Free until the summaries stop, then it is a seat
Fathom is the best free notetaker in the category and it is aimed squarely at sales teams — the free plan caps the AI summaries that make it useful, and the CRM sync you upgrade for pushes into sales pipelines. A vacancy is not a deal, and a candidate is not a contact.
Free, with a ceiling
Their published plans start free with a monthly cap on AI summaries, then per user per month, with sales-CRM sync on the higher tiers. Checked 22 August 2026.
A vacancy is not a deal
The objects a recruiter works with only exist in a recruitment CRM.
The free plan is generous until the month you actually use it
A capped number of AI summaries is fine for a light month and useless in a busy one, which is precisely when the notes would have mattered. Then the upgrade is a seat, for everyone, forever.
A quiet month
Free, within the cap
Fathom
You pay for the hours attended
Recruitly
A busy month
The cap, then a seat
Fathom
Still just the hours attended
Recruitly
The CRM sync
Sales pipelines
Fathom
Candidates, jobs and placements
Recruitly
Based on Fathom’s published plans and free-tier limits, checked 22 August 2026. Their pricing changes — check their site, and hold ours to the same standard.
What recruitment needs that a sales tool cannot model
Written onto the record
Notes land on the client, the candidate and the job in the CRM your agency already runs on. Nothing to copy, nothing to file, nothing to reconcile.
The call becomes the job
A client briefing drafts the vacancy: requirements, band, process and fee, ready to publish and match against the same afternoon.
Commitments become tasks
Every promise made in the room becomes a task with an owner and a date, or a callback in the queue. Not a bullet in a document.
The rest of the desk
Jobs, candidates, shortlists, placements, billings, campaigns, WhatsApp and an AI phone system — in the same subscription.
Built for pipelines, not placements
Sales software models one relationship: a company you are selling to. Recruitment has two, and they are in the same meeting.
A candidate is not a lead. A vacancy is not an opportunity. A shortlist, a submission, a second stage, a placement and a fee are objects a sales CRM has no field for — which is why a notetaker built for sales can log a meeting against an account and stop there.
Recruitly writes the client’s requirements onto the job, the candidate’s notice period onto the candidate, the debrief onto the stage, and the promise you made into the callback queue — because it was built for agencies and nothing else.
Recruitly vs Fathom
One is a very good free tool for sales teams. One is your agency’s system, with the meeting in it.
| What you licence | Hours attended | Seats, above the free cap |
| AI summaries | Every meeting | Capped on the free plan |
| What it syncs into | Its own candidate, job and client records | Sales CRMs, on higher tiers |
| Understands vacancies and placements | Included | — |
| Drafts a vacancy from a client briefing | Included | — |
| Scorecard prefill after a screen | Included | — |
| Action items become owned CRM tasks | Included | Exported to your tools |
| Applicant tracking system | Included | — |
| Recruitment CRM | Included | — |
| AI phone system in the same product | Included | — |
| Cost of a quiet month | Nothing | Free, within the cap |
Capability comparison against Fathom’s published plans, checked 22 August 2026.
Questions before you move
Fathom is free. Why would we pay anything?
For a solo recruiter who wants a transcript and the occasional summary, free is a good deal and we would not pretend otherwise. What you are paying for here is the part after the meeting: the notes on three records, the vacancy drafted from the briefing, the four tasks with owners and dates, and the fact that a colleague covering your desk can see all of it.
Their CRM sync would cover us, surely?
It covers sales objects — accounts, contacts, deals. Recruitment runs on candidates, vacancies, applications, shortlists, submissions, interviews, placements and fees, and no amount of syncing invents a field that does not exist on the other side. That is why the intake call cannot become a job over an integration.
What does yours cost in a heavy month?
$1.50 an hour of meeting attended, charged by the second, with no cap and no tier to jump to. Twenty client calls of an hour each is thirty dollars for the desk, not a seat for every consultant.
Is the transcription as good?
Yes, and the speaker naming is better by construction: meeting platforms hand over real participant identities, so nothing is guessed from voice. That matters more than it sounds, because an action item without a name attached is just a sentence.