Granola vs Fathom

This pair is the bot question with one side that refuses to commit — and refusing to commit turns out to be the strongest position on the page.

Remembering to press record

Granola records on your device. Nothing joins the call, nobody else sees that it is running, and the audio is deleted once the transcript exists. That is a genuinely different product experience from a bot appearing in the participant list.

The cost is stated plainly in Granola's own material: you have to remember to start it, and it will never turn up on its own. A note-taker that misses the meeting produces nothing, and over a busy month that failure mode costs more notes than any feature gap.

Fathom offers a choice between bot and bot-free capture rather than imposing one model, so it can join automatically when you want that and stay out when you do not. The bot-free half is still marked as being in beta, which is the caveat to weigh.

What you get before paying

Fathom gives unlimited recordings, storage and transcription at no cost, and scores 5 for value against Granola's 4 and 5 for ease against Granola's 4. Advanced summaries stop after five calls a month on the free plan, which is the one real limit.

Granola's free tier includes custom note templates and cross-meeting chat, and its notes are shaped around what you type during the call rather than replacing it — the product sharpens your notes rather than writing its own. That suits people who take notes anyway and would not suit people who want to stop.

Coverage is level: Granola scores 4 and Fathom scores 4. Granola offers ten transcription languages on desktop and seventeen on mobile with an English-only interface; Fathom offers thirty-eight, without Mandarin.

Storage separates them. Granola keeps everything in the United States with no regional choice, and training uses anonymised data unless you find the setting and switch it off — a default worth knowing about. Granola scores 3 for privacy and Fathom scores 3 as well.

Which should you choose?

Choose Fathom if you want the recording to happen whether or not you remembered, and you would rather decide about the bot per meeting than once and forever.

Choose Granola if you type during calls and want the tool to improve what you wrote, and you are certain you will remember to start it.