Best for
Best for sales and customer-facing teams who want every call recorded and summarised on a free plan, and the follow-up written back into the CRM once it is worth paying for.
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
AI Voice & Speech Comparison
Fathom vs. Retell AI
At a glance
At a glance
Best for
Best for teams putting AI voice agents on real phone lines and testing them before they meet customers.
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
Full Comparison
| Criterion | Fathom | Retell AI |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free plan; Premium $20 / user / month Premium is $16 per user per month billed annually. For teams, Team is $19 per user per month ($15 annually) and Business $34 ($25 annually), both with a two-user minimum. Enterprise is quoted. | lower value From $0.07 / minute of calls Pay as you go, quoted by the vendor as $0.07 to $0.31 per minute for voice agents depending on the models, telephony and add-ons chosen, plus from $0.002 per message for chat agents. Enterprise is quoted by sales. |
| Free trial | Free plan with unlimited recordings, transcription and AI summaries | $10 in free credits, no contract and no commitment; 20 concurrent calls are included |
| Commercial use | Not stated | Yes, usage-based |
| Output | Transcripts, AI meeting summaries, action items and follow-up emails | Voice agents for inbound and outbound phone calls and web calls, plus chat agents over SMS and a web widget |
| API | Yes, a public REST API with webhooks and SDKs, plus an MCP server | Yes, REST API with Node.js and Python libraries, webhooks and an MCP server |
| Languages | Transcripts in 38 languages; summaries auto-translated into six | 57 languages listed for text-to-speech and 55 for speech recognition, each with the providers that cover it |
| Hosting | Cloud, with a desktop app for bot-free capture | Cloud on AWS; the vendor states it does not currently operate services within the European Union |
| Voice cloning | No, Fathom records, transcribes and summarises meetings and does not synthesise or clone voices | Yes, custom voices can be added by searching ElevenLabs community voices, importing an existing clone or training one from uploaded recordings, with Inworld, Cartesia, MiniMax, ElevenLabs and Retell's own platform clones as providers; up to 100 custom voices per account |
| Real-time use | Yes in the new experience, which shows a live summary that updates as the meeting runs; in the previous experience summaries and transcripts are generated once the recording has been processed | Yes, live inbound and outbound phone calls and browser web calls, with a proprietary turn-taking model, batch calling for campaigns and live monitoring that lets a human listen in or step in |
| Speech-to-speech and dubbing | No speech-to-speech or dubbing; the translation covers written summaries only | A call runs as spoken conversation by chaining speech recognition, a language model and text-to-speech; dubbing of existing recordings is not part of the product |
| Editing and controls | Chronological and enhanced summaries, advanced summaries from over fifteen templates including BANT and Sandler, AI action items and follow-up emails, clips and playlists, Ask Fathom chat over a single call or the whole account, keyword and AI search alerts, custom summary templates and a custom bot name | Single and multi-prompt agents or node-based conversation flows, knowledge bases, expressive mode for emotion and emphasis, custom pronunciation with IPA, CMU, Pinyin or Jyutping, denoising and interruption sensitivity, voicemail and IVR handling, plus a playground, simulation tests, A/B testing and post-call analysis |
| Consent and trust | A choice of bot or bot-free capture, a custom bot name and the option to disable the in-meeting banner on paid plans; Enterprise adds SSO, Okta SCIM provisioning, organisation-wide security controls, custom data retention policies and a signed HIPAA BAA | HIPAA compliant, SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 certified and GDPR compliant, with a BAA and a DPA including EU standard contractual clauses available for self-signing at no extra fee. Per-agent data retention runs from 1 day to 2 years, PII can be excluded from what is stored, and recording URLs can be signed. Services are not currently operated inside the EU |
| MCP-ready | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based |
| Support | Email helpdesk | Not stated |
| Onboarding | more entries Documentation and knowledge base, Guided onboarding | Documentation and knowledge base |
| Company size | more entries Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise | Small and mid-sized, Enterprise |
| Integrations | Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack, Asana, Zapier, Make, ChatGPT, Claude | Twilio, Telnyx, Vonage, Genesys Cloud, Five9, Avaya, Amazon Connect, HubSpot, Make, n8n, GoHighLevel |
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Row where the values differ The small markers point at the lower number, the longer list or the stated feature. They describe the data, they are not a verdict.
The short version
Key Differences
- Starting price Fathom Free plan; Premium $20 / user / month Retell AI From $0.07 / minute of calls
- Free trial Fathom Free plan with unlimited recordings, transcription and AI summaries Retell AI $10 in free credits, no contract and no commitment; 20 concurrent calls are included
- Company size Fathom Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise Retell AI Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
- Hosting Fathom Cloud, with a desktop app for bot-free capture Retell AI Cloud on AWS; the vendor states it does not currently operate services within the European Union
- Languages Fathom Transcripts in 38 languages; summaries auto-translated into six Retell AI 57 languages listed for text-to-speech and 55 for speech recognition, each with the providers that cover it
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Strengths and Limitations
Fathom
Strengths
- Free plan carries unlimited recordings, transcription and AI summaries
- Records without a bot in the call from the desktop app, or with one
- Transcripts in 38 languages
- Documented REST API with webhooks, SDKs and an MCP server
Limitations
- Transcription and summarisation only, with no voice synthesis, cloning or dubbing
- Summary translation covers six languages against the 38 it transcribes
- Team and Business plans carry a two-user minimum
- CRM field sync, coaching metrics and custom summaries start on the Business plan
Retell AI
Strengths
- Usage-based per-minute pricing with no contract and $10 in free credits to start
- Testing tooling built into the product: playground, simulation runs, batch tests and A/B splits of live traffic
- Custom voices can be cloned or imported across several voice providers
- HIPAA, SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 and GDPR, with BAA and DPA available for self-signing at no extra fee
Limitations
- The per-minute rate varies widely with the models, telephony and add-ons chosen, so the entry rate is not the rate to budget with
- The vendor states it does not currently operate services within the European Union
- Retell-managed phone numbers cover the US and Canada only; elsewhere a number has to be brought in
- Building and running an agent assumes developer work; there is no packaged seat-based plan
Plans
Pricing
Fathom
- Free $0 Unlimited recordings and transcriptions, bot-free or bot capture, instant AI summaries, clips, playlists and search across calls.
- Premium $20 Per user per month, $16 billed annually. Adds advanced call summaries, AI action items, the conversational meeting assistant and a custom meeting bot.
- Team $19 Per user per month, $15 billed annually, two-user minimum. Adds global search across calls, team playlists and collaboration with comments, folders and keyword alerts.
- Business $34 Per user per month, $25 billed annually, two-user minimum. Adds CRM field sync, deal view, coaching metrics and AI scorecards and custom summaries.
- Enterprise Not stated Quoted. Adds the Launch Assist onboarding programme, organisation-wide security controls, SSO and SCIM provisioning, custom data retention and a dedicated success manager.
Retell AI
- Pay as you go $0.07 Per minute and up, quoted by the vendor as $0.07 to $0.31 per minute for voice agents and from $0.002 per message for chat agents. Includes $10 in free credits and 20 concurrent calls, with no contract.
- Enterprise Not stated Contact sales. Custom pricing for higher volumes, with dedicated support and implementation, custom compliance terms covering HIPAA, SSO and a DPA, no cap on concurrent calls and a dedicated server option.
What users say
Review Scores · opens after launch
Fathom
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Retell AI
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Where this comes from
Where this comes from
Fathom https://fathom.video · checked against the official source on 2026-09-16
Retell AI https://www.retellai.com · checked against the official source on 2026-09-13
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.