custom ones that already exist in HubSpot, and the credits guide says it also pushes to Salesforce. Fireflies' help article says Autofill CRM is on Business and Enterprise only and uses one AI credit each time meeting data is extracted, however many fields you map. Business includes 30 credits, pooled across the team, so a sales team autofilling 60 calls a month uses them in about a fortnight. After that Fireflies moves you onto its lowest paid credit tier, $5 a month for 50 credits, unless you pause auto-upgrades.

So the comparison for CRM sync is not just sticker price. It is the sticker price plus any credits the sync consumes. Here is a filled-in test you can run before committing, illustrative only:

Pick 10 recent sales calls.
For each, list the CRM fields you retype: budget, timeline, decision maker, next step.
Run the tool's sync on all 10.
Score each field: correct / wrong / blank.
Fathom Business: __ of 40 fields correct.
Fireflies Business (Autofill CRM): __ of 40 correct, and credits used: __

If one tool gets 35 of 40 right and the other 25, you have your answer, whatever the price. The tutorial on updating the CRM after sales calls shows the general method.

Pricing for five people, annual and monthly

From the vendors' pages, per seat per month: Fathom Premium $16 annual and $20 monthly, Team $15 and $19, Business $25 and $34. Fireflies Pro $10 annual and $18 monthly, Business $19 and $29, Enterprise $39 annual only.

Fireflies Pro is the cheapest paid tier on annual billing, at $25 a month less than Fathom Team. But Fathom Team includes shared folders, comments, trackers and team-wide search, while Fireflies Pro includes 8,000 minutes of storage per seat, unlimited summaries and 20 credits. They are not the same bundle, so compare what you would use. Note also that Fireflies' monthly price is much higher than its annual one ($18 against $10 for Pro), so commit to annual only after your trial period.

Storage and credits at the paid tiers

Fireflies Pro lists 8,000 minutes of storage per seat, which is more than 133 hours. A person recording ten hours of meetings a week would take about three months to fill it. Business lists unlimited storage and 30 AI credits. Enterprise lists 50 credits and, among other controls, private storage and custom retention.

Fathom's paid plans do not describe a storage cap on the page, so the question there is features. Premium adds advanced summaries, AI action items and a conversational assistant; Team adds the shared workspace and team security controls; Business adds CRM field sync and coaching tools.

A care agency with eight staff, each recording around six hours of meetings a month, would store about 48 hours a month, and in a year that is roughly 576 hours across the team, or 72 hours per seat. Even Pro's per-seat storage would not fill in the first year, so for them storage is not the deciding factor and credits and CRM are.

Sharing notes with people outside the team

Notes are only useful when the right person sees them. Two questions come up quickly: can a client or a supplier read the summary, and can you send a clip rather than a whole call? Fathom's free plan lists clips and playlists, which suits sending a thirty-second excerpt of an agreed decision. Fireflies lists search, an assistant and a Chrome extension on Free, and its paid tiers add transcript downloads and video recording on Pro.

In practice most small teams share a summary by pasting it into an email or a project tool. Test that route in the bake-off: how many clicks from the end of the call to a clean summary in the colleague's inbox? A tool that needs six steps will not be used on a busy Friday. Time yourself on three calls and write the number down.

Call ended 14:30 -> summary ready 14:32
Open summary, copy action items: 40 seconds
Paste into email to client, edit two lines: 2 minutes
Total hands-on time per call: about 3 minutes

Decision worksheet for a team of four to ten

Print this, fill it in with the team, and the choice often makes itself. The answers below are illustrative, for a care agency of six.

1. Meetings recorded per month: 55
2. Average length: 30 minutes  ->  1,650 minutes a month
3. Needs shared folders and comments? Yes
4. Needs CRM sync? No (spreadsheet only)
5. Handles sensitive client details? Yes -> read retention terms first
6. Budget per seat per month: under $20
Result: 1,650 minutes a month outgrows Fireflies Free (400 minutes) within two months, even on the per-seat reading.
Shortlist: Fathom Team ($15 annual, $19 monthly) and Fireflies Pro ($10 annual, $18 monthly).

Notice how question two did the heavy lifting. A quick multiplication removed one free plan and narrowed the field to two paid ones. Do that sum before you read another review.

Setting up either tool in the first hour

Both tools connect to your calendar and join the meetings you mark, so the first hour is mostly permissions. A sensible order is to connect one person's calendar only, choose which meetings are recorded (all, or only those you invite the bot to), and add the consent line to your standard meeting invitation. A one-sentence line works: "We use an AI note-taker in this meeting; tell me beforehand if you would rather it was off."

Then run one internal meeting, not a client call, and check three things: did the bot join on time, did the transcript capture names correctly, and where did the summary arrive? Fix settings before inviting the rest of the team. If the bot fails to join, calendar permissions are the usual cause, and the Fireflies not joining tutorial walks through them; for Fathom, check that the recurring-meeting setting captures series as well as one-off events.

A worked month for a two-person consultancy

Say a two-person consultancy runs six client calls a week, averaging 35 minutes. That is 210 minutes a week, or about 840 in a four-week month. On Fireflies Free, 400 minutes lasts about two weeks (about a month if the limit is per seat), so they would delete recordings or upgrade. On Fathom Free they would keep recording. If they need no sharing beyond emailing summaries, Fathom Free costs $0 for the year. If they later want shared notes, Team needs two users and costs $30 a month annually. Fireflies Pro for two is $20 a month annually and gives 8,000 minutes per seat, so storage would never bite. In this case the price gap is $10 a month, and the deciding factor is whether they value shared folders over storage headroom.

That is a very different answer from the five-person nursery, which shows why a single winner does not exist. The arithmetic is the argument.

Privacy and consent are part of the comparison

Both tools record people who may not have chosen to be recorded, so settle consent before cost. At minimum, tell attendees before you record and give them a way to opt out. On model training, the two vendors say different things. Fireflies' pricing page says your data is never used for AI training. Fathom's help centre says its AI sub-processors are not contractually permitted to train on your data, but Fathom itself uses de-identified customer data to improve its own models unless you opt out in My Settings; on a team plan an admin can opt out every user from the organisation settings page. Read each vendor's privacy policy yourself and compare them on four points:

• Is your meeting content used to train AI models, and can you opt out?
• How long are recordings and transcripts kept, and can you set the retention yourself?
• Who inside the company can access recordings?
• Can an administrator delete a departing employee's recordings?

Fireflies lists custom data retention, private storage and audit logs on Enterprise, and Fathom lists custom data retention on Enterprise and team security controls on Team. If you handle sensitive client matters, those controls may decide the contest for you. The Otter consent and storage tutorial lists settings worth checking in any note-taker.

Two meeting types, two different winners

A music school's parent consultations. Short calls, mostly internal use, no CRM. The office wants search ("what did we promise about the exam fee?") and shared notes. Fathom Free or Team fits, since there is no storage meter and shared folders arrive on Team. Fireflies Free would fill its 400 minutes within weeks.

A kitchen fitter's sales calls. Three people take enquiries, quote, and log details in HubSpot. They need budget, room dimensions and timeline in the CRM. Either Fathom Business or Fireflies Business with Autofill CRM works on paper; the ten-call test above decides. The tie-breaker is cost per month once credits are included, because a busy week of calls can spend the Fireflies credit pool.

A third case: a care agency recording supervision meetings. Here the sensitive content makes retention and access controls the first filter, and price the second. Look at the plans with team security controls and custom retention, and ask the vendor in writing how deletion works.

A two-week bake-off you can run

1. Days 1 to 2. Sign up to both on free plans using the same calendar. Decide which meetings each will record. Do not put both bots into one meeting.
2. Days 3 to 12. Alternate: Fathom on Monday, Wednesday and Friday meetings, Fireflies on Tuesday and Thursday, or split by team.
3. Day 13. Open five summaries from each. For each, record whether you used it without editing, edited it, or ignored it.
4. Day 14. Add up what you hit: storage warnings, credit warnings, missing features. Decide on evidence.

A filled-in scorecard might read: "Fathom: 4 of 5 summaries used as written, no limit hit. Fireflies: 3 of 5, 140 of 400 storage minutes used, 6 of 20 credits spent." The point is to leave with numbers, not impressions.

Where each tool disappoints

A fair warning before the detail: a free plan is a trial with good manners, not a promise. Vendors change limits, so screenshot the plan page the day you start and note the date, which gives you something to point to if a limit tightens later.

Fathom's free plan has no shared workspace, so notes stay with whoever recorded the call, and the first time a colleague asks "can you send me the transcript?" you will feel it. Its bot-free capture is marked beta and Mac only. Fireflies' free plan quickly runs into storage, and if a team enables scheduled AI features such as daily digests, credits drain without anyone noticing; its guide says Daily Digest and Meeting Prep are on by default and use credits, and that you can see usage in settings. When you run short mid-cycle on a paid plan, Fireflies' guide says it can auto-upgrade you to a higher credit tier, so check the billing settings and pause auto-upgrades if you want a fixed bill.

Both can mishear names and jargon. Whichever you pick, read the first ten summaries before trusting the next hundred. For a hybrid route that sends notes into task tools, see Fathom or Fireflies with Zapier into Asana.

The choice in one table

Confirm every price on the day you buy, because both vendors change plans often. If you are still undecided after the bake-off, Read AI is a third option worth a look, and the Fireflies alternatives roundup goes wider.

Fathom versus Fireflies: the follow-up questions

Which has the better free plan?

For raw capacity, Fathom: its pricing page lists unlimited recordings and transcripts with instant AI summaries. Fireflies offers unlimited transcription but limited summaries (its free plan guide gives 3 summary credits for a website sign-up), 400 minutes of storage and 20 AI credits. Fireflies' free plan suits trying features; Fathom's suits running real meetings.

Do both put a bot in the meeting?

Both offer a bot that joins the call, and both list a way round it. Fathom's pricing page shows bot-free capture as a beta feature for Mac; Fireflies' comparison table lists recording through its Chrome extension without the bot. Check how each tool appears to guests, and tell attendees before you record.

Can I use both tools at once?

You can, but two bots in one meeting looks clumsy and doubles the consent conversation. Run each on a different set of meetings for two weeks instead, then compare the notes you actually used.

Which is cheaper for ten people?

On annual billing from the vendors' pages, Fireflies Pro at $10 a seat is $100 a month and Fathom Team at $15 a seat is $150. Business tiers are $190 and $250. Cheaper is not the same as better, so judge on what the notes let you skip doing.

Further reads

• Fathom Pricing for Teams: Premium vs Team vs Business Plans — Fathom's plan ladder with totals for a five-person team.
• Fireflies for Nonprofits: Can It Write Board Minutes Safely? — Set up Fireflies for board meetings the safe way: consent notice, a minutes template, a review step before trustees approve, and where the transcript lives.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: Fathom's pricing page, CRM integrations page and help centre (HubSpot integration, recordings, security); Fireflies' pricing page and its guides to AI credits, the Free plan, storage limits and Autofill CRM; all read in November 2026.