Whisply and Fathom, two different categories

Fathom is a notetaker. You connect it to your calendar, it dials into your Zoom or Google Meet or Teams call as a participant, it records the audio and video, and afterwards you get a transcript, a summary, action items, and a clip library you can search. The whole point is the artifact after the meeting.

Whisply is a real-time overlay. There is no calendar integration, no bot, no participant named Whisply in anyone's call. The app sits in your Mac's menu bar, you hit Cmd+Return when you want help, and an answer appears on your screen that only you can see. The whole point is the moment during the meeting, not the recap after it.

These are not competing products in the same lane. They are different categories. A team can absolutely run both, Fathom for the team's shared record and Whisply for the individual help that nobody else needs to see.

Fathom runs in the cloud and on the web. The bot you see in your call is a server-side participant joining over the meeting platform's API. The desktop app is essentially a thin client on top of that cloud, and it works the same way on Mac, Windows, and the browser.

Whisply runs only on your Mac. macOS 13 Ventura or later, Apple Silicon or Intel. The audio capture happens through the system microphone permission, the screen reading happens through the screen recording permission, and the overlay window is rendered by AppKit on your machine. Nothing about the assist requires anyone else's call client to know Whisply exists.

The practical effect is simple. Fathom needs a meeting to attach to. Whisply works on a Zoom call, a Teams call, a Google Meet, a phone call on speaker, a recorded interview playing back, a video on YouTube, or a one-on-one in a coffee shop with your laptop open.

Fathom's value proposition starts with the bot. It joins the call, it asks for recording consent in some setups, and then it captures every participant for the team's shared library. That model is great when the meeting is yours to record, when everyone is comfortable being on the transcript, and when the team wants a single source of truth they can search later.

Whisply was built around the opposite premise. The people on the other end of your call did not sign up to be processed by your AI tool. So Whisply does not dial in, does not record anyone's voice but the audio that hits your own Mac, and does not store a transcript of the room in a third-party database. The assist is personal, on your screen, gone when you close the window.

If your meetings are internal and the team is fine with a notetaker, the bot model is convenient. If your meetings are interviews, sales calls, partner conversations, or anything where the other person's comfort matters, the bot adds friction Whisply was designed to avoid.

Fathom is excellent at the after-the-fact summary. You finish the call, you open the dashboard, you get sections with timestamps, action items pulled out, and clips you can share. Sales teams use it for coaching and pipeline review. Customer teams use it for handoffs. The recap is the product.

Whisply is excellent at the during-the-call answer. The other person asks a question you half-know the answer to, you hit Cmd+Return, the overlay surfaces the right number or the cleaner phrasing or the follow-up question, and the conversation keeps moving. The moment is the product.

These are complementary skills, not the same skill done two different ways. Fathom makes the next quarter easier to review. Whisply makes the next ten seconds easier to survive.

Because Fathom captures the whole call, anything you screen share goes into Fathom. That is the intended behavior. The recap should reflect what the room actually saw.

Whisply does the opposite on purpose. The overlay window stays out of screen sharing and screen recording by default on macOS, which means when you share your screen on a call, the Whisply panel is not visible to the other side. The assist stays private to you. The same isolation keeps Whisply out of most proctoring frames on Pro Undetected, including LockDown Browser, Safe Exam Browser, Examplify, OnVUE, Honorlock, Proctorio, and others.

If you want the people you are sharing with to see what your AI tool is suggesting, Whisply is the wrong choice. If you want a private layer that helps only you, the capture isolation is the whole reason Whisply exists.

Fathom famously offers a generous free tier with unlimited recordings and core summaries, and charges for team features, advanced AI, and integrations. The model is built for breadth across organizations.

Whisply has a free tier with limited daily messages, a Pro plan at $19.99 per month monthly or $11.99 per month on annual, and Pro Undetected at $149.99 per month monthly or $44.99 per month on annual. Pro Undetected adds Computer Use mode, which acts on your Mac through the accessibility permission, plus proctor-resistant overlay behavior out of the box.

Models are included in every Whisply tier. There is no BYO API key, no separate OpenAI bill, no per-minute transcription charge.