Assistly vs Fathom: an honest comparison (2026)
By The Assistly team ·
Fathom is probably the first AI meeting tool most people ever used. It's a notetaker bot with a useful free plan that joins your Zoom, Meet, or Teams call, records it, and hands you a tidy summary with action items when it's over. If you're weighing it against Assistly, the core difference is architectural: Fathom puts a bot in the call and helps you after it. Assistly stays off the participant list and helps you during it.
At a glance
| Assistly | Fathom | |
|---|---|---|
| Live answers while the question is still being asked | Yes, auto-assist, hands-free | No, the summary arrives after the call |
| No bot joins the call | Yes, works from your computer's audio | A "Fathom Notetaker" bot joins, visible to everyone |
| Visible to other participants | No. Nothing in the participant list, and the overlay is excluded from screen capture at the OS level | Yes. The bot appears, and recording is announced |
| Works on calls you can't record | Yes | Not really, since recording is the product |
| Video recording & shareable clips | No, Assistly isn't a recorder | Yes, its core feature, done well |
| Guidance for sales calls, meetings & interviews | Yes: talking points, objection handling, structured answers | No, recap only |
| Notes & action items after the session | Yes, automatic summary | Yes, polished summaries, highlights, CRM sync |
| Multi-speaker context (who said what) | Yes, live | Yes, in the transcript |
| Price | $14.99/mo, or $9/mo billed annually; free plan with 3 sessions/month | Solid free tier; premium & team plans reported around $15–29/user/mo |
| Platforms | Native macOS & Windows apps | Bot-based, tied to Zoom, Meet & Teams |
Pricing for both moves around; check each site for current numbers. Fathom's figures here are as reported in mid-2026.
What Fathom does well
The free plan is the honest headline. Recording, transcription, and summaries at a price of zero is why Fathom spread through sales teams and one-on-ones everywhere. The summaries are good, highlight clips are easy to share, and the CRM integrations (HubSpot, Salesforce) save reps real admin time. If what you need is a faithful, searchable record of your calls with the follow-up half-written, Fathom is a strong default and the price is hard to beat.
Where the bot model costs you
Everything Fathom does follows from one decision: a bot joins the call.
- Everyone knows it's there. The bot sits in the participant list and recording is announced. That's the right thing for a recorder to do, but it changes the room. Plenty of prospects, candidates, and counterparties ask for the bot to be removed, and some companies ban notetaker bots outright (we've written about how teams weigh notetaker bots).
- No help when it counts. Fathom can tell you tomorrow that you fumbled the pricing question. It cannot put the answer in front of you while the prospect is still talking. The value is entirely retrospective.
- It only works where bots can go. Calls on platforms without bot support, meetings you're not hosting, and conversations you can't record all fall outside the model. Assistly works from your computer's audio, so it works with any call app, with no integration and no invite.
How Assistly is different
- Help during the call. When a question lands, talking points and structured guidance stream into an overlay only you can see. There is no hotkey, no prompt, and no break in eye contact.
- Nothing joins the call. No bot in the participant list, nothing announced, and the overlay is excluded from screen capture at the OS level, so it never shows in a share or recording. Other people see only you.
- The recap is still there. Every session ends with a summary, decisions, and action items. The notetaker's job is included.
- It knows who's talking, live. Speaker-level context during the call, so the guidance addresses the right person rather than only labeling the transcript afterward.
- It sounds like you. Personas built from your CV, docs, and notes, with modes for sales calls, client reviews, and interview rounds.
Which should you choose?
If you need recordings, clips, and CRM-synced summaries, and everyone on your calls is fine being recorded, Fathom's free plan is hard to argue with. If what you want is to be sharper in the conversation, with the answer ready while the question is still being asked, notes and action items at the end, and nothing visible to anyone else, that's Assistly.
It's free to try: 3 sessions a month with the full feature set. Get started for free, or see how it compares to a bot-free notepad in Assistly vs Granola.