After Fathom limited advanced AI summaries on its free plan to roughly five per month in 2026, the AI meeting-notetaker choice for a small team turns on meeting volume and privacy posture rather than feature lists: a solo or light user can stay on a free tier or a single-seat upgrade (Fathom Premium around $16/month annual), while a team with several client meetings a week across multiple people is usually better served by a per-seat plan such as Fireflies Pro (around $10/user/month annual); pick on how much you actually meet and your data/consent posture, not on the comparison table.

Anchored on (a) Fathom pricing page at fathom.ai/pricing (free-plan advanced-summary cap; Premium ~$16/mo annual; Team ~$15/user/mo annual); (b) the alfred_ teardown documenting the free-plan 5-summary cap and its change from an effectively-unlimited positioning; (c) Fireflies pricing page at fireflies.ai/pricing (Pro ~$10/user/mo annual, Business ~$19/user/mo annual, 8,000 mins); (d) Granola and Zapier comparison context for alternatives (Otter, Granola). VERIFIED 2026-05-30: (1) the Fathom free-plan cap applies to ADVANCED/templated summaries at ~5/month, after which only the basic chronological template remains, while unlimited recording + transcription stay free — confirmed via WebSearch across alfred_/tldv/costbench and multiple 2026 reviews; the body was made precise to specify advanced-vs-basic (Fathom's own pricing-page marketing copy understates the cap, describing free as including 'AI call summaries', so the cap is sourced to the reviews + documented post-trial behaviour, not the headline pricing copy); (2) Fathom Premium $16/mo annual ($20 monthly), Team $15/$19, Business $25/$34 — confirmed via WebFetch of fathom.ai/pricing; (3) Fireflies Pro $10/seat/mo annual ($18 monthly, 8,000 mins), Business $19/$29 — confirmed via WebFetch of fireflies.ai/pricing. Pricing remains volatile, so the body still tells readers to verify on the live page before deciding. The DURABLE core is the decision logic (choose on volume + seat count + privacy posture, not features; trial two for a week of real meetings), which holds regardless of the exact figures. The privacy section (bot-joins-call consent, transcript data handling, model-training opt-out) is framework-agnostic and durable. 30-day cadence because tier/cap changes are frequent. Trigger conditions: (1) Fathom's free cap moving; (2) Fireflies changing per-seat price or minute allowance; (3) a new entrant resetting the bottom-of-market value calculation. Related: /operators/solopreneur-ai-stack-consolidation/, /operators/solo-founder-email-triage-ai-stack/, /operators/ai-vendor-due-diligence-small-business/.