Fathom vs Fireflies vs Iris: Best B2B AI Meeting Assistant

You're looking for an AI meeting notetaker. Chances are, whatever you searched for, you came across Fathom or Fireflies on Google because your team needs something to sit in on calls and write things down so nobody has to.

That's a fair thing to want. It's also not actually the problem worth solving.

Both AI meeting assistants do the job they promise. Fathom and Fireflies join your calls, record them, and hand you a clean summary when it's over. The real question isn't which one takes better notes.

It's what happens after the notes are written, because for most teams, the honest answer is nothing. The transcript sits in a folder. Nobody goes back to it. The rep who fumbled the same objection last week fumbles it again this week, because no one had time to catch it.

This guide compares Fathom, Fireflies, and Iris, In2ition's AI meeting intelligence, feature by feature, then goes further: Iris ships as two connected experiences, Iris Listen and Iris Live, and even the more modest of the two already leaves passive notetakers behind.

If you'd rather see what Iris finds in one of your own calls than keep reading about it, book a demo

What Is a B2B AI Meeting Assistant?

B2B AI meeting software is any tool that joins your sales calls, demos, discovery calls, or client check-ins, usually over Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, and turns the conversation into something you can use afterwards.

At the simplest level, that means a recording and a transcript. Most tools now go a step further and add an AI-generated summary, a list of action items, and a way to search back through past calls.

The category started as pure transcription, software that just wrote down what was said so nobody had to take notes by hand. It's since split into a few distinct tiers, and it's worth knowing which one you're actually looking at, because the names get used interchangeably even though the tools do very different jobs:

AI notetakers

Tools like Fathom and Otter.ai. They join the call, record it, transcribe it, and hand you a summary. This is the largest and most crowded tier, and it's built to solve one problem: stop losing what was said in a meeting.

Conversation intelligence platforms

Tools like Fireflies, Gong, and Chorus. These add analysis on top of the transcript, topic tracking, sentiment, deal signals, searchable call libraries. They're built for teams that need to analyze a large volume of calls after the fact, often for pipeline visibility rather than individual coaching.

AI meeting participants that coach

This is where Iris sits.

Instead of just recording or analyzing a call, it interprets the conversation and turns it into a coaching plan for the person who was on it, then feeds what it learns into training, hiring, and retention.

Iris isn't one single product, either:

• Iris Listen joins a call and listens the way a notetaker does, but passes everything into In2ition's intelligence layer instead of just handing back a transcript.
• Iris Live goes further, participating in the conversation as it happens, in real time. Between them, they do everything a notetaker does and a lot more with it.

Who actually uses this software? Mostly B2B sales teams, auto dealers, customer success teams, and retail teams, to name a few, anyone whose job runs through a high volume of one-to-one or small-group conversations where a detail forgotten, or a pattern nobody caught, has a direct cost.

If that describes your team, the question isn't whether you need something in this category. Which tier of it actually solves your problem?

See Iris in action to see if it meets your needs

Do Your Sales and B2B Team Really Need an AI Meeting Assistant?

It's a fair question, especially if Zoom or Teams already records your calls for free. Here's a straightforward way to answer it for your own team.

Start with what actually happens today without this software. A rep finishes a call and either scrambles to write notes from memory or trusts they'll remember the important part.

A manager wants to know how a call went, and the honest answer is usually "I wasn't on it." Most teams record every call and review almost none of them, the industry pattern is close to 100% recorded, under 2% actually reviewed.

Nobody has time to rewatch hours of calls looking for the moment something went sideways.

That's the real cost, and it's worth being specific about it. A deal doesn't usually die in one dramatic moment. It dies from a small thing that happened on a call three weeks ago that nobody caught, an objection answered badly, a next step that got mentioned and never followed up on, a buying signal that didn't register with anyone at the time. Multiply that across every rep on your team, every week, and the compounding cost is higher than it looks from the outside.

A basic recording doesn't fix this. It just moves the problem.

Now, instead of nothing, you have a folder of unwatched video files. What actually closes the gap is software that does the reviewing for you: surfaces what mattered in the call automatically, without anyone having to go looking for it.

So do you really need it? If your team runs client-facing calls regularly, if managers don't have time to review most of them, and if deals or renewals have ever slipped for reasons nobody could quite pin down after the fact, yes. Not because recording calls is fashionable. Because the alternative is quietly losing revenue to things nobody had the bandwidth to catch.

With that settled, here's how the three most-searched options, Fathom, Fireflies, and Iris, actually compare.

What Fathom Actually Does

Fathom is a free-first AI meeting assistant that joins your Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams calls, records them, and generates an AI summary with action items once the call ends.

Its free plan is genuinely useful, unlimited recording and transcription, with a capped number of AI summaries each month before you need a paid plan for unlimited use and deeper CRM sync.

Fathom is easy to install and easy to use, which is exactly why so many reps try it first. It does the core job, capture and summarize, reliably and without much setup.

What it doesn't do is anything with the call after the summary is written. There's no coaching layer, no way to see how a rep is trending over time, and no connection between what happened on the call and what that rep should learn next.

What Fireflies Actually Does

Fireflies is the more established option of the two, and it leans further into "intelligence" in how it's positioned. It adds topic tracking, sentiment tags, and a searchable library across every call your team has ever recorded, along with stronger native integrations into CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot.

Pricing scales per seat, and AI features on the lower tiers are usually governed by a monthly credit allowance rather than flat unlimited use.

For teams that need to search across hundreds of calls, every time a competitor's name came up, every pricing objection last quarter, Fireflies is genuinely good at that.

But its intelligence stops at the individual call. It tells you what was said. It doesn't tell a rep what to do differently next time, and nothing it finds feeds back into training or coaching.

Where Iris Fits Into This Comparison

Iris isn't one single product, it's In2ition's AI meeting intelligence, and it ships as two connected experiences: Iris Listen and Iris Live. Iris Listen is the direct comparison point for this article. Like Fathom and Fireflies, it joins your calls and listens, but instead of handing back a transcript and calling it done, it passes everything it hears into In2ition's intelligence layer, where it becomes a coaching plan, not just a summary. Compared 1:1 against Fathom and Fireflies on listening alone, Iris Listen is already several steps ahead.

Iris Live goes further still. Where Fathom, Fireflies, and even Iris Listen are passive, they capture a conversation and process it afterwards, Iris Live actually participates in the call as it happens. It's less a meeting notetaker than meeting intelligence: not a document produced after the fact, but a presence in the room while the conversation is still live. Neither is sold as a standalone notetaking app the way Fathom and Fireflies are, both are pieces of a platform that also covers Calling, Recruiting, Training, and Employee Engagement.

See what Iris finds in one of your own calls

Fathom vs Fireflies vs Iris: Feature by Feature

Here's the same comparison at a glance, including where Iris Listen already leads on listening alone, and how far Iris Live goes beyond that:

Feature	Fathom	Fireflies	Iris Listen	Iris Live
What it is	Free-first AI notetaker	Conversation intelligence platform	Listens, then passes everything into In2ition's intelligence layer	Participates in the call live and coaches in real time
Records & transcribes calls	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Real-time coaching signal	No	No	No	Yes
Emotional intelligence scoring	No	Limited (sentiment tags)	Yes	Yes
Searchable call library	Basic	Strong	Yes	Yes
Feeds training, recruiting, or retention data	No	No	Yes	Yes
Pricing model	Free tier + paid unlimited summaries	Free tier (limited) + credit-based paid plans	Part of the In2ition platform	Part of the In2ition platform
Best for	Individuals or small teams wanting free notes	Large sales orgs needing call search at scale	Teams that want a smarter listener than a notetaker	Teams that want a coach actually in the room

Live participation vs. passive recording

Fathom and Fireflies both work as recorders; they capture the conversation and hand it back afterwards. Iris Listen does the same job of listening, but instead of handing back a transcript, it passes everything into the intelligence layer, so what comes back is a judgment, not a document. Iris Live goes further than all three: it participates as the call happens, surfacing coaching signals in real time, not after someone finally opens the transcript.

Where Iris differs:

A recorder produces a document. Iris Listen produces a judgment: what mattered in the call, why it mattered, and what to do differently next time, from the same listening job Fathom and Fireflies do. Iris Live produces that judgment live, while the conversation is still happening.

Transcription and summary quality

Both Fathom and Fireflies handle this well. Fathom's summaries are fast and clean. Fireflies adds topic and sentiment tags on top. If accurate transcription is genuinely all you need, either one will do the job.

Where Iris differs:

Iris transcribes and summarizes too, but treats that as the raw material for coaching, not the finished product. The summary is a byproduct. The coaching plan is the point. It identifies your tone, strengths and challenges and coaches you accordingly.

Pricing and accessibility

Fathom's free tier is the most generous of the two for basic recording, with paid plans unlocking unlimited AI summaries and deeper features. Fireflies' free tier is more limited on transcription minutes, with most AI features gated behind paid, credit-based plans. Both charge per seat as the team grows.

Where Iris differs:

Iris isn't priced as a standalone notetaker. It's part of the In2ition platform, so the real comparison isn't "how many AI summaries do we get," it's what it's worth to catch a coaching gap before it costs a deal, or a hire before they walk.

Explore In2ition AI pricing

Integration depth

Fireflies has the edge over Fathom on CRM and workflow integrations for larger sales teams. Fathom's integrations are solid for smaller teams but shallower at the enterprise tier.

Where Iris differs:

Iris's most important integration isn't a CRM, it's the rest of the platform. What Iris learns from a call feeds straight into that rep's Training content, Coaching plan, and Engagement signal, automatically.

What happens to the call after the meeting ends

This is the real dividing line. For Fathom and Fireflies, a call's value mostly ends once the summary is generated and shared. It gets archived. Sometimes it's searchable. It's rarely acted on.

Where Iris differs:

This is the entire point of the platform. A call isn't a record to file away, it's an input. Iris turns it into a coaching plan for the person who was on it, a data point for how the team is trending, and over time, a signal for what your best performers do that your average ones don't.

What Iris Actually Delivers After the Call Ends

It's easy to say a tool "goes beyond transcription." Here's what that means in practice, this is what In2ition's intelligence layer produces whether Iris Listen quietly passed it the call, or Iris Live was already coaching in real time.

Emotional intelligence scoring, not just a sentiment tag

Iris doesn't stop at "this call felt positive." It scores specific dimensions, empathy, emotional regulation, sentiment management, against what was actually said, with a confidence level attached. A manager doesn't get a vague read on tone. They get a breakdown of exactly which skills showed up and which didn't.

Moment-by-moment reasoning, not a highlight reel

For key moments in a call, a correction handled well, an objection managed poorly, a spike in enthusiasm or frustration, Iris identifies what happened, explains why it mattered to the outcome, and suggests what the person could have said instead. That's a coaching conversation, generated automatically and timestamped back to the exact moment in the call.

A coaching plan someone can actually use

Every session produces a structured plan: strengths worth reinforcing, specific challenges to work on, and techniques to practice, grounded in what happened on that call, not generic advice.

Action items and open questions that don't get lost

Iris pulls commitments and follow-ups straight from the conversation, attributes them to the right person, and flags anything that never got resolved, so nothing depends on someone remembering to reread the transcript.

It compounds, this is what no notetaker does

What Iris learns about a rep's call doesn't stay in a coaching report. It feeds the Training module to shape what that person learns next, the Recruiting module to sharpen what a strong hire looks like, and the Engagement module to flag a performance or sentiment shift worth a manager's attention before it becomes a resignation. Fathom and Fireflies give you a document about one meeting. Iris builds a growing picture of how a person, and a team, actually perform, one that gets sharper with every call.

Book a 15-minute walkthrough of Iris on a real call

Which AI Meeting Tool Is Actually Right for Your Team

Fathom makes sense for an individual or a small team that just wants a free, no-friction way to stop taking manual notes. If your only pain is "I forget what was said on calls," Fathom solves that on day one.

Fireflies makes more sense once you're a larger sales org with a big call library and a real need to search across it. Its conversation intelligence tools are built for that kind of retrospective digging, and its CRM integrations go deeper at scale.

Iris makes sense for a different question: not "how do we keep better records of our calls," but "how do we make sure every call makes the next one better."

Iris Listen fits if you want a smarter listener than a notetaker, same simple setup as Fathom or Fireflies, but what it hears turns into coaching instead of a transcript.

Iris Live fits if you want that coaching happening while the call is still live, not after. Either way, that's the fit for B2B and sales teams where rep performance is inconsistent, ramp time is too long, managers don't have the bandwidth to review more than a fraction of calls, and there's no real link between a call and what a rep gets coached on next. A searchable archive doesn't close that gap. A system that turns every call into a coaching plan does.

Best AI Meeting Software for B2B and Sales Teams

If you're only weighing Fathom against Fireflies, both are competent at the same narrow job: capture the meeting, summarize it, move on.

Fathom wins on accessibility and its free tier. Fireflies wins on integration depth and searching a large call library. Neither is wrong for a team that only needs a record of what was said.

But "best AI meeting software for B2B and sales teams" is a bigger question than "best notetaker," because B2B and sales teams don't actually have a note-taking problem, they have a performance problem that shows up on every call.

Deals slip because of a pattern nobody's coaching against. New reps ramp slowly because feedback is sporadic and depends entirely on whichever manager has time that week. The information to fix all of this already exists in every call your team has. Fathom and Fireflies capture it. Iris is the only one of the three built to act on it, turning every conversation into coaching, and every rep's calls into a plan that keeps updating itself.

For a team that needs a transcript, Fathom or Fireflies will do the job. For a team that needs its calls to make the people on them better, that's a different category of tool, and right now, it's one In2ition is building alone.

The Real Question You Came Here to Answer

You came looking for the better notetaker. That was never really the decision. The real question is whether your team's calls should stay a record of what happened, or become the reason your team gets better at what happens next.

Fireflies takes notes. Fathom takes notes for free. Iris Listen coaches even from listening. Iris Live coaches while you're still on the call.

See how Iris turns your next call into a coaching plan

FAQs

Is Fathom or Fireflies better for a sales team?

It depends on what you're optimizing for. Fathom's free tier and simplicity make it the lower-friction choice for smaller teams. Fireflies' deeper search and CRM integrations make it a better fit for larger sales orgs managing a large call library. Neither is built to turn that library into coaching.

What's the difference between an AI notetaker and an AI meeting participant?

A notetaker like Fathom or Fireflies records and summarizes a conversation after the fact. A meeting participant like Iris interprets the conversation as it happens, scoring things like emotional intelligence and sentiment, and produces a coaching plan rather than just a transcript.

What's the difference between Iris Listen and Iris Live?

Iris Listen joins a call the same way Fathom or Fireflies does, it listens and transcribes, but instead of handing back a document, it passes everything into In2ition's intelligence layer, turning the call into a coaching plan. Iris Live goes further: it participates in the conversation in real time, surfacing coaching signal while the call is still happening rather than after it ends. Both feed the same training, recruiting, and engagement data, Iris Live simply starts doing it live.

Can Iris replace Fathom or Fireflies outright?

Iris performs the same core recording, transcription, and summary functions as both tools, so most teams don't need to run a separate notetaker alongside it. The difference is what happens next, Iris connects what it learns from a call into training content, coaching plans, and retention signal, which neither Fathom nor Fireflies is built to do.

Does switching to Iris mean losing the call search and CRM features Fireflies offers?

No. Iris includes call search, summaries, and CRM-relevant outputs as part of the same platform. The distinction isn't feature parity on the notetaking side, it's that Iris treats the call as the start of a coaching loop rather than the end of a task.

Start learning from your calls with Iris.

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