Menutes vs Fathom – In-Depth Comparison (2026)

What is Fathom?

Fathom is a free AI meeting assistant focused on Zoom. It records, transcribes, and summarizes Zoom calls with highlighted moments and action items. Fathom is known for its clean interface and generous free tier, making it popular with individual professionals and small teams.

Feature comparison at a glance

How do the AI summaries compare?

Both Menutes and Fathom generate high-quality AI meeting summaries, but they structure the output differently. Menutes produces formal meeting minutes with distinct sections for decisions made, action items with assignees, and next steps. This format is designed for professional documentation and team alignment.

Fathom takes a more flexible approach with AI-generated highlights, summary paragraphs, and action items. Its interface lets you click on any part of the summary to jump to that moment in the recording. For individual users who want to review key moments quickly, this is intuitive and fast.

The difference matters most for team workflows. Menutes' structured format is immediately shareable as official meeting notes. Fathom's format is better for personal review and catching up on meetings you attended. For distributed teams that need documentation, Menutes saves the formatting step.

What about pricing and the free tier?

Fathom offers one of the most generous free tiers in the industry, offering unlimited Zoom recording and AI summaries at no cost. This makes it a compelling default choice for anyone who primarily uses Zoom. The catch is that Fathom's free plan is limited to individual use.

Menutes' free plan provides 5 hours of transcription per month with 30-day meeting history, including all AI features. While more limited in volume, it covers both in-person and virtual meetings.

On paid plans, the cost difference is significant. Menutes Premium is €10/month. Fathom Standard starts at $32/user/month, over 3x more expensive. For a 10-person team, that's €90/month (Menutes) versus $320/month (Fathom). Fathom's team features include CRM integrations and advanced collaboration, but the price premium is steep for core transcription needs.

Which works better for multilingual teams?

Menutes supports transcription in 50+ languages with AI summarization available across all of them. Whether your team meetings are in German, Spanish, Estonian, or Japanese, Menutes handles the full pipeline: transcription, speaker identification, and structured summary generation.

Fathom supports transcription in 28 languages but its AI summary features are primarily optimized for English. If your meetings are in English, this isn't a limitation. But for teams that regularly meet in other languages, the summary quality drops compared to the transcription quality.

For international organizations, EU-based companies with multilingual teams, or anyone working in languages beyond English, Menutes provides more consistent quality across the entire workflow. This is especially important for formal meeting minutes where summary accuracy in the meeting's language matters.

Who should choose Menutes over Fathom?

Choose Menutes if you need in-person meeting recording, work in languages other than English, require GDPR-compliant EU data hosting, or want structured meeting minutes. Menutes is also significantly more affordable for teams.

Choose Fathom if you exclusively use Zoom, work primarily in English, want a free unlimited recording tool for individual use, or need Fathom's specific CRM integrations for sales workflows.

The key question is whether you ever meet in person. If the answer is yes, Menutes covers your entire meeting workflow. Fathom only handles the virtual portion, leaving a gap for face-to-face conversations, workshops, and in-office meetings.

The verdict

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