Fellow Alternatives: What to Use When You Need Help During the Call, Not After It

Fellow now redirects from fellow.app to fellow.ai with a 301, and its current features page says the product “captures audio natively through its desktop and mobile apps, no visible bot joins the call.” That single line kills the most common reason people go looking for Fellow alternatives. If you left Fellow because a bot kept showing up in your participant list, that reason is gone. The reason that survives is different, and it’s about when the AI helps you.

What Fellow actually does

Fellow is a meeting-management product first and a note taker second. The order matters. Its pitch is built around the whole recurring-meeting loop: a collaborative agenda that attendees fill in before the call, 500+ meeting templates sorted by department, automated action-item extraction with owners and due dates, and an AskFellow agent that searches back across old transcripts to answer “what did we decide about pricing in April.”

The compliance surface is heavy in a way most note takers aren’t. Fellow’s features page lists SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and GDPR, plus a Zero-Day Retention option that deletes recordings and transcripts after processing, information-barrier policies, transcript redaction, and pause-and-resume recording with independent logging. It also lists transcription in 90+ languages and native Salesforce and HubSpot connectors that push summaries and deal fields back into the CRM. Read the details on Fellow’s own features page.

That is a serious enterprise product. It is not a stealth tool and never claimed to be.

Is Fellow a bot or a botless meeting recorder?

Both, by design. Fellow offers bot-based recording where a visible participant joins the call, and botless recording where its Mac and Windows desktop app captures audio locally. Teams can pick per meeting. The bot version exists on purpose, because in many regulated workplaces a visible recorder is the compliant option, not the annoying one.

This is where a lot of comparison content gets Fellow wrong. Botless is not a Craqly-only trick. Fellow, Krisp and Craqly all capture at the device layer on macOS and Windows. What separates them is what happens to the audio in the next 400 milliseconds.

The actual split: after the call versus during it

Fellow processes the meeting and gives you the output afterwards. Notes, summary, action items, CRM sync. Excellent output. It arrives when the conversation is over.

Craqly is built for the part where you’re still talking. It’s a native desktop app that captures system audio locally, transcribes it live, and streams an answer into an always-on-top overlay window while the other person is mid-sentence. Five session modes ship with it: interview, sales, pitch, meeting-notes and recruiting. Each one loads different context. Sales mode pulls your battle cards and objection handling. Pitch mode pulls round details and investor FAQ. Recruiting mode runs screening and technical sub-modes. Meeting-notes mode is the only one that overlaps with Fellow’s core job, and even there Craqly is doing it live rather than as a post-call artifact.

The overlay is excluded from screen capture at the OS level, so it doesn’t appear when you share your screen. That’s a real architectural difference, not a setting. It also means Craqly has no bot, no calendar auto-join, and no participant-visible presence at all, which cuts both ways. Fellow’s bot can join a meeting you aren’t in. Craqly cannot. If the value you want is “record the 8am standup I skipped,” Craqly is the wrong tool and Fellow is the right one.

Fellow vs Craqly at a glance

Pricing, both verified

Fellow’s pricing page on 22 July 2026 lists four tiers: Free at $0 per user per month, Team at $7 per user per month billed annually ($11 billed monthly), Business at $15 per user per month billed annually ($23 monthly), and Enterprise at $25 per user per month billed annually starting at 10 users. The free tier gives 5 AI notes and 5 AI recordings per user as a lifetime allowance, not monthly. Team moves to 10 AI notes per user per month. Business is where recordings and notes go unlimited. Verify current numbers on Fellow’s pricing page.

Craqly bills in credits where 1 credit equals 1 minute of live session, resetting monthly. Starter is $0 with 20 credits. Pro is $19 per month with 180 credits and a single project workspace. Pro Max is $39 per month with 420 credits, custom AI personas and multiple workspaces. Ultra is $69 per month with 780 credits and unlimited workspaces. Yearly billing takes 20% off. All five session modes and stealth mode are on every plan including the free one.

Straight comparison is awkward because the units don’t match. Fellow charges per seat for a workspace. Craqly charges one person for minutes of live help. A 12-person team on Fellow Business is $180 per month for unlimited recordings across everyone. One person on Craqly Pro Max is $39 for 420 minutes. Different products, different bills.

Who should pick Fellow

Pick Fellow if meetings are a team problem rather than a personal one. Specifically: if you run recurring 1:1s and staff meetings and you want the agenda, the notes and the action items to live in one place that everyone can edit. If you need HIPAA or SOC 2 Type II on paper before procurement will sign. If your reps live in Salesforce and you want summaries written back automatically. If you sometimes need a bot to sit in a meeting you’re not attending.

Craqly does none of those things and isn’t trying to. My honest read is that for a 40-person company standardizing how it runs internal meetings, Fellow is the better purchase and it isn’t close. Craqly is a personal tool for high-stakes live conversations where you need an answer in the next four seconds, and it will look strange as a company-wide meeting system.

If you’re evaluating the botless category more broadly, our rundown of the best AI note-taking apps for meetings in 2026 covers the bot and botless options side by side, and the no-bot Otter.ai alternatives guide goes deeper on why participant-list bots became a problem in the first place.

One caveat we won’t hide

Craqly runs an interview mode. Most employers prohibit undisclosed AI assistance during interviews, and some now require candidates to attest they aren’t using it. Using a hidden assistant in a live interview can get an offer pulled. We think the mode is genuinely useful for mock practice, for interviewers running structured screens, and for candidates in jurisdictions and processes where AI use is permitted or disclosed. Decide for yourself. Our writeup on using an AI interview assistant on Zoom, Meet and Teams goes into what the platforms can and can’t detect. Fellow, to be clear, has no interview product and no stealth surface, which for many buyers is the point.

What about the full job search pipeline?

If you are reading this comparison, you are probably either preparing for interviews or actively in a loop. Craqly helps you during the live conversation. It does not help you get the interview in the first place.

That gap is what LastRoundAI covers, and it is worth naming because it is our sister product and because it genuinely fills a hole Craqly leaves open. LastRoundAI builds your resume and scores it for ATS parsing, searches live job boards from Greenhouse, Lever, and Ashby, auto-applies with tailored resumes and cover letters (you approve every one), runs voice mock interviews with feedback, and gives you a live copilot for the calls that come out of it. The whole pipeline from “I need a job” to “I am in the room” lives on one account.

Plenty of people use both: LastRoundAI to get the interview, Craqly in the room for everything after it. The free plans on both sides are enough to decide whether the handoffs work for your search.

FAQs

Does Fellow join meetings as a bot?

Optionally. Fellow supports both bot-based recording, where a visible participant joins the call, and botless recording through its Mac and Windows desktop apps. Teams choose per meeting. Both paths run under the same security controls, so the choice is about visibility and consent norms rather than capability.

What is the closest Fellow alternative for live in-call help?

Craqly is the closer fit if you want answers while the conversation is happening. It captures system audio locally on macOS and Windows, transcribes live, and streams suggestions into an overlay excluded from screen capture, across interview, sales, pitch, meeting-notes and recruiting modes.

How much does Fellow cost?

Checked 22 July 2026, Fellow lists Free at $0, Team at $7 per user per month billed annually ($11 monthly), Business at $15 billed annually ($23 monthly), and Enterprise at $25 per user per month annually with a 10-user minimum. Unlimited notes and recordings start at Business.

Can Craqly replace Fellow for team meeting management?

No. Craqly has no collaborative agendas, no meeting templates, no CRM write-back and no bot that can attend a meeting without you. If your requirement is a shared system of record for recurring team meetings, Fellow does that job and Craqly does not.

Is botless recording legal without telling people?

Recording consent law varies by state and country, and two-party consent jurisdictions require everyone to agree. Botless capture removes the visual cue that recording is happening, which raises the disclosure bar rather than lowering it. Check your local rules and your employer’s policy before recording anything.