There’s no denying that Fireflies.ai is a great tool. It records, transcribes, and summarizes your meetings, but is that all? In a fast-moving industry, users are now expecting these types of features as the bare minimum. Is there anything where Fireflies sets the trend, or is it worth taking a closer look at some Fireflies.ai alternatives to see the contrast?
If you’re attending dozens of video calls a day, or manage people who do so, you need reliability.
Whether you’re in sales, user research, or the hiring process; recording and transcribing your video calls is a hugely beneficial practice. Some might say, essential. But it’s no good just having hundreds of meeting recordings lying around; you need a tool that helps you organize, automate, and put the insights from these calls to work.
Fireflies.ai might be a good platform, but there are plenty of Fireflies.ai competitors all vying for the AI meeting assistant throne. And let’s face it, some of them are just plain better. They make better use of meeting insights, cost less, or are easier to set up. Or sometimes all three!
Before we delve into Fireflies’ alternatives, let’s first establish what Fireflies.ai actually is, as well as its advantages and disadvantages.
What is Fireflies.ai?
Fireflies.ai is an AI meeting assistant, useful for recording, transcribing, and note taking during a meeting. Used by industry leaders like Nike and Expedia, Fireflies.ai has a proven track record of being a top quality system that simplifies your meeting organization.
It allows you to search through your meeting database to find exact moments with ease. You can search a whole range of different things to find what you’re looking for: keywords, action items, dates, times, metrics, questions, sentiment, and more. This makes locating specific moments a breeze.
You can also track certain topics to automatically find discussions about pricing, objections, competitors, or anything else you deem worthy.
Fireflies also makes sharing easy. You can embed soundbites directly into your favorite work tools like Notion or Salesforce, and you can leave comments and reactions in the transcript for more streamlined collaboration.
Finally, Fireflies.ai integrates directly with dozens of platforms, and allows you to connect with hundreds more through third party apps like Zapier.
Let’s dive into Fireflies’ pros and cons.
Fireflies.ai Pros
- Good Integrations. Fireflies has plenty of integrations, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, and more.
- Easy to Search. Fireflies is designed for you to be able to find meeting moments in seconds.
- AI Summaries. Fireflies converts an hour-long meeting into a bite-sized summary.
- Concurrent Meetings. You can record up to three meetings simultaneously, making it perfect for busy managers.
- Translations. Transcripts are translatable in more than 60 languages.
- Filler Word Removal. Fireflies automatically removes filler words so your transcript will be clear, clean, and concise.
- Custom Vocabulary. Fireflies enables users to add their own custom vocab to be picked out by the AI in transcripts. This is a fantastic feature for teams that use a lot of industry-specific terminology.
- Compatibility. Fireflies works with Google Meet, MS Teams, Zoom, and more.
- Collaboration. Fireflies has a number of features that help teams collaborate better.
Fireflies.ai Cons
- Video Recording. To record video on Fireflies, users need a Business subscription. This is a basic feature included in most Fireflies.ai alternatives’ free plans.
- No Video Clips or Reels. While Fireflies makes it easy to share snippets, these snippets are audio-only. You cannot share small video clips from your meeting.
- Weak Free Plan. Fireflies’ free plan is on the weaker side, with no video recording, only 3 hours of weekly storage, and limited AI summaries.
- No Multi-Meeting Intelligence. Fireflies users are unable to use the AI to provide intelligence across multiple meetings at once. This is particularly useful for managers to identify trends and patterns. For instance, if you want to select a bunch of meetings and ask “what competitors were mentioned in these calls?”, you can’t really do this – you have to go meeting by meeting to get this.
- No Sales Coaching. Another big drawback, specifically for Sales teams, is that the platform’s AI offers no sales coaching features, including playbooks, scorecards, and objection handling tips.
Fireflies.ai Pricing
The paid plans for Fireflies.ai start at $10 per user per month (when billed annually). This isn’t inherently bad, but it’s worth noting that this still doesn’t unlock video recording.
Free Plan Features
- Unlimited transcription
- 800 mins of storage (tops 3 hours per week)
- Limited AI summaries
- Record on Zoom, Google Meet, MS Teams, and more
- Transcription in 69+ languages
- Search within meetings
- Customizable playback speed
- Soundbites
- Global search
- Uploads
- API access
For advanced AI summaries, CRM integrations, and smart search filters, you’ll need the Pro plan. The Business plan unlocks video recording, conversational intelligence, and unlimited integrations. It’s also here where you’ll get priority support. The Enterprise plan, coming in at $39 per user per month, unlocks dedicated support, private storage, custom data retention, SSO, and even a personalized onboarding program.
Is Fireflies.ai Worth It?
While Fireflies.ai isn’t the most feature-fancy platform on the market, it does offer a good range of features for an affordable price. If your goal is solely to record internal meetings to maintain a sense of organization within your company, Fireflies is definitely a contender.
If, however, you want to take your AI meeting assistant to the next level, it lacks the flashy features that can do so. For example, it doesn’t have any sales coaching features which makes it relatively useless for sales teams. It has no revenue intelligence either, making it a hard sell for revenue teams. Video clips are absent so even user researchers will find it burdensome. Finally, it lacks multi-meeting intelligence so managers can’t evaluate their team across multiple meetings at once.
In short, Fireflies is a great tool for recording internal meetings and the occasional external one. Don’t expect it to help you much more than that. For more advanced features, you’ll need to take a look at some Fireflies.ai alternatives. Luckily for you, we’ve done the legwork already.
5 Fireflies.ai Alternatives and Competitors
1. tl;dv
tl;dv gets the basics right, but then excels with the more advanced stuff too. For starters, its free plan includes unlimited video recordings, transcripts, and AI moment summaries. You can also integrate with emails, Slack, and your calendar on the free plan too, something that Fireflies keeps locked off until you’re paying.
When you compare plans, don’t be fooled by simply comparing the price between the similar named plans (Pro, Business, Enterprise).
In fact, besides the top tier integrations (all 5,000+ of which are unlocked with the Pro plan) and the global transcript search (also unlocked with the Pro plan), tl;dv basically covers all of Fireflies’ features in its free plan.
So what’s included in tl;dv’s paid offerings? This is where the fun starts…
tl;dv provides multi-meeting intelligence, empowering users to generate recurring AI reports that cover topics of your choice across all your team’s meetings. If you’re a sales manager, this means you can keep tabs on specific objections that prospects keep raising. You’re able to get a weekly (or however frequently you desire) report that tells you when and by whom the objection was raised (with timestamps for a quick catch up). If it was raised in several sales calls for several different sales reps, you’ll get AI insights on all those calls simultaneously.
Keep in mind that objection handling was just an example too. This can be used by customer success teams to identify calls about a specific problem, internal product discussions to monitor progress with a new feature, or user research teams to quickly find common ground across all your user interviews.
tl;dv also has a range of sales coaching features, making it easier for your sales team to excel. From popular sales playbook templates like MEDDIC and BANT to custom playbooks, scorecards, and objection handling tips, tl;dv is ideal for a sales team looking to close more deals.
You’ll get a great dashboard where you can fully evaluate your sales reps too. The intuitive AI knows how long your sales reps speak and how long they listen, making it a great place to start with sales training. As well as talk-to-listen ratio, it will show questions asked, filler words, key points and more.
How Does tl;dv Compare to Fireflies?
Earlier, we listed 5 key drawbacks (cons) for Fireflies.ai. Here is tl;dv’s answer to each of those.
- Video Recording. This one is simple: tl;dv offers unlimited video recording for free. Fireflies, on the other hand, charges $19 per user per month to record any video at all.
- Video Clips or Reels. Fireflies isn’t able to make video clips, only soundbites. tl;dv allows its users to create clips and highlight reels directly from the transcript. These include both video and audio and are also available on the free plan.
- Free Plan. As you can see from the above two points, tl;dv’s free plan is already more generous than Fireflies’. It features unlimited video recording, transcriptions, and AI moment summaries, among other things we’ll get to in a moment.
- Multi-Meeting Intelligence. Fireflies is not capable of providing multi-meeting intelligence, where tl;dv has it mastered. If you want a recurring report about something specific across all your team’s meetings, you’ll only get that with tl;dv.
- Sales Coaching. Where Fireflies has no sales coaching features whatsoever, tl;dv offers playbooks (templates and custom-made), scorecards, and objection handling tips, as well as a dashboard that lets managers evaluate sales team performance.
For a more comprehensive overview of how these two tools square up to each other, check out our in-depth comparison: tl;dv vs. Fireflies.
tl;dv Pros
- Free AI Integration: tl;dv capitalizes on top-of-the-range AI to provide summaries, notes, and automatic speaker detection.
- Free and Instant Translations: tl;dv’s transcriptions are available in more than 40 languages for Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meet.
- Incredible Free Plan: Unlimited free video recordings and transcriptions of Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meet calls.
- Easy to Use: tl;dv’s sleek design makes it super easy for beginners and experts alike.
- Multi-Meeting Intelligence. Schedule recurring reports to get insights from multiple meetings at once, delivered straight to your inbox.
- Sales Coaching. Upgrade your sales team using insights from your sales calls. Improve objection handling and use templates or custom playbooks to personalize your coaching strategy.
- Timestamps and Tagging Features: Timestamp your meeting highlights to quickly jump back to specific moments in the call. It also features the ability to tag colleagues at specific meeting moments so they get an email with a link straight to their inbox.
- 5,000+ Integrations: Push timestamps and meeting clips directly to Notion, Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, and 5,000+ more via native integrations.
- Create Clips and Highlights: Scan your library and make clips and highlight reels to condense insights.
- Intuitive Library: Search your meetings library for keywords in transcripts to quickly find what you’re looking for.
- Concurrent Meetings. tl;dv’s AI can record and transcribe multiple meetings at the same time, making your life easier if you’re double (or triple+) booked.
tl;dv Cons
- Compatibility: Not yet available for Webex or BlueJeans.
Pricing
While tl;dv’s features speak for themselves, its free plan is one of the key reasons it sits on top of this list of Fireflies.ai alternatives. You can get started today with no strings attached. Plus, depending on which region of the world you’re in, you can get up to a 40% discount on the paid plans!
Free Plan Features
- Unlimited video recordings and transcripts.
- Record Google Meet, Zoom, and MS Teams calls.
- Transcribe in 40+ languages
- Unlimited AI moment summaries
- 10x AI Meeting Notes
- 10x Ask tl;dv AI
- 10x AI Multi-Meeting Reports
- Slack, Email, and Calendar integrations
- Set timestamps and highlights
- Create and share clips
- Automatic speaker recognition
- 3 monthly uploads
tl;dv’s paid subscriptions unlock 5,000+ integrations, sales coaching playbooks, limitless multi-meeting intelligence, recurring reports, analytics, downloadable recordings, customizable share settings, priority customer support, and much, much more.
See the full details here.
In this tl;dv vs Fireflies.ai showdown, both stand out as remarkable AI notetakers, excelling in providing detailed transcriptions, concise summaries and a vast range of integrations.
However, despite their similarities, there are distinct differences that
2. Fathom
Fathom is a top Fireflies alternative that rivals tl;dv for its competitive free plan. For individuals, you’ll get unlimited video recordings and transcripts, but it has no AI features. It’s a great way to try before you buy (as is the 14-day free trial), but it’s not going to be feasible for teams or organizations. They’ll need Fathom Premium.
Fathom is widely regarded as a top AI meeting transcription tool that quickly and automatically creates summaries of meetings, including action item summaries so you can make decisions faster and more efficiently. As with Fireflies, Fathom provides real-time transcriptions which can be a massive bonus if you want to take notes on-the-go.
You can also organize your insights across popular documentation tools like Google Docs, Notion, or Asana with ease because of Fathom’s array of integrations. On top of this, you can generate highlights mid-call and get its powerful AI to summarize them in a simple click. You can instantly sync your mid-call notes with the rest of your research notes, streamlining your work process even more.
Fathom Pros
- Automatic Summaries. Fathom automatically generates summaries of meetings, including action items.
- Easily Shareable Reels. With Fathom, you can create short video clips and share them in a single click.
- Powerful AI. Generate highlights mid-call and then get Fathom’s AI to summarize them on the go.
- Download Instantly. Meetings and transcripts are available to download instantly.
- Good Free Options. It’s free for personal use and has a 2 week free trial for the team version.
Fathom Cons
- Compatibility. Fathom is only available with Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meet.
- Limited Translations. Only available in 6 languages.
- Complicated Pricing. The pricing for Fathom can be quite confusing compared to other Fireflies alternatives.
- No Sales Coaching. There are no features to help sales teams close more deals.
- No Multi-Meeting Intelligence. Fathom doesn’t offer insights across multiple meetings at once.
Pricing
Fathom is completely free for personal use, making it one of the top free plans out of all the Fireflies competitors. For use in teams, which is where it’ll be most essential for sales managers, Fathom requires you to get a paid plan. There is a free trial for this plan, but after the trial runs out, you’re left without any options. This paid plan starts at $50 per month and is priced on a rather odd “per company” basis.
Fireflies vs Fathom
Fathom is definitely a better place to start if you’re just looking to test the tools out. Fathom’s individual free plan gives everything it’s got. Fireflies has a rather weak free plan by comparison.
Besides this, Fathom and Fireflies are quite similar tools. Neither offer sales coaching or revenue intelligence, but both offer solid transcripts. Fathom offers video recording for free (for individuals) which is slightly better than Fireflies. It also allows you to create short video clips to share as reels which is great when you need a colleague to see something but you don’t want them to sit through the entire recording.
For a comprehensive comparison of Fathom and the number one meeting recorder on this list, tl;dv, see our overview: tl;dv vs Fathom.
3. Tactiq
Tactiq is a leading AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and takes notes during your live calls. It provides real-time transcriptions and insightful AI summaries so that you can get more out of your meetings.
Tactiq has a lot going for it: it translates into more than 60 languages, supports regional dialects, and automatically removes filler words. It records video as a standard, and its AI is more useful than Fathom’s or Fireflies’. It can even perform sentiment analysis, helping your sales reps figure out where your prospects are at emotionally.
One of Tactiq’s subtle but great features is that it allows for assigning tasks based on meeting discussions. Like tl;dv, it has great admin options, organizational features, and its customer support is known to be quick and efficient.
One thing Tactiq lacks that could take it to the next level is sales coaching. It does everything else right, but doesn’t have any industry-specific features to take it to the next level (or higher up this list of Fireflies.ai alternatives).
Tactiq Pros
- Real-Time Transcriptions. Tactiq’s transcriptions appear in real-time so you can make notes or share snippets on the go.
- Translations. Tactiq’s transcripts come in more than 60 languages and it has a localized platform in 7 languages, making it great for international teams.
- Great AI Summaries. Tactiq’s AI summarizes meetings, pulling out the most insightful comments for you to rewatch.
- Task Assignment. Tactiq enables users to assign tasks based on the meeting discussions.
- Sentiment Analysis. Tactiq’s AI can determine the emotional tone behind words.
- Efficient Customer Support. Tactiq’s customer support is quick, friendly, and efficient.
Tactiq Cons
- No Sales Coaching. Tactiq suffers in this regard by not being able to use its AI to improve sales.
- No Multi-Meeting Intelligence. Tactiq’s AI is limited to single meeting insights. It’s unable to connect the dots between two or more separate meetings.
- Weak Free Plan. Only 10 meetings are available to be transcribed per month on the free plan, with just 5 AI credits too.
- Questionable Compliance. Tactiq doesn’t comment on whether or not it is SOC2 compliant, and its data retention policies are not clearly presented.
- No Concurrent Meetings. Tactiq doesn’t allow users to record more than one meeting at the same time, making it a weaker offering for busy managers.
Tactiq Pricing
Tactiq’s paid offerings start at $8 per month, making it the cheapest plan out of all the Fireflies.ai alternatives. This plan unlocks unlimited transcriptions and 10 AI credits per month. The Team Plan is $16.7 per user per month and allows for unlimited AI credits and priority support. Finally, the Enterprise Plan is customizable and varies in price depending on your needs.
Free Plan Features
- 5 AI credits per month
- 10 transcripts per month
- Share and export transcripts
- Upload meeting recordings
The free plan also allows you to use some basic features like global search and edit transcript.
Fireflies vs Tactiq
Tactiq provides a little more bang for your buck than Fireflies in our opinion. The plans start off cheaper (although they lack any juicy features), the task assignment is a helpful feature and the customer support is top tier.
The two tools have a lot in common: both miss out on sales coaching features, neither have multi-meeting intelligence, and they both target the same markets. Tactiq has video recording included for free, which is a massive plus. However, Fireflies enables users to record up to 3 concurrent meetings, which Tactiq downright doesn’t allow.
This one is a close call, and it’ll come down to what you want from a call. If you’re super busy and often double booked for meetings, Fireflies’ concurrent meetings might tip it in their favor. If that’s not the case, Tactiq is probably the better all-rounder.
Check how it performed against the number one Fireflies competitor on this list in our comprehensive comparison; tl;dv vs Tactiq.
4. Gong
Gong is a powerhouse of a platform that upgrades sales teams and transforms revenue growth through meeting intelligence. The only reason Gong isn’t higher on this list is because it has a very niche focus: sales. Not only that, but Gong is an expensive tool to get compared to Fireflies and its alternatives.
With Gong’s super-charged AI analytics, it helps sales reps enhance their skills, identify high-potential leads, and improve overall sales performance. It’s hyper-specialized for Enterprise-scale sales teams, so if you’re looking for a Fireflies.ai alternative that isn’t necessarily sales-oriented, Gong isn’t for you.
Most of the other Fireflies.ai competitors on this list are multi-faceted, focusing on remote and asynchronous work and collaboration with the occasional specialized feature for sales teams. Gong is for sales or nothing. This can be an advantage and a disadvantage; it depends on your business needs.
Gong Pros
- Integrations. Gong has hundreds of integrations that make connecting your workspaces seamless.
- Revenue intelligence. Gong’s state-of-the-art revenue intelligence allows you to forecast sales and help with deal execution.
- Sales coaching. Gong offers custom playbooks, scorecards, templates, and objection handling training.
- Sentiment analysis. Gong’s AI analyzes customer sentiment to bring you closer to closing the deal.
Gong Cons
- Expensive. Gong’s pricing is notoriously high.
- Heavy Sales Focus. If you aren’t going to maximize Gong’s sales features, you’re better off going elsewhere.
- Long-Winded Onboarding. To get access to Gong, you have to jump through a lot of hoops.
- Intrusive Recommendations. Some reviewers suggest that Gong’s recommendations on how to improve your sales pitch can be annoying and unwanted.
Gong Pricing
Gong’s pricing is hidden behind a phone call with a sales rep. It’s a hurdle but it’s also done to warn off those that aren’t serious. Gong is for enterprises so expect to be paying the big bucks.
It’s been reported that some plans cost as much as $1,600 per user annually, for a maximum of 49 users. That means if your team has 49 members, you’ll be paying $78,400 before you’ve even made a single sale.
Fireflies vs Gong
There’s no doubt about it: Gong is the better tool for Sales teams. If, however, you’re not looking for a sales-specific AI meeting assistant, then you’re better off with Fireflies.ai or one of the other alternatives on this list.
For those wanting a deeper look at Gong, check out our detailed comparison between Gong and tl;dv.
5. Otter.ai
Otter.ai is another Fireflies alternative that fulfills the same kind of need. If you’re looking for a platform that records and transcribes meetings with basic AI summaries, you can’t really go wrong with Otter. It’s been around for quite a while so it’s well recognized as a powerful transcription tool; it was the primary meeting recorder used in education during remote education in the pandemic.
Otter provides real-time transcriptions, filler word removal, and custom vocabulary, making your transcripts clearer and more accurate.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows for Otter, however. There are several downsides that make it a questionable alternative to Fireflies. For starters, it has no video recording at all. It’s also an English-only tool, making it drastically weaker for international teams. You also can’t download recordings, make clips or reels, or even track keywords. There are no sales coaching features, but more than that, there isn’t even a way to use smart filters to search through all your meetings at once.
Otter Pros
- Easy to Use. Otter.ai is intuitive and easy to navigate.
- Multi-Meeting Intelligence. You can get AI insights on multiple meetings at once.
- Real-Time Transcription. Get your transcripts live during the call.
- Custom Vocabulary. With custom vocabulary, users can add jargon to their AI’s dictionary.
- Filler Word Removal. Get clearer transcripts as filler words are automatically removed.
Otter Cons
- English Only. The lack of transcript languages (and localized platform languages) makes this a weak choice for multinational teams.
- No Video Recording. There’s no video recording, not even on the paid plans.
- Can’t Download Recordings. Otter doesn’t allow users to download recordings, presenting a problem for those who want to store call recordings locally.
- No Clips or Reels. Otter doesn’t allow the user to make clips or reels from meeting moments.
- Can’t Track Keywords. Otter can’t track keywords, taking a large amount of potential automation away from the tool.
- No Smart Filters. Otter’s global search function lacks any smart filters, making it more difficult to find what you’re looking for.
- No Sales Coaching Features. Otter.ai is no good for sales teams hoping to improve their performance as it lacks playbooks, scorecards, dashboards, or insights on improvement.
Otter Pricing
Otter’s paid plans start at $8.33 per user per month when billed annually. This includes custom vocabulary and the ability to tag speakers, but it still limits transcription to 90 minutes per conversation and only 1,200 minutes in total.
Their Business Plan will set you back $20 per user per month, unlocking usage analytics and priority support. This allows you to join up to 3 meetings concurrently and ups the monthly transcription minutes to 6,000.
Finally, their Enterprise Plan requires a sales call to get a quote. It includes SSO and advanced security and compliance controls.
Free Plan Features
- 300 monthly transcription minutes (30 max per conversation)
- 3 imported transcriptions
- 5 terms for custom vocabulary
- Otter AI chat
Otter vs. Fireflies
Otter and Fireflies both target similar markets. Neither tool has a stand-out industry-leading feature, but they both get the transcription job fairly well. They both offer live transcriptions, custom vocabulary, and filler word removal, three useful features for keeping transcripts clean and tidy.
However, Otter suffers when it comes to multilingual teams. They simply can’t use it. It’s English-only, compared to Fireflies which translates transcripts in over 60 languages. On top of that, Fireflies has countless great integrations (including Zapier) to which Otter has just a select few (and no Zapier).
Both tools allow for a maximum of 3 concurrent meetings, but only Fireflies has smart filters to enable users to quickly and easily find what they’re looking for afterwards. In reality, Fireflies is the stronger tool, but Otter does offer a nice middle ground pricing with $8.33 as its lowest offering. If you find what you need there, then it may be worth it for you.
See how Otter fared against the number one Fireflies competitor on this list in our comprehensive breakdown: tl;dv vs Otter.ai.
The Verdict
So now you’ve checked over all the Fireflies.ai alternatives, it comes down to this: what does your business need?
If you’re looking to ditch Fireflies and upgrade to get some nifty new features for your sales team, you’re left with Gong and tl;dv. Gong is a more comprehensive sales tool, but it has a hefty price tag and you’ll be wasting money if you don’t maximize its sales features.
tl;dv is the best of both worlds, providing a utility that’s versatile. You can use it for your asynchronous internal calls as well as your sales pitches. It’s number one for a reason…
Try it for free today. You won’t be disappointed.
