TL;DR: Gong is the enterprise revenue-intelligence leader (unpublished pricing, real platform fees); Zoom AI Companion and Google Meet’s Gemini notes are “free” if you already pay for those platforms; Fathom has the best free tier; Fireflies is the value pick at scale; Granola is the bot-free favorite; Otter is the transcription veteran; Avoma is the all-in-one mid-market play. Pricing verified July 2026, sources linked.
Full disclosure, because these lists usually hide it: Noded is not a call recorder and doesn’t compete with anything on this page. We integrate with all of them — Gong, Zoom, Meet, Fathom, Fireflies, Granola and more — which means we have no favorite to sell you and no reason to rig the table. What we do have is a front-row seat to how hundreds of customer teams actually use these tools, because their calls flow through us either way.
So here’s the honest version.
The comparison, at a glance
| Tool | Pricing (July 2026) | Bot or bot-free? | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gong | Not published. Reported: ~$1,300–$1,600/user/yr base + platform fee (~$5K–$50K/yr) + paid modules | Native + bot options | Enterprise revenue orgs that want deal intelligence, forecasting and coaching in one system | The 2025 unbundling moved Forecast/Engage/Enable into paid modules; annual-only contracts; effective cost up sharply since 2023 |
| Zoom AI Companion | Included with paid Zoom plans (from ~$13.33/user/mo); +$12/user/mo add-on for cross-platform | Native, no bot | Teams already on Zoom who want good-enough notes for free | Included tier covers Zoom meetings only; it’s a notetaker, not conversation intelligence |
| Google Meet (Gemini notes) | Included with Workspace Business Standard (~$14/user/mo) and up | Native, no bot | Workspace shops that want zero new vendors | Meet-only; short, high-level summaries; notes/transcript/recording land as separate unlinked Drive files |
| Fathom | Free (summaries capped at 5 calls/mo); Premium $16; Team $15–$19; Business $25/user/mo annual | Bot | Individuals and SMB teams — the best free tier in the category | Summaries can run shallow on nuanced calls; support is email-only and reviewers call it slow |
| Fireflies | Free; Pro $10; Business $19; Enterprise $39/user/mo annual | Bot | Price-sensitive teams recording everything across platforms; 100+ languages | AI-credit metering on advanced features; some organizations block recording bots outright; an Illinois biometric-privacy suit (filed Dec 2025) is pending — allegations, not findings |
| Granola | Free (25-meeting lifetime history); Business $14; Enterprise $35/user/mo | Bot-free (captures system audio) | Founders, CS leaders and anyone whose counterparties hate bots; raised $125M at a $1.5B valuation in March 2026 | No visible bot means the consent burden is entirely on you; audio still processes through cloud subprocessors; historically no video |
| Otter | Free (300 min/mo); Pro ~$8.33; Business ~$20/user/mo annual | Bot | Transcription-heavy workflows; longest track record; passed $100M ARR in 2025 | Notorious auto-invite emails to your contacts; a consolidated class action over recording consent is pending — again, allegations |
| Avoma | Startup $19; Organization $29; Enterprise $39+/user/mo — but CI/RI add-ons push realistic all-in to ~$77–$87/seat | Bot | Mid-market teams wanting Gong-style scorecards without the platform fee | Recorder reliability is the top G2 complaint; add-ons quietly erode the price advantage |
A note on the Gong number: Gong, Chorus, and Clari Copilot don’t publish pricing — every dollar figure you’ve ever read for them comes from third-party teardowns, including ours. Fathom, Fireflies, Otter, Granola and Avoma figures match their public pricing pages as of July 2026.
So which one?
- Choose Gong if you’re an enterprise revenue org and conversation data will drive forecasting and coaching — nobody else goes as deep. Budget for the platform fee and read the module list carefully.
- Choose Zoom AI Companion or Meet Gemini notes if “good notes, zero new vendors, zero new spend” is the bar. It’s a high bar-clearer and a low ceiling.
- Choose Fathom to start free and stay cheap; Fireflies to record everything everywhere on a budget; Granola if bots poison your meetings (board calls, exec relationships, skittish customers); Otter for raw transcription volume; Avoma for scorecards at mid-market prices.
Also worth knowing in 2026: this category is consolidating fast. Chorus went to ZoomInfo, Wingman became Clari Copilot, and the CS-specific tools got absorbed too — half the tools still being recommended in roundups no longer exist as products. Check dates before you trust a list. Including this one: we’ll keep the date stamp at the top current, and if we miss something, call us on it.
The part that actually matters: recorders don’t create memory
Here’s what we see across every team we work with, regardless of which recorder they picked: the recording isn’t the bottleneck. Every tool above will capture the call and hand you a decent summary. Then the summary sits in the recorder’s library, the commitments in it never reach the CRM, support never hears about the frustration in minute 43, and three weeks later someone preps for the renewal by re-watching video at 2x speed.
Your recorder is a microphone. It hears; it doesn’t remember. That’s why we built Noded to sit downstream of whichever recorder you choose: transcripts flow into the Customer Context Graph, where they join the emails, tickets, and CRM records for that account — and become briefs, follow-ups, and signals where you work. Pick the recorder your team will actually turn on. Switch later if you like. The memory layer doesn’t care.
And the honest limitation, as always: Noded won’t record a single call for you. You genuinely need one of the tools above — that’s why this guide exists.
FAQ
What’s the best free option?
Fathom — unlimited recording and transcription free, with advanced summaries capped at five calls a month. Zoom and Meet notes are effectively free if you already pay for the platform.
Which recorders work without a bot?
Granola (system audio capture), plus the native notetakers in Zoom and Google Meet. Everything else joins as a visible participant — and some organizations now block recording bots entirely.
How much does Gong really cost?
Unpublished. Reported 2026 figures: roughly $1,300–$1,600 per user per year base, plus a platform fee between ~$5K and $50K annually, plus modules. Treat all of it as reported, not quoted.
Can we run two recorders?
Plenty of companies do — sales on Gong, CS on Fathom or Granola. The cost isn’t the licenses; it’s that customer conversations end up in two silos. Solve that at the data layer and the tool choice stops being political.