AssemblyAI vs Fathom
AssemblyAI and Fathom are both audio AI tools, tracked here on price, platforms, integrations, and capabilities. Every figure below is read from the vendor's own pages and dated. No score and no winner: the facts do the picking.
AssemblyAI
Voice AI infrastructure for builders
AssemblyAI delivers production-ready Voice AI models, including pre-recorded and real-time streaming speech-to-text, speaker diarization, and voice agent APIs. It provides advanced models like Universal-3.5 Pro, supporting multiple languages and specialized medical transcription modes.
Fathom
AI notetaking that summarizes meetings with or without a bot
Fathom captures meeting recordings, generates instant summaries, and creates transcripts. Users can record calls using a meeting bot or through a bot-free capture option on Mac. The tool includes the Ask Fathom conversational assistant to search and query conversations.
At a glance
Capability tags are factual labels we assign when a tool is added; they describe what a tool does, not how well it does it.
Checked against the vendors. Written from each vendor's own site and last re-checked there: AssemblyAI (under review since September 7, 2026) · Fathom on September 8, 2026. Vendors change pricing and features without notice, so confirm anything that decides your purchase on the vendor's page.
Also in audio
A tool we have an affiliate relationship with. It is not part of the comparison above and we are not calling it the better pick.
- Repurposing podcast and video recordings into social posts, newsletters, and blogs
- Content teams and agencies managing multi-brand client media pipelines
- Transcribing and summarizing meetings, webinars, and sales calls
Key features
AssemblyAI
- Pre-recorded and real-time streaming speech-to-text transcription
- Speaker diarization to segment utterances by speaker
- LLM-powered Speech Understanding and LLM Gateway
- Custom keyterms prompting and Medical Mode for specialized terminology
Fathom
- Bot-free capture or standard meeting bot recording
- Automated AI summaries and action item generation
- Ask Fathom conversational search across call transcripts
- Automatic synchronization to CRMs and productivity apps
- Clips, highlights, and team playlists
What each one does well
AssemblyAI
- ✓ Building real-time voice agents
- ✓ Transcribing pre-recorded audio files with high accuracy
- ✓ Performing call analytics and medical transcription
Fathom
- ✓ Automating meeting notes and post-call action items
- ✓ Syncing meeting summaries and deal context directly into CRMs
- ✓ Searching transcripts across calls with conversational AI
People also ask
Which is cheaper, AssemblyAI or Fathom?
AssemblyAI starts at $0.02 usage-based and Fathom starts at $15/mo. The two are billed over different periods, so we do not rank them on price.
Does AssemblyAI or Fathom have a free plan?
Both. AssemblyAI and Fathom each publish a free plan.
What is the difference between AssemblyAI and Fathom?
Both are tracked for transcription. Of the capabilities they do not share, only AssemblyAI is tracked for speech-to-text, speaker-identification, developer-api, and only Fathom is tracked for meeting-notes, summarization, ai-search, ai-chat, workflow-automation.
How much do AssemblyAI and Fathom cost?
AssemblyAI: free plan, then $0.02 usage-based. Fathom: free plan, then $15/mo.
Answers are generated from the tracked plans and capability tags shown above, so they move when the vendors' pages do.
Full fact sheets, FAQs, and discussion links: AssemblyAI · Fathom · all audio tools