Fireflies.ai review

What Fireflies.ai is

Fireflies.ai is a cloud meeting assistant. Its notetaker (long known as "Fred") joins Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and other platforms from your calendar, records the call, and produces a transcript, AI summary and action items. Meetings are stored in a searchable workspace where teammates can comment, make soundbite clips, organize meetings in channels and run analytics such as talk time, sentiment and topic trackers. AskFred, its AI assistant, answers questions about one meeting or many.

The company has steadily added more: a desktop app, a Chrome extension that records without the bot, AI "apps" and skills, a personal assistant, email assistant and voice agents on paid plans.

Key features

• Notetaker bot for Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and 10+ other platforms, plus real-time notes and live transcription.
• Bot-free options: a Chrome extension that records without the Fireflies bot, and a desktop app.
• Uploads: transcribe your own audio and video files.
• AI summaries and AskFred. Summaries are limited on Free and unlimited on paid plans; AskFred and AI apps draw on AI credits (20 to 50 depending on plan).
• Collaboration: comments, bookmarks, soundbite clips and channels (3 public channels on Free, unlimited on paid plans, private channels on Business).
• Conversation intelligence on Business: speaker talk-time, sentiment, question detection and topic trackers.
• Integrations with CRMs, Slack, Notion and other apps, Zapier, and an API with rate limits that grow by plan.
• Languages: the pricing page lists transcription in 100+ languages; the FAQ calls English the primary language, with Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian supported and the rest in beta.

Pricing

Prices below are per seat per month, in US dollars, as of October 2026, from Fireflies' pricing page. "Annual" is the monthly price when billed yearly. Every teammate added to a paid workspace counts as a seat.

Strengths

• Integrations. Fireflies' biggest draw: notes and action items flow into CRMs, project tools and chat with little setup. Teams that live in Salesforce or HubSpot consistently cite this.
• Unlimited transcription, even free. You can transcribe as many meetings as you like; storage is what's capped.
• Team features. Channels, comments, clips and analytics make it a shared meeting library rather than a personal notebook.
• Reasonable annual pricing. $10 per seat billed yearly for Pro is competitive.
• Language breadth. More languages than many rivals, with auto-detection.

Weaknesses

• Free storage fills fast. 400 minutes per team is roughly seven one-hour meetings before you need to delete or upgrade.
• AI credits add a second meter. Some AI features draw on a small credit allowance, so "unlimited" plans still have AI limits.
• The bot. A recurring complaint in public feedback is the Fireflies Notetaker joining meetings people didn't expect, and recap emails reaching attendees who never signed up. You can control auto-join, but defaults matter.
• Transcript quality varies. Users report good results on clear English and weaker results with accents, crosstalk and non-English languages, which Fireflies itself labels partly beta.
• Feature sprawl. The growing list of assistants, apps and agents makes the product harder to learn than simpler note takers.

Privacy and security

On its security page, Fireflies says it is SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and HIPAA compliant, encrypts meeting notes and transcripts at rest with 256-bit AES and uses TLS in transit. It says customer data is not used for AI training by default (elsewhere on the page, "never"), and that it has a zero-day data retention arrangement with its AI vendors. Enterprise customers can choose private storage and custom data retention.

In December 2025 a proposed class action (Cruz v. Fireflies.AI Corp., C.D. Illinois) was filed alleging that Fireflies' speaker recognition creates voiceprints of meeting participants without the notice and consent Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act requires, as legal commentators reported. These are allegations, and we found no ruling. Any tool that identifies speakers by voice (ours included) handles this kind of data, so it's worth knowing where it is stored. And tell people you're recording: some places require everyone's consent.

Platforms

• Meeting platforms: Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and 10+ others via the notetaker.
• Web app, Chrome extension and a desktop app.
• Mobile: iOS and Android.

Which plan makes sense

For one person trying Fireflies, the free plan is enough to judge transcript quality and summaries, but the 400-minute storage limit means you'll be deleting meetings within a couple of weeks of regular use. Pro is the realistic plan for individuals and small teams: unlimited summaries, 8,000 minutes of storage per seat, downloads and integrations, for $10 a seat on annual billing. Business is where Fireflies becomes a team tool, with unlimited storage, private channels, conversation intelligence and admin analytics; it's aimed at sales and customer teams who review calls together. Enterprise, which is annual only, adds the controls larger organizations ask for: SSO, SCIM, HIPAA, private storage and custom data retention.

Because every teammate added to a paid workspace counts as a seat, it's worth deciding up front who actually needs an account. People who only read shared recaps may not.

Who it suits, and who it doesn't

• Good fit: sales, recruiting and customer success teams that want call notes in their CRM automatically; managers who review calls; teams spread across languages.
• Good fit: people who want to search across months of meetings and ask questions about them.
• Poor fit: individuals who mainly want a tidy summary of their own calls and no team features; simpler tools are cheaper or free.
• Poor fit: anyone whose clients or employer don't allow meeting bots or cloud storage of recordings.

Alternatives

• Otter.ai: a stronger live transcript and cheaper annual Pro. See Otter vs Fireflies.
• Fathom: unlimited free recordings with summaries. See Fireflies vs Fathom.
• Read AI: meeting reports plus email and chat summaries.
• Bluedot: bot-free recording with CRM and ATS sync on Business.
• Hark (made by us): a desktop app for Windows, Mac and Linux that records and transcribes on your own computer with no bot. Voiceprints, recordings and transcripts stay on your computer unless you turn on encrypted sync; local use is free, AI notes are $12 per month. It has no CRM integrations or team workspace, transcribes English only, and on a Mac records the microphone only.

More options: Fireflies.ai alternatives.

Bottom line

Fireflies is one of the most complete team note takers: unlimited transcription, deep integrations and analytics at a fair annual price. Individuals will find the free plan's storage limiting, and anyone wary of bots or cloud-stored voice data should weigh the privacy questions first.