Fathom Free gives you plenty of minutes, but the bot still joins, recordings live in Fathom's cloud, and the AI features you want sit behind Premium at $24 per seat per month. Quietly captures on your Mac with no third party in the call, writes plain Markdown to your folder, and costs $49 once.
Plain .md. Front-matter has attendees, calendar, duration. Body is clean, LLM-polished Whisper output.
“Fathom has joined the meeting.” Your customers, your candidates, and your legal counterparties all see the bot in the room.
Recordings live in Fathom's cloud. A terms change, a breach, or an acquisition turns them into a problem you have to explain.
The free tier is a funnel. AI summaries, CRM push, and ask-AI all sit behind Premium ($24 per seat) and Team Edition.
Notes stay inside Fathom. They open in Fathom and the tools Fathom integrates with. Cursor, Codex, and Claude need workarounds.
| Quietly | Fathom | |
|---|---|---|
| No bot joins the call | Bot in every call | |
| Where recordings live | Your Mac, Markdown | Fathom's cloud |
| AI summaries | Chat on a local model or your own key | Premium tier only |
| MCP for Claude / Cursor / Codex | Shipping next | |
| Works fully offline | ||
| Open in VS Code / any editor | ||
| In-person / hallway capture | Mic + Transcribe a file… | Meeting links only |
| Pricing | $49 once | Free / $24 seat / $32 team |
If these matter more to you, stick with Fathom.
Fathom Team Edition writes call notes into CRM records for you. With Quietly, your own script reads the Markdown and pushes it where you need it.
Fathom's free tier is unusually generous. If you can live with the bot, the cloud, and the upsell, it costs nothing.
Fathom runs on Mac, Windows, and phones. Quietly is macOS-only today.
No “Fathom has joined the meeting.” Quietly captures system audio and your mic on your Mac, so no extra participant shows up in the call.
Audio stays on disk, and so do the transcript and summary when Chat runs on a local model in Ollama or LM Studio. Fathom uploads every recording to its cloud and runs its AI server-side.
Fathom Premium costs $24 per seat per month to unlock summaries, ask-AI, and CRM. Quietly costs $49 once with every feature included and no per-seat math.
Fathom's “ask AI” runs on Fathom's servers with Fathom's prompts. Quietly's built-in Chat answers on a local model through Ollama or LM Studio, or with your own Anthropic or OpenAI key, and cites the transcript. You can also point Claude, GPT, Cursor, or Codex at the Markdown yourself.
A hallway chat, a customer dinner, a conference panel, a voice memo. Open Quietly and press ⌘R for the mic, or pick Transcribe a file… for any audio file. Fathom needs a meeting link.
Plain .md in your repo, your iCloud folder, any folder you pick. Fathom lets you export. Quietly's notes start out as files.
Export from Fathom. Account → Export. You get a folder of summaries, transcripts, and action items.
Drop the files into your Quietly folder. iCloud, your repo, any folder you point Quietly at.
Keep recording. Cursor, Codex CLI, and Claude Desktop can read your back catalogue, and new recordings save next to the old ones.
For help with a Fathom Team Edition export, email support@meetquietly.com.
Or read the buyer’s guides: best local meeting note takers for Mac and AI note takers that don’t join your meetings.
Free 7-day trial · No account, no card. 7-day refund. $49 once, no subscription.