Head-to-head comparison
Fellow vs Shortwave
A practical comparison of Fellow and Shortwave for pricing, workflow fit, strengths, and limitations.
Choose Fellow for
- Teams standardizing meeting capture across Zoom, Meet, Teams, and in-person conversations
- Organizations that need consent, retention, redaction, and access controls
- Managers turning decisions into accountable follow-up
Choose Shortwave for
- Gmail users who repeatedly search and synthesize long email histories
- Professionals who want drafting and inbox organization in one client
- Teams that can govern MCP and cross-app actions
DiscoverAI verdict: Choose Fellow when its best-use cases match your current workflow. Choose Shortwave when its pricing, ecosystem, or category focus is a better fit.
Fellow
Fellow records, transcribes, summarizes, and searches meetings while adding agendas, action items, consent capture, retention controls, integrations, and organization-wide governance
Shortwave
Shortwave is a Gmail-based email client with AI search, thread analysis, personalized drafting, inbox organization, filters, web browsing, attachment analysis, and MCP-connected actions
| Decision factor | Fellow | Shortwave |
|---|---|---|
| Overall rating | 8.2 | 8.2 |
| Best for | Teams standardizing meeting capture across Zoom, Meet, Teams, and in-person conversations, Organizations that need consent, retention, redaction, and access controls | Gmail users who repeatedly search and synthesize long email histories, Professionals who want drafting and inbox organization in one client |
| Features | AI transcription and summaries, Meeting agendas and action items, Ask Fellow meeting search | AI email search with source links, Thread summaries and attachment analysis, Personalized drafting and autocomplete |
| Pricing | Fellow lists Free at $0, Team at $7 per user monthly on annual billing or $11 monthly, Business at $15 annually or $23 monthly, and custom Enterprise pricing. Recording allowances, upload limits, CRM connections, advanced permissions, retention, SSO, and workspace analytics vary by tier. | Shortwave lists Business at $30 per seat monthly, Premier at $45, and Max at $120, alongside individual-plan choices shown in its pricing selector. AI intelligence level, daily usage, search history, context, filters, integrations, billing cadence, and Tasklet automation can materially change total cost. |
| Free plan | Yes. The Free plan includes five AI notes and five recordings per user for the lifetime of the plan, plus summaries, transcription, action items, uploads, and core meeting integrations. | Shortwave advertises AI access across plans and a 14-day paid trial; buyers should confirm the live Individual selector because limits and packaging differ from the Business tiers shown by default. |
| Main limitation | Meetings that should not be recorded or summarized | Organizations not using Gmail |
Final Recommendation
Choose Fellow when its best-use cases match your current workflow. Choose Shortwave when its pricing, ecosystem, or category focus is a better fit.
Fellow
Best for
Teams standardizing meeting capture across Zoom, Meet, Teams, and in-person conversations, Organizations that need consent, retention, redaction, and access controls, Managers turning decisions into accountable follow-up.
Pros
- • Teams standardizing meeting capture across Zoom, Meet, Teams, and in-person conversations
- • AI transcription and summaries
- • A bounded pilot can test value before broad rollout
Cons
- • Meetings that should not be recorded or summarized
- • Teams expecting transcripts to be authoritative records
- • Pricing, limits, and product behavior can change
Shortwave
Best for
Gmail users who repeatedly search and synthesize long email histories, Professionals who want drafting and inbox organization in one client, Teams that can govern MCP and cross-app actions.
Pros
- • Gmail users who repeatedly search and synthesize long email histories
- • AI email search with source links
- • A bounded pilot can test value before broad rollout
Cons
- • Organizations not using Gmail
- • Users unwilling to give a third-party client broad mailbox access
- • Pricing, limits, and product behavior can change
Full Review
Fellow
Fellow records, transcribes, summarizes, and searches meetings while adding agendas, action items, consent capture, retention controls, integrations, and organization-wide governance
Full Review
Shortwave
Shortwave is a Gmail-based email client with AI search, thread analysis, personalized drafting, inbox organization, filters, web browsing, attachment analysis, and MCP-connected actions
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