Comparison
The cloud recorders are good products. They also hold every word of every meeting you've ever had. Hark exists for people who want the same features without that trade.
| Hark | Fathom | Otter.ai | Fireflies.ai | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, MIT open source | Free tier; paid plans for teams and integrations | Free tier with minute limits; paid plans | Free tier with limits; paid plans |
| Where recordings live | Your computer only | Their cloud | Their cloud | Their cloud |
| How it captures | Records mic + the meeting app's audio on your PC (per-app on Windows) | Bot joins the call | Bot joins the call | Bot joins the call |
| Visible to other participants | No | Yes (bot in participant list) | Yes | Yes |
| Works offline | Yes | No | No | No |
| Account required | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Transcription | whisper.cpp on-device (large-v3-turbo on GPU) | Cloud | Cloud | Cloud |
| Speaker identification | On-device, with confirmable voice memory | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| AI summaries | On-device (Qwen3) from editable templates | Cloud, templates on paid plans | Cloud | Cloud |
| Ask questions about meetings | On-device, across your library, timestamp citations | Cloud | Cloud | Cloud |
| Live captions and notes during the call | Yes, on-device | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Import existing recordings | Yes (audio and video files) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Follow-up email and exports | On-device draft; .txt / .srt / .md | Paid plans | Paid plans | Yes |
| Screen / video recording | Optional | Yes | No | No |
| Sharing | Links on your network, exportable bundles and web pages | Cloud links | Cloud links | Cloud links |
| Bring your own model | Yes (Ollama, LM Studio, any OpenAI-compatible server) | No | No | No |
| Platforms | Windows, macOS | Windows, macOS, web | Web, iOS, Android | Web, mobile |
Competitor details summarised from their public pages as of September 2026. Corrections welcome on GitHub.
If you need a bot to record meetings you don't attend, a mobile app, or transcripts shared to a whole company automatically, a cloud service is a better fit today. Hark is for the meetings you're in, on the computer you're using.
Client calls under NDA. Medical, legal and HR conversations. Anyone who has read a meeting-bot privacy policy all the way to the end. Anyone who wants the recorder to still work in five years without a subscription.
Download Hark