Beanly vs Fathom: Which AI Note-Taker Wins for Meetings?

If you’re trying to pick between two of the more popular free AI note-taking assistants, the beanly vs fathom decision comes up a lot. I needed a lightweight tool for weekly team standups and research paper notes, so I spent a few days running both side by side. Here’s what I actually found.

Starting with the same scenario

I joined a 45‑minute product review meeting and used beanly on one device and Fathom on another. My goal: get a clean summary and an actionable to‑do list without touching my keyboard.

Fathom joined the Zoom call automatically and started transcribing immediately. It also captured the recording to its own dashboard. Beanly required me to start the meeting inside its web app, but once running, it tracked the speaker labels more accurately — especially when two people talked over each other. That was the first notable difference.

Summaries and recall

Both tools gave me a bullet‑point summary. Fathom’s was longer and included timestamps — great for revisiting a specific moment. Beanly’s was shorter and more like a compressed version that someone else had written for you. For quick reference, I preferred beanly’s brevity. But when I needed to verify a decision, Fathom’s timestamps made me trust it more.

One tradeoff I noticed: Fathom stores everything in its own library, which is fine if you don’t mind another silo. Beanly lets you export notes to a Notes or Journal format, and even offers a clipboard‑style export. That helped when I wanted to paste meeting takeaways directly into Notion.

Where each tool stumbles

Fathom’s free plan is generous — unlimited recordings — but it sometimes chokes on longer sessions over an hour. I had one class recording where the connection dropped mid‑session and the transcript split awkwardly. Beanly handled a 90‑minute research review without a hiccup, but its free tier caps the number of transcripts per month, which is a real limitation if you’re in back‑to‑back meetings.

I also tested both for a literature review session where the conversation jumped between Chinese and English. Fathom handled mixed‑language transcription okay but mixed up speaker‑name formatting. Beanly (which is built by the team behind tidenote) has better Chinese support — the app even includes a Chinese branding 小片刻 in its interface — and the speaker identification stayed correct throughout. That mattered more than I expected.

Interface and linking

One small frustration with Fathom: you can’t easily link back to the original transcript from a highlight. Beanly has an Anchor Text feature that lets you drop a clickable anchor on any line of the transcript, then share that as a reference. It’s a minor detail, but if you’re sending action items to Slack, it saves a step.

Which one should you try first?

If you’re after a free tool with no recording limits and you work mostly in English, Fathom is the safer bet. If you need cleaner speaker tracking, shorter summaries, or you often work with mixed‑language content, beanly feels more polished — even with its monthly cap. Neither is perfect, and I’m still not sure which one I’ll stick with. For now I keep both installed and choose based on the meeting length and language mix. That’s probably the most honest take I can give on the beanly vs fathom question.

I haven’t tested the best free ai note taking app 2026 landscape yet, but for 2025 these two are the ones worth comparing. The free ai note taking app 2026 category will likely be more competitive — both tools still have rough edges. For now, pick the one that matches your meeting style, not the one with the cleaner marketing.