# Fellow vs Shadow

Fellow records 188,722 monthly visits with -5% month-over-month growth and Contact for Pricing pricing. Shadow records 17,796 monthly visits with -4.4% growth and Freemium pricing.

| Metric | [Fellow](https://openaitools.app/tool/fellow) | [Shadow](https://openaitools.app/tool/shadow) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://fellow.app | https://www.shadow.do |
| Categories | AI Meeting Assistant, AI Note Taker, AI Transcription, AI Summarizer | AI Meeting Assistant, AI Transcription, AI Note Taker, AI Summarizer |
| Pricing Model | Contact for Pricing | Freemium |
| Monthly Visits | 188,722 | 17,796 |
| MoM Growth Rate | -5% | -4.4% |
| Primary Market | United States | United States |
| Direct Visits | 99,104 | 7,167 |
| Review Score | 4.3 | 4.3 |
| Saved Count | 0 | 1 |
| Supported Platforms | Website | Website |

## Fellow

Fellow is an AI meeting assistant that handles the part of meetings most teams lose time on: capturing what was said and turning it into something actionable. It records, transcribes and summarizes meetings on Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, and can also capture in-person conversations, storing transcript, audio and video in one place with context-aware summaries that surface decisions rather than raw transcripts.

Where Fellow differentiates itself is governance. It is marketed first and foremost to regulated and security-conscious organizations — private equity, hedge funds, investment banks, fintechs, healthcare and legal teams — where meeting records fall under recordkeeping and supervision rules. Organizations can set policies on who may record, apply retention windows that can even be zero-day, redact sensitive content such as MNPI, and review every access and deletion event through a compliance portal. Individual users keep control to pause or resume capture when part of a conversation should stay off the record.

The product also reaches beyond a single meeting. Ask Fellow lets you query your meeting history conversationally, workflow automations handle pre-meeting prep and post-meeting follow-ups, and meeting intelligence can flow through MCP into ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot, or sync into CRMs and project tools. Fellow states that it never uses your meeting data to train AI models on any plan, including free.

**Pricing & Plans:** Fellow has a Free plan for individuals with five AI notes and five recordings lifetime per user. Paid plans scale per user: Team around $7/user/month billed annually for small teams with 10 AI notes monthly, Business around $15/user/month for unlimited AI notes and CRM integrations, and Enterprise from $25/user/month or custom pricing with advanced security, SSO, redaction and compliance features.

- **Recording, transcription and AI notes:** Fellow joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet or captures in-person conversations, producing transcripts, audio and video in one place with context-aware summaries.
- **Automatic action items and recaps:** Action items are identified automatically from the conversation, with assignees post-meeting recaps, shared agendas and note history so follow-ups do not slip.
- **Governance and recording policies:** Admins set organization-wide policies for who can record, share and access meeting data, with retention rules configurable independently for recordings, transcripts and summaries.
- **User-level recording control:** Members choose when to record, pause or resume capture, so sensitive portions of a conversation can stay off the record while the rest is documented.
- **AI follow-up workflows and integrations:** Ask Fellow or pipe meeting context into ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot through MCP, and sync meeting intelligence to CRMs and business systems.

**Strengths:** Security and governance depth that most AI notetakers lack, including SSO, retention policies and audit trails; Works across Zoom, Teams, Google Meet and in-person meetings rather than a single platform; Clear no-training-on-your-data policy on every plan including free; Meeting intelligence connects outward to ChatGPT, Claude, CRMs and project tools

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/fellow.md)

## Shadow

Shadow starts from a complaint many knowledge workers share about meeting assistants: the bot that joins your call, the note-taker that locks your history behind a subscription, and the data that leaves your machine for someone else's servers. Shadow's answer is a native Mac app that operates entirely in the background. It has no bot that joins the meeting, auto-detects when a call begins, records and transcribes it locally, and stops on its own when the call ends. Speaker identification is done in real time, so transcripts arrive labelled with who said what.

The output is deliberately portable. Every meeting is written to your Mac as Markdown — transcripts, notes, and Skill results — with every call and every person linked into a knowledge base. You can open the folder as an Obsidian vault, sync it with iCloud Drive or Google Drive, search it with Spotlight, or point any AI agent at it. Shadow emphasises that there is a built-in advantage: because agents read the raw files rather than a connector's filtered view, tools like Claude, Codex, or OpenClaw get the complete context.

Between calls, Shadow is more than a note-taker. Press a keyboard shortcut on any screen and it can see what you're looking at, hear what you say, or read selected text, then run an Action Skill to produce an email, a set of notes, or code. Skills are just prompts you can edit or write from scratch, and a webhook can forward results to Zapier, n8n, or Make. The privacy stance is equally concrete: transcription is local, audio does not leave the device, meeting content is never used for model training, and you choose which Skills are allowed to call AI at all.

**Pricing & Plans:** Shadow is free to start, and the developer's stated policy is that every meeting is saved to your Mac as Markdown with no history limit on any plan — you keep the files even if you stop paying. For current paid tiers, check the pricing page inside the app.

- **Bot-free auto recording:** Shadow detects when a call starts, records automatically, and stops at the end — no bot in the meeting, nothing to remember to press.
- **On-device transcription:** Transcription runs on your Mac, with real-time speaker identification so you always know who said what.
- **Markdown you own:** Every call is saved as a clean .md file locally, openable as an Obsidian vault, backed up with iCloud or Drive, or searchable by Spotlight.
- **Meeting and Action Skills:** Run prompts on a completed call (notes, BANT, follow-ups, summaries) plus shortcut-driven actions on your screen between meetings.
- **Webhooks and automation:** A webhook pushes transcripts and Skill results into Zapier, n8n, or Make so meetings feed your existing workflows.

**Strengths:** No bot joins your call, so meetings stay natural; Local, on-device transcription with no history limits; Meetings stored as portable Markdown that works with Obsidian and AI agents; Flexible Skills you can edit or write from scratch

**Limitations:** Mac-only — there is no Windows or web app; Local-first storage means you manage your own folder, sync, and backups; By design it records without a bot, so you are responsible for getting consent from other participants; Skill output quality still depends on prompt craft, though Skills ship with sensible defaults

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/shadow.md)

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How do Fellow and Shadow compare in monthly traffic?

Fellow has 188,722 monthly visits, while Shadow has 17,796. Traffic estimates describe audience size, not product quality.

### How do their growth rates compare?

Fellow has a month-over-month growth rate of -5%; Shadow has -4.4%.

### How does pricing compare?

Fellow: Contact for Pricing. Fellow has a Free plan for individuals with five AI notes and five recordings lifetime per user. Paid plans scale per user: Team around $7/user/month billed annually for small teams with 10 AI notes monthly, Business around $15/user/month for unlimited AI notes and CRM integrations, and Enterprise from $25/user/month or custom pricing with advanced security, SSO, redaction and compliance features. Shadow: Freemium. Shadow is free to start, and the developer's stated policy is that every meeting is saved to your Mac as Markdown with no history limit on any plan — you keep the files even if you stop paying. For current paid tiers, check the pricing page inside the app.

## Alternatives

| # | Tool Name | Monthly Visits | MoM Growth Rate | Pricing Model | Summary | Profile (Markdown) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 1 | [Otter AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/otter-ai) | 7,360,981 | +9.6% | Freemium | AI meeting agent that transcribes, summarises, and turns every conversation into searchable knowledge | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/otter-ai.md) |
| 2 | [Tactiq](https://openaitools.app/tool/tactiq) | 6,521,542 | +4.1% | Freemium | Live meeting transcription and AI notes without a bot in the call | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/tactiq.md) |
| 3 | [Fathom](https://openaitools.app/tool/fathom-2-0) | 5,620,385 | +0.2% | Freemium, Free Trial | AI notetaker that records, transcribes and summarizes meetings — bot-free | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/fathom-2-0.md) |
| 4 | [Fireflies.ai](https://openaitools.app/tool/fireflies-ai) | 4,411,502 | +3% | Freemium | AI teammate that records, transcribes and summarizes every meeting | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/fireflies-ai.md) |
| 5 | [tl;dv](https://openaitools.app/tool/tldv-io) | 1,396,729 | +1.9% | Freemium | Strong focus on video clip sharing and CRM automation, but less centered on pre-meeting agenda building. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/tldv-io.md) |
| 6 | [Noota](https://openaitools.app/tool/noota) | 283,526 | +3.3% | Freemium, Paid, Contact for Pricing | Bot-free AI meeting assistant hosted in Europe | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/noota.md) |
| 7 | [Circleback](https://openaitools.app/tool/circleback) | 272,906 | +12.5% | Free Trial | AI notetaker and company brain that turns every meeting into searchable knowledge | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/circleback.md) |
| 8 | [Avoma](https://openaitools.app/tool/avoma-ai-meeting-assistant) | 193,867 | +7.5% | Freemium, Free Trial, Paid | Deep revenue intelligence and deal tracking capabilities, but carries a steeper learning curve for basic note-taking. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/avoma-ai-meeting-assistant.md) |
| 9 | [MeetGeek](https://openaitools.app/tool/meetgeek) | 188,118 | -7.5% | Freemium, Free Trial | Great automated insight routing to external project tools, though interface customization is more limited. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/meetgeek.md) |
| 10 | [Grain](https://openaitools.app/tool/grain) | 174,166 | -14.8% | Freemium, Free Trial, Contact for Pricing | The AI notetaker that turns meetings into ready-to-use context for your AI agents | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/grain.md) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/fellow-vs-shadow

More Markdown: [Categories](https://openaitools.app/categories.md) · [Traffic rankings](https://openaitools.app/rankings.md) · [llms.txt](https://openaitools.app/llms.txt)