Fathom vs ClerkMinutes: Which AI Meeting Tool Actually Works for Government Clerks?

Fathom.ai has earned its reputation. With over $18M in ARR and glowing reviews praising its accurate transcription, it's become one of the most popular AI meeting assistants on the market. Sales teams love it. Project managers swear by it. It's the fastest-growing app in the HubSpot ecosystem.

But here's the question most Clerks aren’t asking: Was it built for you?

If you're a city Clerk racing against posting deadlines, a county recorder responsible for ADA-compliant public records, or a municipal administrator who needs motions formatted exactly right, Fathom wasn't designed with your job in mind. It was designed for sales calls, client meetings, and corporate stand-ups.

This guide breaks down what each tool actually does, where Fathom falls short for government work, and how to decide which one fits your specific workflow.

Quick Comparison

What is Fathom.ai?

Fathom launched in 2020 as an AI-powered meeting assistant designed to eliminate manual note-taking. The pitch is simple. An AI bot joins your Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams call, records and transcribes the conversation, then delivers an AI-generated summary with action items straight to your inbox within 30 seconds of the call ending.

The platform has grown rapidly, and for good reason. Users consistently praise Fathom for reducing follow-up work and letting them stay present in conversations. One reviewer described the experience: "I don't have to frantically scribble notes... I'm sent an accurate to-do list in my recap email after every meeting."

Core Features

Here are the most popular features.

• Automated Recording & Transcription: Fathom's bot automatically joins scheduled meetings across Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. It generates time-stamped transcripts with speaker identification and supports 25+ languages. Users can add custom vocabulary dictionaries to improve accuracy for company-specific terminology.

• AI Summaries & Action Items: Within seconds of a call ending, Fathom produces a structured summary highlighting key decisions and next steps. The platform supports custom summary templates to structure their call recaps.

• Ask Fathom: This built-in AI assistant lets users query their meeting archives with natural language. A sales rep can ask "What were the top objections the client raised?" and get an instant answer drawn from the transcript.

• Integrations: Fathom connects natively with Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Asana, and Zapier. The CRM integration is particularly robust—Fathom can auto-populate deal fields and sync summaries directly to contact records. The platform also offers a public API for custom workflows.

Pricing

Fathom's pricing model is notably generous:

• Free Plan ($0): Unlimited recordings, unlimited transcription in 25 languages, basic AI summaries, core integrations. Limited to 5 "premium" AI features per month.

• Premium ($20/user/month): Unlimited AI features, custom summary templates, Asana integration, custom bot naming.

• Team ($18/user/month, 2+ users): Shared workspace, global search across team calls, keyword alerts, SSO.

• Business ($28/user/month, 2+ users): CRM field sync, Deal View across multiple calls, AI coaching scorecards, custom data retention policies.

What Fathom Does Well

Fathom excels at its intended purpose. For business teams, it's a polished, low-friction tool that delivers real value:

Speed and Convenience

Summaries arrive in under 30 seconds after a call ends. Setup is minimal. Just connect your calendar and conferencing accounts, and Fathom's bot joins your meetings automatically.

Strong Transcription Accuracy

Users consistently report excellent transcription quality. A clinical research coordinator in one review noted that "the notes are highly accurate, even when we use very specific medical terms."

The platform also supports custom vocabulary dictionaries, so teams can add company-specific acronyms and terminology.

Generous Free Tier

The unlimited recording and transcription on the free plan is generous compared to competitors. Otter.ai's free tier caps at 300 minutes per month. Fireflies.ai limits storage and summary credits on free accounts. Fathom's free plan includes unlimited recordings and transcription in 25 languages.

Deep CRM Integration

The HubSpot and Salesforce integrations are particularly robust. Fathom can auto-populate deal fields, sync summaries directly to contact records, and even generate draft follow-up emails. According to Fathom’s own case studies, this saves sales teams 20-30 minutes per deal update.

For sales calls, client meetings, project stand-ups, and internal team check-ins, Fathom is a strong choice.

The Core Problem: Fathom Wasn't Built for Government Work

Here's where things break down. Fathom was designed for a sales rep who needs to remember what a prospect said about pricing. It was not designed for a city Clerk who needs to produce legally compliant minutes that will be posted publicly, subject to records requests, and potentially reviewed in court.

So while Fathom's transcription is excellent, there is still a gap for most Clerks.

No Government-Specific Output Formats

Fathom produces business-style summaries: bullet points of key decisions, action items with owners, next steps. That's exactly what a project manager wants.

It's useless for official government minutes.

Government minutes require specific structural elements: formal headers, attendance records with titles, verbatim motion language, roll call vote tallies, proper legal citations. Fathom doesn't know what a consent calendar is. It doesn't understand that "Council Member Martinez moved to approve Resolution 2024-47" needs to be captured differently than "Sarah mentioned we should revisit the budget."

Users who've tried adapting Fathom for government work describe spending hours reformatting the AI-generated summaries to meet compliance standards, which defeats the entire purpose of using an AI assistant.

Compliance Gaps That Create Legal Exposure

Municipal Clerks operate under legal frameworks that most business tools ignore entirely. The Brown Act in California. Open Meetings Laws in other states. ADA accessibility requirements for all public documents. Public records retention policies.

Fathom has no built-in features to help with any of this:

• No automatic posting deadline calculations for public notice requirements

• No Section 508 accessibility checking for generated documents

• No records retention scheduling or audit trails designed for public records requests

• No compliance warnings when something in the minutes might create legal exposure

Fathom touts its SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA certifications, which matter for data security. But security compliance isn't the same as government meeting law compliance. A HIPAA-certified tool that produces non-ADA-compliant documents still creates legal exposure for your municipality.

Motion and Vote Tracking Falls Short

In business meetings, action items are informal. "John will follow up with the vendor." In government meetings, motions are legal instruments with specific requirements for how they're recorded.

A properly formatted motion entry needs to capture:

• Who made the motion (with official title)

• Who seconded (with official title)

• The exact wording of the motion

• Any amendments and who proposed them

• The vote tally, often as a roll call with each member's vote recorded individually

• The outcome (passed/failed/tabled)

Fathom captures spoken content, but it doesn't structure that content according to government standards. It might note "Maria mentioned they should table the discussion," but it won't automatically format that as "Council Member Rodriguez moved to table Item 7.3. Motion seconded by Council Member Patel. Motion carried 4-1 (Nay: Council Member Williams)."

Speaker Labels Don't Meet Official Requirements

Fathom identifies speakers by name or generic labels (Speaker 1, Speaker 2). For official government minutes, speakers must be identified by their formal titles: Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Member, City Manager, City Attorney, Planning Director.

The distinction matters legally. Minutes that record "John said the variance should be approved" may not meet documentation standards. Minutes must specify "Planning Commissioner Chen moved to approve Variance Application 2024-023."

No Agenda Integration

Government meetings run on agendas that are formal documents with specific numbering, legal language, and posting requirements. Fathom focuses exclusively on the meeting itself. It has no tools for creating agendas, calculating posting deadlines, or linking minutes back to agenda item numbers.

Clerks using Fathom for transcription still need entirely separate workflows for agenda creation and management. There's no connection between the agenda items and the corresponding discussion in the minutes. That mapping has to be done manually.

What is ClerkMinutes?

ClerkMinutes exists for one reason. That’s helping municipal Clerks turn meeting recordings into finished, compliant minutes without the usual cleanup nightmare. It's not a business transcription app with a government skin on top. The entire platform was engineered specifically for public meeting documentation.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. Most AI tools approach a city council session the same way they'd handle a sales call. Record everything, spit out a summary, and let you sort out the rest. ClerkMinutes knows that government meetings operate under different rules. Motions carry legal weight. Who said what has compliance implications? The final document might end up in court.

Key Features

Here are the most popular ways that Clerks use ClerkMinutes.

• Agenda-Driven Organization: Drop in your agenda alongside the recording. The system parses the agenda structure, listens for when each item comes up, and slots the relevant discussion, motions, and votes into the right sections. You're not copying and pasting chunks of transcript into an outline afterward. It's already organized when you get it.

• Built-In Parliamentary Awareness: The AI recognizes the mechanics of formal meetings: who moved, who seconded, what amendments were proposed, whether something got tabled or withdrawn. Votes get recorded with the correct outcome and attached to the appropriate agenda item. Instead of treating "I move to approve" as just another sentence, ClerkMinutes handles it as the procedural action it actually is.

• Consistent Speaker Attribution: Tag your speakers at the beginning. From that point forward, names stick. No random switches to "Speaker 3" halfway through. If the system isn't confident about who's talking, it asks you rather than making something up.

• Your Formatting, Every Time: Tell ClerkMinutes how your municipality formats minutes: header styles, indentation preferences, how much detail you include, standard language you use, etc. That configuration applies to every meeting going forward.

• Refuses to Fabricate: Here's the big one. When the audio is unclear or information is missing, the system flags it instead of inventing an answer. It won't guess at vote counts, make up names, or fill in motion language it didn't actually hear.

• Traceable to the Source: Every statement in your minutes connects back to the recording. It’s timestamped, versioned, and referenced. Someone disputes what happened? Pull up exactly where in the audio that statement occurred. That kind of documentation trail matters when your work faces public scrutiny.

The Actual Process in ClerkMinutes

• Add Your Agenda. Drag your agenda file in. ClerkMinutes extracts the structure and builds your minutes outline from it. No retyping item numbers or explaining what goes where.
  
  

• Upload Your Recording. Audio, video, Zoom export, YouTube link, existing transcript: whatever you've got. Upload it as-is. You don't need to split long recordings or manually identify who's speaking before you start like you would if doing it yourself in ChatGPT or Claude.
  
  

• Confirm Speakers. The system suggests who's who. You verify with a click. Those identifications hold steady through the entire document.
  
  

• Review and Export Your minutes come back organized by agenda item, formatted to your specs, with motions and votes structured correctly. Look it over, make any tweaks, approve sections, and export to Word or PDF.

Done. No restructuring a wall of transcript text. No auditing every line for AI mistakes. No reformatting to match your standards.

Detailed Feature Comparison

When to Use Each Tool

Use Fathom.ai When:

• You're documenting internal staff meetings. Department head meetings, project planning sessions, and budget discussions among staff, these don't require formal minutes or compliance with open meetings laws.

• The meeting is informal and doesn't create official records.

• You need CRM integration for constituent outreach. If your office uses Salesforce or HubSpot to track constituent interactions.

• Budget is extremely limited. Fathom's free tier is genuinely useful for basic transcription of informal meetings.

Use ClerkMinutes When:

• You’re a municipal Clerk or Recorder who needs to publish your municipal’s meeting meetings.

• You're producing official government minutes. Any meeting that creates public records.

• ADA compliance is required. Public-facing documents must meet accessibility standards.

• You need proper motion and vote formatting. Official proceedings require government-standard formatting, not business bullet points.

• Public records requests are part of your workflow. ClerkMinutes includes tools designed for this reality.

• You create agendas as well as minutes. ClerkMinutes handles the full workflow from agenda creation through final approval.

• Accuracy, compliance, and legal formatting are non-negotiable. When your work product has legal implications, purpose-built tools aren't optional.

Final Verdict

Fathom.ai is an excellent product. Its transcription accuracy is strong, its free tier is generous, and its user experience is polished. For the use case it was designed for, it delivers real value.

But government work isn't a business use case with slight variations. It's a fundamentally different set of requirements: legal compliance, specific formatting standards, public accountability, accessibility mandates, and records retention obligations.

Fathom wasn't built to handle any of that. And retrofitting a business tool into government compliance workflows creates more work, not less. Plus the ongoing risk that something gets missed.

If your job title includes "Clerk," "Recorder," or "Administrator" and you're responsible for official government documentation, ClerkMinutes was built specifically for what you do. The specialized templates, built-in compliance checking, proper motion formatting, and ADA-compliant output generation exist because experienced government Clerks helped design them.

You can spend your time reformatting business-style summaries into government-compliant minutes, manually checking Brown Act requirements, and hoping you haven't missed something that creates legal exposure. Or you can use a tool that was built to handle all of that from the start.

Ready to see how purpose-built government meeting documentation actually works? Try ClerkMinutes for free and experience what it's like to work with a tool that actually understands what government Clerks need.