Craqly vs Fathom: AI Meeting Notes Head-to-Head

Starting With Credit Where It's Due

Let me say this upfront: Fathom's free tier is one of the most impressive offerings in the AI meeting space. Unlimited meetings, unlimited transcription, automatic summaries and action items — for individual users, completely free. That's not a marketing gimmick or a 14-day trial. It's genuinely free and genuinely useful.

So why would anyone consider an alternative? That's the question this comparison is really about. Not "is Fathom bad?" (it's not), but "where do Fathom's boundaries push you toward something else?"

I've used both tools extensively over the past four months. Here's where they each earn their place.

The Core Difference in 30 Seconds

Fathom is a meeting note-taker. It captures what happens in your meetings and organizes it beautifully. Craqly is a meeting copilot. It does the notes part too, but its real value is helping you during the meeting — with live suggestions, talking points, and real-time coaching.

That difference shapes everything else about these tools.

Platform Support: This Is the Big One

Fathom's native integration with Zoom is seamless. It hooks into Zoom's API directly, records through Zoom's infrastructure, and produces transcripts that are tightly synchronized with the meeting timeline. On Zoom, Fathom is easily one of the best meeting assistants available, at any price.

The problem? Most of us don't live exclusively on Zoom anymore.

Fathom does support Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, but the experience isn't the same. On these platforms, Fathom uses a bot-like approach, which is less elegant and can be visible to other participants. If your meetings are split across platforms — say, internal meetings on Teams, client calls on Zoom, and quick syncs on Meet — you'll get three different experiences from the same tool.

Craqly takes a platform-agnostic approach. It runs as a desktop overlay that works on top of any meeting application. Zoom, Teams, Meet, Webex, phone calls, even in-person meetings if you've got your laptop open. The experience is identical regardless of platform because Craqly doesn't integrate with any specific meeting tool — it sits on top of all of them.

My real-world experience

I had a week where I did 14 meetings: 6 on Zoom, 4 on Teams, 2 on Meet, and 2 phone calls. With Fathom, I got great notes for the Zoom meetings, okay notes for the rest, and nothing for the phone calls. With Craqly running simultaneously, I got consistent notes across all 14. That consistency matters when you're searching your knowledge base later.

Real-Time Features: Where Craqly Pulls Ahead

Fathom focuses entirely on what happens after the meeting is over. You get your transcript, your summary, your action items — all excellent. But during the meeting itself, Fathom is silently recording. It doesn't offer suggestions. It doesn't coach you. It doesn't surface relevant context.

Craqly's Meeting Copilot gives you live assistance while you're in the conversation:

• Context-aware suggestions — based on what's being discussed, not generic prompts
• Objection handling — real-time response suggestions when a prospect pushes back
• Discovery prompts — questions to ask that you might not think of in the moment
• Talking points — keeps you on track without memorizing an agenda

I tested this during a particularly challenging negotiation. The client raised a concern about implementation timelines. Craqly surfaced three relevant data points from our previous meetings — timelines we'd discussed before, commitments we'd made. I was able to reference those immediately, which would've been impossible without flipping through notes.

Fathom couldn't help with that. It would have captured the conversation perfectly for review later, but in the moment, I was on my own.

Note and Summary Quality

Both tools produce solid meeting summaries. Fathom's summaries are well-structured, clearly separating key points, decisions, and action items. The integration with Zoom means the transcript underlying these summaries tends to be very accurate, especially for native Zoom calls.

Craqly's Auto Notes are similarly structured but add speaker identification and feed everything into a searchable knowledge base. Over time, this knowledge base becomes genuinely valuable — you can search across months of meetings to find "what did we decide about the Q3 pricing strategy?" and get results from multiple conversations.

In a direct comparison on the same meeting, both tools captured the same key decisions. Fathom's formatting was slightly cleaner. Craqly caught one more action item (a casual "I'll follow up with them" that Fathom treated as discussion rather than a commitment). Call it a tie with minor advantages in different areas.

Pricing: Fathom's Biggest Advantage

I can't overstate how good Fathom's pricing is for individuals. Free. Unlimited. On Zoom, it's everything most people need at literally no cost. If you're an individual user who primarily uses Zoom and just wants meeting notes, stop reading this article and go use Fathom. Seriously.

Where pricing gets complicated is teams. Fathom's Team plan is $32/user/month. For a team of 10, that's $320/month. At that price, you're paying for collaboration features — shared meeting libraries, team insights, and admin controls.

Craqly's paid plans start around $15/month and include the real-time copilot, Auto Notes, and Sales Assistant. There's a free tier with limited minutes to test everything out. Per-feature value, Craqly offers more functionality per dollar, but Fathom offers infinite value at zero dollars for the base use case.

Pricing Tier	Craqly	Fathom
Free	Limited minutes	Unlimited (individual, Zoom-focused)
Individual paid	~$15/mo	Free (no paid individual tier needed)
Team	Contact for pricing	$32/user/mo
Real-time copilot included	Yes (all tiers)	Not available

Features Beyond Basic Notes

Fathom is focused. It does meeting notes, and it does them well. It doesn't try to be a sales tool, an interview assistant, or a general productivity copilot.

Craqly extends beyond note-taking into several adjacent areas:

• Interview Copilot — helps with job interviews (both conducting and taking them)
• Sales Assistant — objection handling, deal intelligence, post-call summaries tailored for sales workflows
• Meeting Copilot — the real-time coaching we've discussed
• Searchable knowledge base — all your meetings, searchable and cross-referenced

Whether these extras matter depends on your role. A project manager who just needs meeting notes? Fathom. A sales rep who needs an edge in every call? Craqly. An executive who bounces between interviews, sales calls, and strategy meetings? Craqly's versatility helps.

Head-to-Head Comparison

Feature	Craqly	Fathom
Best platform	Any (platform agnostic)	Zoom (native integration)
Google Meet / Teams	Full support	Supported (via bot, less seamless)
Phone calls	Yes	No
Real-time suggestions	Yes	No
Live coaching	Yes	No
AI summaries	Yes	Yes
Action items	Yes (speaker-assigned)	Yes
Searchable knowledge base	Yes	Limited
Sales-specific features	Yes (Sales Assistant)	No
Interview features	Yes (Interview Copilot)	No
Bot visible to others?	No	No (Zoom), Yes (other platforms)
Free tier	Limited minutes	Unlimited (individual)
Paid from	~$15/mo	$32/user/mo (teams only)

Who Wins? It Depends on You

Choose Fathom if:

• You're an individual who primarily uses Zoom
• Free and unlimited is more important than advanced features
• You just need notes, not real-time coaching
• Your meetings are straightforward and don't require in-the-moment assistance

Choose Craqly if:

• You work across multiple meeting platforms
• Real-time coaching and suggestions would genuinely help your performance
• You're in sales, recruiting, or another role where in-call assistance matters
• Privacy is critical — you need a completely invisible tool
• You want a searchable knowledge base across all your conversations

My Personal Take

I use both. Fathom handles my internal Zoom meetings where I just need notes. Craqly handles my client calls and sales conversations where I need to perform at my best. That split works because they're genuinely good at different things.

But if I could only keep one? For my workflow — lots of client calls across different platforms — Craqly wins because it works everywhere and helps me in the moment. For someone who's 90% on Zoom and just wants notes, Fathom's free tier is unbeatable.

Want to see if Craqly fills the gaps Fathom can't? Download Craqly and run it during your next non-Zoom meeting.