Fathom took the bot out. The audio still goes to a server.

A year ago this page would have been easy to write and mostly wrong by now. Fathom has shipped bot-free capture. Its own bot-free page describes a bot-free beta that drops the bot while keeping speaker attribution and mute acknowledgement, says it is currently Mac-only, and says the Free plan lets you choose bot or bot-free capture at no cost. Fathom's product updates set out four ways to record a call: a bot with full video and audio, bot-free video in limited beta for Zoom, bot-free audio with a transcript, and bot-free transcript only.

So the argument most local notetakers reach for first does not apply here, and this page will not pretend otherwise.

The verdict. Fathom's free tier includes unlimited recordings and transcriptions with instant AI summaries, clips, playlists and search across calls. If price is what brought you, stop reading and take it; nothing this app does is worth $19 to somebody for whom $0 already works. Fathom is also the more connected product by a wide margin, with Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Asana, Zapier, Make, ChatGPT, Claude, a public API and MCP.

Coii AudioNotes exists for the calls where the destination of the audio is the whole question. It is $19 once, macOS 13 or later, and the recording, the transcript, the speaker separation and the minutes all happen on your own machine, including with the network off. Nothing is uploaded at any stage. That is the entire product, and it is a narrow argument that either decides your choice immediately or does not apply to you at all.

What "bot-free" changes and what it does not

Removing the bot changes what the other people on the call see. It does not change where the recording is processed.

Fathom without a bot still captures on your machine and still sends the work to Fathom's service, because a hosted notetaker is a hosted notetaker — that is how search across calls, clips, playlists, the CRM integrations and access from a browser work at all. Nothing about that is hidden or unusual; it is the shape of the product, and it is the shape of nearly everything in this category.

Coii AudioNotes has no second half. Transcription runs on your Mac, segment by segment, while the meeting is still going. The summary is written by a language model bundled with the app, so it runs on the Mac too. The only network traffic the app makes at all is activating your licence and checking the clock at launch — no analytics, no crash reporting, no update check, and no audio.

For most meetings that difference is academic and you should not pay for it. For some it is the only thing that matters: a client's unreleased numbers, a candidate explaining why they are leaving, a conversation under an NDA with a named counterparty. The working rule most people land on is that if you would not paste the transcript into a chat window, you should know where it goes.

Prices, checked today

From Fathom's pricing page on 3 September 2026. It changes; confirm before you take a number from anybody's comparison, this one included.

Coii AudioNotes is $19 USD once, covering three of your own Macs, updates included, nothing renewing. Thirty days of everything first, with no card and no account.

Note what that table means for the comparison. Against Fathom Free, we are more expensive by exactly $19 and cheaper by nothing. Against Fathom Premium, one year is $240 on monthly billing or $192 on annual, and the app has no second year. The honest version is that the price argument only starts working once you have decided you want the paid tier of something.

The table

Where Fathom is the better product

The free tier is the best in this category and it is not close. Unlimited recordings and unlimited transcriptions at $0, with AI summaries, clips, playlists and search across your calls. Most competitors meter minutes on their free plan; Fathom meters the features around them instead. If you are one person who wants their calls written up and is not troubled by where the processing happens, that is a complete answer for nothing.

It connects to everything. Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Asana, Zapier, Make, ChatGPT, Claude, a public API and MCP. If the point of a note is that it lands against a record or in a channel without anyone retyping it, this app has no version of that at all. Files are our answer, and files are a weaker answer when your process lives in a CRM.

Clips and playlists. Pulling the ninety seconds where a customer said the thing and sending it to four people is a real workflow, and it is one Fathom is built around. Coii AudioNotes has a transcript, a summary and an audio file; the editing is your problem.

Certifications. Fathom states SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and HIPAA on its site. Coii AudioNotes claims none of those and never will claim any — and it would be dishonest to suggest that "nothing is uploaded" is the same thing as an audit. It is not. It is a fact about where bytes travel. If a procurement questionnaire is coming, Fathom can answer it and we cannot.

It captures video. Bot-free video is in limited beta for Zoom, and the bot mode does full video and audio. This app is audio, transcript and notes. There is no picture and there never will be.

Where Coii AudioNotes is the better product

Nothing is uploaded, at any stage. No retention window to read, no region to pick, no sub-processor to add to a register, and no policy that can be revised next year and apply to recordings you made this year. There is no server of ours for it to reach.

The minutes are finished offline. This is the half of the offline story most comparisons skip. Recording without a connection is easy — plenty of tools do it and owe you the notes later. Here the language model that writes the summary ships inside the app, so a call in a basement meeting room or on a plane produces finished minutes when it ends, not a job that completes when you reconnect.

It records anything the Mac can hear. Fathom's meeting platforms are Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams. This app has no concept of a meeting platform, because it listens to the machine: a Slack huddle, a Discord call, a browser conference nobody has heard of, a phone on speaker next to the laptop, or four people around a table with no software involved at all.

Two tracks instead of one mix. Your microphone and the system audio are written as two separate files. That is why the speaker separation has something clean to work with, and why the app never has to guess whether the voice it just heard was yours. It does nothing for four people sharing one microphone at the far end of a room — nothing does.

One payment. $19, three of your own Macs, updates included, no second year, no seat count and nothing to cancel. Against Fathom Free that is $19 more than nothing. Against Premium at $192 a year on annual billing it is the arithmetic doing the work.

No account exists. There is nothing to log into, nothing to lock you out of, and no support ticket that begins with "I cannot access my recordings". They are files in a folder you chose.

The question the free tier actually raises

It is worth being direct about this, because it is the decision and everything else is detail.

Fathom at $0 gives you unlimited recordings, unlimited transcriptions and AI summaries, and asks in exchange that the audio be processed by Fathom. That is a completely ordinary arrangement, offered by a company that publishes its certifications, and for the overwhelming majority of meetings it is a fine trade that most people should take.

Coii AudioNotes asks $19 and gives you a narrower product in exchange for the audio never leaving your machine. There is no version of this app that is free, because there is nothing to subsidise it with — no seats, no upsell, no data.

So the question is not "which is better". It is whether you have meetings where the destination of the recording changes the answer. If you are a consultant under NDAs, a practitioner with session notes, a lawyer, a recruiter handling candidates' reasons for leaving, or anyone whose employer has a policy about uploaded conversations, you probably do. If you are running internal stand-ups and project reviews, you probably do not, and $0 with more features is the rational choice.

We would rather say that plainly than sell you a licence you did not need.

Speaker separation, honestly

Both label speakers, and both do it well in the case everybody demos: two people taking turns, each on their own device with a usable microphone. That is also most calls.

Both get harder in the same places, and so does every other tool in this category. Three or more voices on one channel. People talking over each other. Somebody on a car speakerphone. Four colleagues sharing a laptop microphone at the end of a boardroom table. Any comparison claiming one product has solved that is selling you something.

Practical advice regardless of which you buy: say a name in the first minute. "Thanks for joining, Nour" does more for a transcript than any setting in either app.

What the four capture modes mean in an actual call

Fathom's list — bot with full video and audio, bot-free video in limited beta for Zoom, bot-free audio with transcript, bot-free transcript only — is a settings screen, and settings screens read differently in a meeting than on a pricing page.

The practical consequence is that what the other people see depends on a choice somebody made earlier. If you sometimes take client calls and sometimes take internal ones, and the modes differ between them, that is a thing to verify before the call rather than discover during it. Nothing about that is a criticism — offering the choice is strictly better than not offering it, and it is why this comparison could not lead with the bot. It is simply a state you have to know.

Coii AudioNotes has one mode, which is the only mode it could have. There is no account, no scheduled attendance and nothing to invite, so there is no configuration whose value changes what other people see. The attendee list is the same after you start recording as before, always, on every kind of call, because the app is not a participant in any sense the meeting software can observe.

That is not a superior design. It is a narrower one, and the narrowness is the reason there is nothing to check.

Where the notes end up

Both produce a summary; what happens next is where the two philosophies stop being abstract.

Fathom's answer is that the note goes to the work: a Slack channel, a HubSpot or Salesforce record, an Asana task, a Zapier or Make automation, or out through the public API and MCP to somewhere nobody has thought of yet. For a team whose process already lives in those tools that is not a convenience, it is most of the value, and it is why a per-seat subscription is a sensible shape for them.

This app's answer is that the note is a file, and files already go everywhere. There is no integration to configure and none to break when a vendor changes an API. Whatever you already use to move files — a synced folder, a repository, a notes vault pointed at the same directory — already moves these. That is a weaker answer if your team standardises on a CRM, and a stronger one if you want the notes to outlive the tools you happened to be using when you took them.

Neither is right in general. They answer different questions, and the question is whether the note's destination is a system somebody else administers or a folder you do.

What switching costs

Your archive stays with Fathom. There is no importer here and none is coming. Export what matters while your account is live — good practice before cancelling anything, wherever you go next. Recordings and transcripts held by a service are yours to retrieve and theirs to hand over, and nothing on this page is a promise about what that process looks like in practice.

You lose the integrations first and the clips second. If Fathom was pushing summaries into HubSpot or Slack, nothing here replaces that. If your team watched clips, nothing here replaces that either. Those are the two things people actually miss, in that order.

You gain a directory. Recordings, transcripts and minutes become files in a folder you chose, covered by whatever backup you already run, readable by anything, and outside anybody's retention schedule including ours.

The habit costs about a week. Fathom attaches itself to your calendar; this app expects you to start it. That is a small friction several times a day at first and the most common reason somebody drifts back.

On an older Mac

Fathom does the heavy work on its own infrastructure, so the age of the laptop barely matters. Coii AudioNotes does all of it locally, so it matters. On Apple Silicon the transcript keeps pace with the conversation. On an older Intel Mac it works and the summary takes longer once the call ends. If your Mac predates Apple Silicon, spend the thirty days on real meetings rather than a two-minute test — that is exactly the case where trying beats reading about it.

Local processing is a trade, not a free win. You get nothing uploaded and the offline capability, and you pay for it in CPU time and battery.

Which one to buy

Choose Fathom if the price matters more than the destination of the audio; if notes have to reach Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce or an API automatically; if you share clips of calls; if you need video; if a procurement process will ask for SOC 2; or if you simply want the most capable free notetaker available right now, which it currently is.

Choose Coii AudioNotes if the recordings are the kind that should not be uploaded at all; if you need finished minutes with the network off; if the calls you record are not on Zoom, Meet or Teams; if two clean tracks matter to you; and if $19 once suits you better than an account and a service.

There is a third answer and it is free: for one meeting a week, Voice Memos and five minutes of typing is sufficient. Any of these tools only starts earning its place around the fourth or fifth call a day.

If Fathom is one of several tools you are weighing, Granola is the closest thing to it among the no-bot apps, Wispr Flow does dictation as well as meetings, and Otter, Fireflies and tl;dv are the ones that will still attend a call for you. The library has the rest. Or download this one — thirty days, everything unlocked, no card and no account, and the price only comes up afterwards.