Head to head · verified pricing
Otter.ai vs Fireflies.ai
Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai compared on entry price, free-tier caps, speaker accuracy and archive search. Verified against both pricing pages, August 2026.
| Criterion | Otter.ai AI meeting notes Freemium | Fireflies.ai AI meeting notes Freemium |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 7.5/10 | 7.9/10 (best in this comparison) |
| Pricing model | Free plan · from $16.99/mo | Free plan · from $18/mo |
| Entry paid plan | $16.99/mo (best in this comparison) | $18/mo |
| Free tier | 300 transcription minutes/month, 3 lifetime file imports, 5 workspace members, 1 concurrent meeting | 400 minutes of storage per team, unlimited transcription and summaries, 20 AI credits |
| Platforms | Web, Mobile, Plugin, API | Web, Mobile, Extension, Plugin, API |
| API | Yes (best in this comparison) | Yes (best in this comparison) |
| Developer | Otter.ai, Inc. | Fireflies.ai, Inc. |
| Launched | 2016 | 2016 |
| Pricing verified | August 2026 | August 2026 |
| Capability 30% | 7.5 | 8.0 |
| Value for money 25% | 6.5 | 7.5 |
| Ease of use 15% | 8.5 | 8.0 |
| Maturity 15% | 9.0 | 8.5 |
| Support & docs 10% | 7.0 | 7.5 |
| Momentum 5% | 5.5 | 7.5 |
| Where it falls short |
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| Go to source | Visit Otter.ai | Visit Fireflies.ai |
Both launched in 2016, both sit in every "best meeting notes" list, and both cost within a dollar of each other. The decision comes down to when you use the transcript.
Otter is better during the meeting
Otter's live transcription view is the feature people actually keep it for: you watch text appear while the call happens, catch what you missed thirty seconds ago, and leave with a summary already written. Its language support is broad and its integrations are the widest in the category.
The cost of that maturity is a worse record with existing customers. Plan limits and pricing were changed repeatedly through 2024–2025, generating sustained 'shrinkflation' complaints from long-time subscribers, people who bought one allowance and later found themselves on another. Its free tier now carries a trap worth naming: 300 minutes a month sounds workable, but you get three file imports for the lifetime of the account. Live recording is fine; processing audio you already have is effectively unavailable.
Fireflies is better after the meeting
Fireflies treats calls as a corpus. Transcripts from Zoom, Teams and Meet land in one place and the point is searching them three months later, which is a different product from watching text scroll during a standup.
Its free plan is also the more honest of the two: unlimited transcription and summaries, capped by 400 minutes of team storage rather than by metering the summary, the part you actually read. Most rivals, Otter included, are stingier there.
Where it loses is speaker identification. Unless participants say their names aloud, Fireflies guesses, and on an eight-person planning call you will spend time fixing labels. Accuracy also drops with background noise and crosstalk, a limitation both tools share, but Fireflies wears it more visibly because its whole value is in what you retrieve later.
The price difference is not the difference
$16.99 against $18 is noise. Judge on the free tiers, because that is where the two philosophies show: Otter meters imports, Fireflies meters storage. If you record live, Otter's cap never bites. If you have a backlog of recordings, it makes the free plan useless immediately.
Which one fits your case
- Solo consultant recording their own calls
- Fireflies. The free tier includes summaries with no monthly meeting counter, so most solo users never reach a reason to pay.
- You take notes live and act during the call
- Otter. The live transcription view is genuinely useful while the meeting is happening, not just afterwards.
- A team searching decisions made months ago
- Fireflies. One searchable archive across Zoom, Teams and Meet is the core of the product rather than a side feature.
- Large multi-speaker meetings
- Otter. Both struggle with crosstalk, but Fireflies' speaker labelling degrades faster when people do not announce themselves.
- You have a backlog of existing recordings to process
- Fireflies. Otter's free plan allows only three file imports for the lifetime of the account, which rules it out before you start.
- You want the lowest-risk long-term bet on pricing
- Fireflies. Otter has changed plan limits on existing subscribers repeatedly; that is the one documented difference in how the two treat people who already paid.
Verdict
Fireflies for most people. Its free tier is the more usable of the two, its archive search is what you end up wanting after a few months, and it has not rewritten the deal on existing customers.
Otter if the live view is the point. If you work during calls rather than after them, nothing here replaces watching the transcript appear in real time, and the three-import limit never touches you if you only ever record live.
What should not decide it: the $1 price gap, or the fact that Otter is the name you already knew.
Questions people ask
- Is Fireflies cheaper than Otter?
- No. Fireflies starts at $18/mo against Otter's $16.99/mo. The meaningful gap is in the free plans: Fireflies includes unlimited transcription and summaries capped by 400 minutes of storage, while Otter gives 300 minutes a month but only three file imports ever.
- Which one transcribes more accurately?
- They are close on clean audio, and both degrade on accents, jargon and crosstalk. The practical difference is speaker labelling: Fireflies frequently mislabels speakers unless each person states their name aloud.
- Can I use either for free indefinitely?
- Yes, both keep a permanent free tier. Whether it is usable depends on your pattern: live recording suits Otter's free plan, while a backlog of existing files does not, because of the three-import lifetime cap.
- Do both send a bot into the meeting?
- Yes. If that is a problem for consent or compliance, Granola takes a different approach, it listens locally and keeps no recording at all.