7 Fireflies.ai Alternatives in 2026

Otter
October 14, 2026
7 min
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Halfway through a meeting heavy week, you go hunting for Tuesday's decision and find the summary skipped it, the transcript garbled the one accented voice on the call, and the credit meter ran out before Thursday. When call volume outruns your notetaker, you start looking for something that keeps up.

Teams comparing options usually start with the Fireflies.ai platform. It's a capable notetaker, but its pricing model and call accuracy don't fit every team, especially those running high call volume across noisy environments or multilingual conversations.

The alternatives below span budget-friendly transcription, sales coaching, multilingual coverage, and live-annotation workflows, so you can match a tool to how your team actually meets.

The Short on Time Version

  • Switches usually come down to unpredictable pricing and accuracy that slips on noisy or accented calls, while higher tiers may lock workflow automation.
  • Real-world transcription quality and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tier gating distinguish tools in this category, as do security certifications.
  • Free plans differ on monthly minutes, per-meeting limits, storage windows, and paywalled AI features.
  • Some tools transcribe live, Otter.ai among them, so you can read and annotate the record during the call; others deliver a transcript afterward.
Your first 300 minutes are free — turn every meeting into searchable notes and summaries with Otter.ai.

7 Fireflies.ai Alternatives

Free-plan limits and starting costs vary widely across the alternatives.

Tool Best For Free Plan and Paid Pricing Key Advantage vs. Fireflies
Otter Live transcripts plus searchable history Free plan, 300 minutes per month; paid from $8.33 per user per month (annual) Live annotation, minute-based quotas
tl;dv Unlimited free recording Free unlimited recordings; paid from $18 per seat per month (annual) No free-plan recording ceiling
Avoma Revenue and customer success teams Free viewer/collaborator seats; recorders from $19 per seat per month (annual) CRM notes from entry plan
MeetGeek Transparent budget pricing Free plan, 3 hours per month; paid from $9.99 per user per month (annual) Hour quotas, published overage rate
Sembly Proxy attendance and multilingual teams 7-day trial only; paid from $10 per user per month (annual) Attends meetings you skip
Grain Video highlights and clips Free plan, 45-minute cap; paid from $15 per seat per month (annual) Clips on every plan
Notta High-quota simple transcription Free plan, 120 minutes per month; paid from $8.17 per month (annual) HIPAA on all tiers

Free plans diverge most: Grain allows 45 minutes per meeting, MeetGeek provides 3 hours monthly, and Sembly has no permanent free plan.

1. Otter.ai

The Otter.ai platform is an AI notetaker and Conversation Intelligence Platform for teams that want the transcript during the meeting and searchable afterward, without an AI-credit meter counting down in the background. Otter's Conversation Intelligence layer turns calls into automated summaries and action items as a searchable record of decisions, and context across every meeting, so your team can follow up without rebuilding notes from a recording.

As the meeting runs, Otter builds a live transcript, with speaker labels, that you can highlight and comment on in the moment. In Zoom and Google Meet, Otter can also display live captions so participants can read along without leaving the call. When the meeting ends, the full transcript, summary, and action items are ready to share.

Otter can be configured to join Zoom meetings, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams calls you choose. Otter's desktop and mobile apps also capture in-person conversations, so your team records scheduled and face-to-face calls without an AI notetaker showing up on meetings you did not intend to record.

Ask Otter AI Chat which pricing objection appeared in last quarter's renewal calls, and it answers from your conversation history with speaker and timestamp attribution, so you can retrieve context without reviewing each call. Otter connects to 30+ integrations, including Claude, ChatGPT, Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Notion, and Jira. 

The Otter Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server syncs updates bidirectionally across plans, so your team can reuse conversation context in the AI assistants and CRMs it already uses. On sales calls, Live Assist (Enterprise) AI coaching surfaces objection handling and playbook prompts during the conversation.

Pros

  • Live transcription is included on every plan, including the free one, so you can annotate during the call rather than wait for a post-meeting file.
  • Monthly-minute quotas make costs easy to forecast without tracking AI credits per query.
  • Otter AI Chat spans your entire conversation history, so you can retrieve context across meetings instead of searching one recording at a time.

Cons

  • Otter currently transcribes six languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese Simplified), however more are planned.
  • The free Basic plan's 300 minutes and 30-minute conversation cap suit trials rather than heavy meeting weeks.
  • HIPAA compliance and Business Associate Agreement (BAA) support are available on Otter Enterprise, not on standard plans.

Pricing

Basic is free with 300 monthly minutes. Pro costs $8.33 per user per month annually with 1,200 minutes and 90-minute conversations. Business costs $19.99 per user per month annually ($30 monthly) with 6,000 monthly minutes and unlimited imports. Enterprise is custom with Single Sign-On (SSO), and includes HIPAA compliance with BAA support. MCP access is available across plans.

Who Is Otter Best For?

Teams that want predictable costs, a live transcript they can annotate during the call, and a searchable record they can query across meetings afterward.

2. tl;dv

tl;dv is an AI notetaker for individuals and small teams that want unlimited recording without paying, an appealing swap for anyone who hit Fireflies' 400-minute free storage cap. 

Pros

  • The free plan includes unlimited meetings, recordings, and transcription, with no team storage ceiling to manage.
  • Paid plans add cross-meeting AI queries, sales coaching, and playbook features that Fireflies gates behind its Business tier.
  • tl;dv states support for more than 40 languages with automatic detection, useful for teams whose calls span multiple regions.

Cons

The free plan caps AI use at 10 AI notes and 10 Ask AI queries monthly, so heavy AI users still hit a ceiling. Free-plan recordings also auto-delete after three months, which can wipe out historical context you might want to search later.

Pricing

Pro costs $18 per seat per month annually, Business costs $29 per seat per month annually ($35 monthly), and Enterprise pricing is custom.

Who Is tl;dv Best For?

Small teams that record heavily and want a free plan without a recording ceiling, provided they don't need long-term history.

3. Avoma

Avoma is a meeting assistant for revenue and customer success teams that want coaching, call scoring, and deal management.

Pros

  • CRM note-saving is included from the entry Startup plan, whereas Fireflies gates third-party integrations to Business.
  • The conversation intelligence add-on covers automatic call scoring, custom AI scorecards, and coaching recommendations for teams that need more than summaries.
  • Viewer and collaborator seats are free; only recorder seats are paid, which helps larger teams share access without scaling seat count.

Cons

  • Avoma's pricing is modular, with Revenue Intelligence offered as separate paid add-ons on top of its base seats.
  • CRM integration depth is limited compared to platforms with two-way CRM field updates on lower tiers.
  • The Enterprise tier requires a 10-seat minimum, which can be steep for smaller revenue teams.

Pricing

Annually, Startup costs $19 per recorder seat monthly, Organization $29, and Enterprise $39 with a 10-seat minimum (Enterprise is annual-billing only); each add-on costs $29 per seat monthly.

Who Is Avoma Best For?

Revenue and customer success teams that need coaching and forecasting alongside notes, not just meeting summaries.

Ask every meeting a question — search across months of conversations in seconds with Otter.ai.

4. MeetGeek

MeetGeek is an AI notetaker for budget-conscious teams that want hour-based quotas and published self-serve prices, a direct answer to Fireflies' AI-credit model. 

Pros

  • HIPAA compliance is available on any annual plan, well ahead of most competitors that gate it to Enterprise.
  • Quotas use plain hours with a published overage rate ($0.50 per extra hour), so effective cost is easy to forecast.
  • Bot and no-bot recording, API access, and MCP access are included on the free plan, which supports flexible capture without paying up front.

Cons

  • The free plan's three monthly transcription hours can run out with several weekly calls, pushing regular users to Pro.
  • Video recording is absent on Basic and Pro; it arrives at Business.
  • Team meeting analytics require Business, while Pro includes personal analytics.

Pricing

Basic is free. Pro costs $9.99 per user per month annually with 20 hours plus $0.50 per extra hour. Business costs $17 annually with unlimited transcription; Enterprise is custom.

Who Is MeetGeek Best For?

Teams that want predictable hour-based pricing and HIPAA availability without waiting for an Enterprise contract.

5. Sembly

Sembly is an AI notetaker for multilingual teams, and it can attend meetings on your behalf, a differentiator for teams whose calendars overlap.

Pros

  • Mixed-language meeting support across 48 languages is included on all plans, useful for calls that switch languages mid-conversation.
  • Every paid plan includes unlimited meeting hours, so heavy call volume doesn't force a tier upgrade.
  • For meetings you skip, Sembly attends and returns video recordings with AI summaries, so the record still exists.

Cons

  • Sembly offers seven-day trials rather than a permanent free plan, so long-term free use isn't an option.
  • File uploads are capped at 5 hours on Basic, 10 on Pro, and 15 on MAX.
  • HIPAA compliance is limited to the MAX plan.

Pricing

Annually, Basic costs $10 per month for one user, Pro costs $20 for up to 40 users, and MAX costs $30 for up to 500 users.

Who Is Sembly Best For?

Multilingual teams that want coverage for meetings they skip and unlimited hours on every paid tier.

6. Grain

Grain is an AI notetaker for sales teams that records, transcribes, summarizes, and creates shareable video clips from meetings, so specific moments become artifacts your team can circulate. 

Pros

  • The free plan allows unlimited meetings for workspace-registered users with basic MCP access, more generous than Fireflies' free storage cap; personal-email accounts are capped at 20 bot-recorded meetings before upgrade.
  • Clips and highlight reels are included on every plan, so sharing a customer objection or product feedback moment doesn't require a paid tier.
  • Business adds AI coaching, trackers, follow-up emails, and CRM sync for teams running structured sales motions.

Cons

Free meetings cap at 45 minutes with a 30-day history and one Notetaker seat per workspace, tight for full sales calls. HubSpot and Salesforce integration is also gated to Business, similar to Fireflies' tier gating.

Pricing

Starter costs $15 per seat per month annually and removes duration and history limits. Business costs $29 and adds CRM integrations; Enterprise requires contacting sales.

Who Is Grain Best For?

Sales teams that circulate call moments as video clips and want highlight reels on every plan.

7. Notta

Notta is a transcription-first AI notetaker for individuals and teams that need high monthly volume across 58 languages, with broader language coverage than Fireflies markets. 

Pros

  • HIPAA compliance is available on all tiers, rare among notetakers at this price point.
  • The Business plan removes the monthly minute cap for teams processing constant call volume.
  • Speaker recognition is included on every plan, so attribution isn't gated behind an upgrade.

Cons

Free recordings are capped at 3 minutes each within a 120-minute monthly quota, effectively a demo tier. Reviewers also list transcript accuracy among the top cons, with drops on noisy calls, one of the same complaints that drives users away from Fireflies.

Pricing

Pro costs $8.17 per month annually with 1,800 monthly minutes. Business costs $16.67 per seat monthly with unlimited transcription plus CRM and cloud-storage integrations.

Who Is Notta Best For?

Solo users and small teams that need high-volume transcription, 58-language coverage, and HIPAA availability on any tier.

Test Your Shortlist Against Real Calls

With seven tools on the table, feature lists only get you so far. Run each candidate against the calls your team actually holds, whether those calls are noisy, accented, or spread across languages, and confirm the CRM and security features you need are available at the tier you'd actually buy. Your priority shapes the pick: predictable costs, accuracy on messy calls, live transcript access, multilingual coverage, or automation depth.

For teams that want a searchable record during and after every conversation, Otter combines live transcription, annotation, automated summaries, action items, and cross-meeting search, so Tuesday's meeting decision is still retrievable months later. Business includes 6,000 monthly minutes and unlimited imports, and Enterprise adds unlimited minutes. MCP is available across plans, so Claude and ChatGPT can securely query Otter records outside the app.

MRI Software adopted Otter as a knowledge hub for its sales engineering team, preserving context across long sales cycles.

Try Otter free on your next meeting, or get a demo to see it on your own calls.

Capture every decision — Otter.ai works across Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.

Frequently Asked Questions About Fireflies.ai Alternatives

Is Otter Better Than Fireflies?

Otter fits teams that want coverage across the full meeting journey, from pre-meeting briefs to live transcription and captions, in-call coaching and annotation, Otter AI Chat across conversations, and automatic follow-ups, all on predictable minute-based pricing. Fireflies emphasizes integrations across business apps and conversation intelligence, so the choice hinges on whether your team leans toward real-time workflows or downstream automations.

What's the Best Free Fireflies Alternative?

Otter's free Basic plan includes real-time transcription and 300 monthly minutes. tl;dv allows unlimited free recording and transcription, while MeetGeek covers three hours monthly.

Do These Alternatives Connect to My CRM?

Otter securely connects conversation records to Claude and ChatGPT through MCP and syncs with Salesforce and HubSpot. Most alternatives also offer CRM connections on paid tiers: Grain gates, Salesforce and HubSpot sync to Business, while Avoma includes CRM note-saving from its entry plan.