Grain vs Fathom
Grain and Fathom side by side: what each one is, what it costs to start, and whether you can try it free. Everything below comes from the vendors' own sites and other public sources, not from hands-on testing.
At a glance
| Grain | Fathom | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Business & Ops | Business & Ops |
| Starting price | Free; paid plans from $15/mo | Free; paid plans from $15/mo (checked October 2026) |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Profile | Read profile | Read profile |
Prices are in US dollars unless shown otherwise. Confirm the current price on the vendor's site before you buy.
Key differences
Both list a free tier, so you can try each before paying.
Their starting paid plans are listed at the same price, $15/mo.
Both are in our Business & Ops category.
About each tool
Grain
AI notetaker and meeting recorder with transcripts, summaries and sharing. Free plan available; paid plans start at $15 per seat a month billed annually (Reported).
Strengths
- Grain lists Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive and Zapier integrations, plus an MCP server and API for querying transcripts from AI tools.
- Grain says every workspace has Paid seats and free Viewer seats; viewers can watch, comment and see AI notes, and are not billed. A workspace can mix both kinds.
- Grain lists Starter features as custom AI prompts, custom note templates, Ask Grain AI, folders, tagging and API access, and Business features as AI coaching, custom follow-up emails, Trackers, CRM and dialer integrations and the advanced MCP server.
- Grain says it is SOC 2 Type II certified, hosts data on AWS in the USA, encrypts customer data at rest and in transit, and that it and its subprocessors do not use customer data for model training.
- Grain's help center says Grain uses OpenAI's API for summaries, that OpenAI keeps API data up to 30 days for abuse monitoring, and that deleted meetings can be restored for 30 days.
Limitations
- Grain's plans page says Free has no file uploads and caps meetings at 45 minutes, with one Notetaker seat per workspace; personal-email users can record up to 20 meetings via the bot. Grain's home page also lists 90-day history on Free, and Grain's pricing page shows a '20 meetings' limit under Free. Another help article describes Free recordings as unlimited in length, so Grain's own pages disagree.
- Refund terms differ: Grain's FAQ offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, while its Terms of Service say fees are generally non-refundable and subscriptions auto-renew unless notice is given 30 days before the term ends.
- Grain's help center says AI features cannot currently be disabled, data is hosted in the USA, and the Terms limit use to internal business purposes; users are responsible for recording-consent laws.
Fathom
AI meeting notetaker for Zoom, Meet and Teams with a free plan; paid plans start at $15 per user a month billed annually (Team, 2-user minimum).
Who it is for
Fathom sells individual plans (Free, Premium) and team plans (Team, Business, Enterprise), so it suits solo users as well as teams that want shared call libraries. Its Business tier adds CRM field sync, Deal View and coaching scorecards aimed at sales-style use; Fathom says phone calls are not supported.
Strengths
- Fathom's pricing page lists unlimited recordings and transcriptions on every plan, including Free, and offers a choice of bot or bot-free capture (bot-free is marked beta).
- Fathom says it works on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Slack huddles, with bot-free capture on Mac and in-person meetings through the iOS app.
- Fathom's help center says transcription covers 38 languages, and CRM sync to HubSpot, Salesforce and Close works on Free and Premium for up to 3 users per email domain.
- Fathom's overview page names integrations including Asana, ChatGPT, Claude, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, Slack, Notion and a public API and MCP.
- Fathom says its AI subprocessors (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google) do not train on user data, and reports SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and GDPR compliance; it will sign a DPA on request.
- The pricing page shows a 90 day guarantee on all plans, a free Team offer for eligible startups (up to 2 years) and 10 free seats for qualifying nonprofits.
Limitations
- Fathom says it uses de-identified customer data to improve its own AI models (opt-out in My Settings; Team admins can opt out all users), and that all data is stored in the United States.
- Fathom's own pages differ on languages: the overview page lists native transcription and summaries in seven languages (Premium and Team) with Ask Fathom translating into 29 more, while the help center says 38 transcription languages. The pricing page's feature grid is also hard to map to each plan.
