Fireflies.ai is a capable AI meeting recorder, but it is not the right tool for every team. The AI-credit system catches Pro users off-guard mid-month. The mandatory bot join creates friction in sensitive client calls. And once you need conversation intelligence, the Business tier at $19/seat/month competes directly with purpose-built sales platforms that often do the job better. So people look for alternatives.
This guide covers eleven competitors — Otter.ai, Granola, Fathom, tl;dv, Read.ai, Avoma, Gong, Krisp Note Taker, Sembly AI, Notta, and MeetGeek — with real June 2026 pricing, honest pros and cons, and clear guidance on who each tool is actually for.
Why people look for Fireflies.ai alternatives
Three friction points drive most searches for Fireflies alternatives.
The AI-credit trap. Fireflies separates transcription storage from AI credits. New accounts get a one-time pool of 20 AI credits — not 20 per month, 20 total. Once those are gone, AskFred, custom summaries, and advanced action items hit a paywall. Users running daily calls exhaust the pool in under a week. Add-on credit bundles auto-renew, adding variable cost on top of the flat subscription fee.
The mandatory bot model. Fireflies joins your calls as a visible participant. That works for internal standups. It creates friction in board discussions, legal calls, investor conversations, or any meeting where a robot attendee changes the dynamic. Several competitors now offer bot-free local capture as an alternative.
Compressed pricing headroom. Pro at $10/seat/month (annual) is reasonable for individuals. Business at $19/seat/month (annual) is a real jump, and Pro storage caps at 8,000 minutes per seat — roughly 133 hours, which active users hit faster than expected. Teams feel pushed to upgrade before they are ready.
None of these are dealbreakers in isolation. Together, they push enough users to look elsewhere that this is worth a thorough comparison.
The 11 best Fireflies.ai alternatives in 2026
| Tool | Starting paid price | Free tier | Best for | Standout feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otter.ai | $8.33/mo (annual) | Yes — 300 min/mo | Teams, sales | Real-time shared transcription |
| Granola | $14/user/mo (annual) | Yes — 25 meetings lifetime | Solo operators | Bot-free local audio capture |
| Fathom | $16/mo (annual) | Yes — unlimited recordings | Free-tier users | Strongest free tier in category |
| tl;dv | $18/user/mo (annual) | Yes — unlimited transcription | Multi-meeting search | AI-generated cross-call reports |
| Read.ai | $15/user/mo (annual) | Yes — 5 meetings/mo | Cross-channel insights | Email + chat + meeting analysis |
| Avoma | $19/seat/mo (annual) | No — 14-day trial | Mid-market sales | Full CI + scheduling stack |
| Gong | ~$100+/user/mo | No | Enterprise revenue teams | Conversation intelligence at scale |
| Krisp Note Taker | $8/mo (annual) | 7-day trial | Noisy environments | Built-in noise cancellation |
| Sembly AI | $10/mo (annual) | Yes — free plan | Budget-conscious teams | Cross-meeting Semblian analysis |
| Notta | $8.17/mo (annual) | Yes — 120 min/mo | Multilingual meetings | 58-language transcription |
| MeetGeek | $9.99/user/mo (annual) | Yes — 5 hrs/mo | Analytics-focused teams | Meeting performance analytics |
Otter.ai
Otter.ai is the benchmark for team-shared meeting knowledge. OtterPilot joins calls on Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams, and real-time transcription streams live to every participant who has the app open.
Pricing (June 2026): Free Basic with 300 minutes/month and a 30-minute cap per call. Pro is $8.33/user/month annual ($16.99/month monthly) with 1,200 minutes/month. Business is $19.99/user/month annual ($30/month monthly) with unlimited live transcription and a 4-hour call cap. Enterprise is custom with HIPAA compliance as an add-on.
Pros:
- Best-in-class real-time transcript sharing with meeting participants
- Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zapier integrations available on Pro
- 300 free minutes beats Fireflies’ storage-based free tier
- No AI-credit trap — summaries included in paid plans
Cons:
- Free tier limits file imports to 3 lifetime uploads (not monthly)
- Otter trains on your data by default unless you have Enterprise terms
- No bot-free capture option
Who it’s for: Teams that want a searchable shared knowledge base from meetings. Strong fit for orgs already using Salesforce or HubSpot.
Granola
Granola is the anti-Fireflies. It records through your device’s local audio — no bot, no notification to other participants. It captures raw audio silently, then enhances the notes you jot during the call with AI post-meeting. The result feels like an upgraded human note-taking process rather than a robotic automation.
Pricing (June 2026): Free Basic capped at 25 total meetings ever (not per month). Business is $14/user/month annual, with unlimited history, HubSpot, Notion, Slack, Zapier, and advanced AI models. Enterprise starts at $35/user/month with SSO and SOC 2 Type II.
Pros:
- Bot-free capture avoids participant friction entirely
- $14/user/month Business tier undercuts most competitors at team scale
- MCP server integration pipes meeting context into Claude and other AI tools
- Trusted by teams at Linear, Vercel, and Brex
Cons:
- Free tier’s 25-meeting lifetime cap is the stingiest in the category
- Mac-only in mid-2026 — no Windows or mobile app
- No conversation intelligence or CRM field-level sync on any tier
Who it’s for: Solo operators and small teams who do client calls, prefer no meeting bot, and want clean notes without a complex analytics layer.
Fathom
Fathom has the most generous free tier of any AI meeting notes tool in 2026 — unlimited recordings, unlimited storage, and unlimited transcription. The one constraint introduced in 2026 is that advanced AI summaries are capped at 5 calls per month on the free plan. Regular daily users will need a paid plan, but Premium at $16/month annual is among the most affordable options in the market.
Pricing (June 2026): Free with unlimited recordings; advanced AI summaries capped at 5 calls/month. Premium is $20/month ($16/month annual). Team Edition is $19/user/month ($15/user/month annual, 2-seat minimum). Business is $34/user/month ($25/user/month annual) with CRM field sync. Fathom 3.0 (April 2026) added bot-free recording and ChatGPT/Claude integrations.
Pros:
- Free tier is genuinely unlimited on recordings and transcription
- Bot-free recording available in beta since Fathom 3.0
- Strong SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance
- 90-day refund window on all paid plans
Cons:
- 5-call advanced summary cap on the free plan introduced in 2026
- CRM field sync only on Business ($25/user/month annual)
- 2-seat minimum on Team and Business plans
Who it’s for: Individual contributors who run client calls and want the best possible free tier. The Team plan at $15/user/month annual is a strong value for small groups.
tl;dv
tl;dv’s standout capability is multi-meeting AI analysis. You can ask it to summarize every competitor mention across your last 30 calls, or surface every unresolved action item from the past quarter. For sales managers and researchers who need cross-meeting intelligence without paying enterprise pricing, that is genuinely useful.
Pricing (June 2026): Free with unlimited transcription but recordings auto-delete after 3 months and a 40-recording-per-week cap. Pro is $29/user/month ($18/user/month annual, 40% discount still active). Business is $98/user/month ($59/user/month annual). Enterprise is custom.
Pros:
- Unlimited transcription free — strongest free raw-transcription tier
- Multi-meeting AI reports and scheduled AI digests are unique at this price
- Strong multilingual support
Cons:
- Free tier auto-deletes all recordings after 90 days — a significant hidden cost
- Business at $59/user/month is expensive relative to Granola or MeetGeek
- No bot-free capture
Who it’s for: Sales managers and team leads who need pattern recognition across calls, not just per-meeting notes.
Read.ai
Read.ai analyzes emails and Slack/Teams messages in addition to meeting recordings. For managers who want to understand communication patterns across all channels — not just transcripts — it offers a qualitatively different proposition than the other tools here.
Pricing (June 2026): Free with 5 meeting transcripts per month. Pro is $19.75/user/month ($15/user/month annual). Enterprise is $29.75/user/month ($22.50/user/month annual). Enterprise+ is $39.75/user/month ($29.75/user/month annual, requires 10+ licenses) with HIPAA and SSO.
Pros:
- Cross-channel analysis across meetings, email, and chat is unique in this category
- Pro at $15/user/month annual undercuts Fireflies monthly pricing
- Meeting coaching features with speaker metrics and engagement scores
Cons:
- Free tier is very limited at only 5 meetings per month
- Enterprise+ requires a 10-license minimum
- Overkill for teams that just need meeting notes
Who it’s for: Mid-sized teams and managers who want a unified view of communication across all channels, not just call recordings.
Avoma
Avoma bundles meeting scheduling, transcription, AI notes, conversation intelligence, and CRM automation in one product. The catch is the headline price — $19/seat/month annual for the Startup plan — excludes the Conversation Intelligence add-on at $29/seat/month that most sales teams actually need. A fully loaded seat runs $48–$68/month.
Pricing (June 2026): Startup is $19/seat/month annual ($29 monthly) for up to 25 seats. Organization is $29/seat/month annual ($39 monthly). Enterprise is $39/seat/month. Conversation Intelligence add-on is $29/seat/month on any base plan. 14-day trial, no free tier.
Pros:
- Transparent per-seat pricing with no hidden platform fees unlike Gong
- Full scheduling + CI stack in one product at mid-market economics
- 14-day free trial, no credit card required
Cons:
- No free tier after the trial
- Add-ons stack quickly to $77+/seat/month for a fully loaded seat
- Revenue Intelligence features newer and less proven than Gong’s
Who it’s for: Sales teams with 5–50 reps who want Gong-adjacent features without an enterprise contract. Plan for the all-in price, not just the base seat.
Gong
Gong is a revenue intelligence platform, not a meeting notes tool. The distinction matters when you see the price. A 25-person deployment typically involves a platform fee of $20K–$40K per year plus per-user licenses in the $1,200–$1,600 range annually. Total annual cost for a mid-sized team lands at $50K–$150K before add-ons. Annual contracts only, no self-serve.
Pricing (June 2026): Per-user licenses run $1,200–$1,600/user/year for teams of 1–25, with volume discounts at higher seat counts. Platform fee ranges from $10K–$20K for small teams to $40K–$80K+ for large deployments. No free plan, no free trial.
Pros:
- Best-in-class conversation intelligence with years of proprietary training data
- Forecast accuracy and deal risk deeply integrated
- Industry-specific AI models differentiate at the enterprise tier
Cons:
- Opaque pricing that varies heavily based on negotiation
- Mandatory platform fee makes small team deployments prohibitively expensive
- Annual-only with no trial — a large commitment
Who it’s for: Revenue teams at companies with 25+ quota-carrying reps and a budget for enterprise contracts. Not a realistic Fireflies alternative for most teams.
Krisp Note Taker
Krisp started in noise cancellation — removing background noise before other participants hear it. The Note Taker product builds meeting transcription on that audio layer. The result is arguably the cleanest audio input of any tool in this category, which pays off in transcription accuracy when calling from noisy environments.
Pricing (June 2026): 7-day free trial with full feature access, no credit card. Core is $8/month annual ($16/month monthly) with unlimited noise cancellation, unlimited AI notes, and 5 GB storage. Advanced is $15/month annual ($30/month monthly) with full collaboration features and analytics.
Pros:
- Best noise cancellation in the category — a genuine differentiator for noisy workers
- $8/month Core is among the cheapest paid tiers available
- Works across any meeting platform via system-level audio processing
Cons:
- Note-taking features lag behind dedicated tools like Fathom or Granola
- No CRM integration on the Core plan
- Free plan is time-limited (7 days), not a genuine ongoing free tier
Who it’s for: Users in noisy environments who have seen transcription accuracy suffer on other tools. Also solid for budget-conscious individuals who want AI notes for less than $10/month.
Sembly AI
Sembly’s Semblian AI analyzes patterns across your entire meeting history, not just individual calls. Ask it to pull every unresolved action item from the past month or surface every competitor mention across your full archive. For teams that want meeting intelligence without paying for Gong, Sembly is worth serious consideration.
Pricing (June 2026): Personal plan is free. Basic individual is $10/month annual ($17/month monthly). Pro is $20/user/month annual ($29/month monthly). MAX is $30/user/month annual ($39/month monthly). Enterprise is custom. Annual billing saves about 30%.
Pros:
- Cross-meeting Semblian intelligence included on paid plans
- Free personal plan is genuinely functional for light users
- $10/month annual is among the lowest starting prices in the category
Cons:
- Free plan caps recording length and limits AI queries in ways that frustrate regular users
- Smaller ecosystem with fewer native integrations than Fireflies
- Enterprise features lag behind Gong and Avoma
Who it’s for: Small teams and individuals who want cross-meeting pattern recognition without enterprise pricing. The $10/month annual plan delivers real value.
Notta
Notta is built for multilingual teams. It supports transcription in 58 languages and offers bilingual transcription — capturing two languages simultaneously in a single meeting. If your team runs calls mixing English with French, Japanese, Spanish, or dozens of other languages, Notta is the strongest option in this comparison.
Pricing (June 2026): Free with 120 minutes/month and a 3-minute per-session cap. Pro is $13.99/month ($8.17/month annual) with 1,800 minutes/month. Business is $27.99/seat/month ($16.67/seat/month annual) with unlimited transcription and CRM integrations. Real-time translation is a paid add-on from $6/month annual.
Pros:
- 58-language support is the widest in this comparison
- Notta Brain AI (updated February 2026) generates PPT, Excel, and Word outputs from meetings
- Pro at $8.17/month annual is one of the cheapest paid tiers in the category
- 100 file imports per month on Pro
Cons:
- 3-minute per-session cap on the free plan makes it useless for real meetings
- Real-time translation and bilingual transcription cost extra as add-ons
- CRM integrations only on the Business tier
Who it’s for: Multilingual teams who regularly conduct meetings across language boundaries. Also a strong value pick for English-only solo users who want solid transcription under $9/month annual.
MeetGeek
MeetGeek adds meeting performance analytics on top of standard transcription — tracking speaker balance, meeting frequency, action item completion rates, and team-level meeting health scores. If you manage a team and want data on whether your weekly standups are productive, MeetGeek provides it.
Pricing (June 2026): Free Basic with 5 hours/month transcription. Pro is $9.99/user/month annual ($15/month monthly) with 20 hours/month. Business is $17/user/month annual with 100 hours/month. Enterprise is $59/user/month or custom.
Pros:
- Meeting analytics layer tracks patterns over time — genuinely differentiated
- Pro at $9.99/user/month annual is cheaper than tl;dv, Otter, and Read.ai at comparable tiers
- API and MCP access included on Pro
- Free plan resets monthly, no lifetime caps
Cons:
- Hour-capped tiers add overhead tracking for high-volume teams
- $0.50 per extra hour on Pro and Business creates variable costs
- Analytics depth is useful for managers, less so for individual contributors
Who it’s for: Team leads who want to understand meeting patterns over time. Also a budget option for individuals — Pro at $9.99/user/month annual is hard to beat.
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Top 3 picks by user type
Best for solo creators and freelancers
Fathom wins for solo operators. The free tier offers unlimited recordings and transcription — and once you need more, Premium at $16/month annual is among the cheapest paid options. Fathom 3.0 added bot-free recording, which matters for freelancers on sensitive client calls. For price-sensitive users, Sembly AI at $10/month annual delivers cross-meeting intelligence at a hard-to-beat price. For multilingual work, Notta Pro at $8.17/month annual is the clear value leader.
Best for small teams (2–15 people)
Granola at $14/user/month annual is the cleanest pick for teams that skip the analytics layer. Bot-free capture, clean AI notes, and MCP integration put it ahead for operators who want simplicity. If you need CRM integration at the small-team level, Otter.ai Pro at $8.33/user/month annual delivers tight Salesforce and HubSpot sync at the lowest price in the category. For small sales teams that need coaching metrics, Avoma Startup at $19/seat/month annual plus the Conversation Intelligence add-on is the realistic entry point.
Best for agencies and enterprise teams
Gong is the answer if you have a 25+ seat sales team and an enterprise budget. Expect $50K–$150K per year depending on team size and modules. For agencies that want Gong-adjacent capability without the commitment, Avoma’s Organization plan at $29/seat/month annual plus the CI add-on delivers a surprisingly complete stack at roughly one-third the Gong per-seat cost. Read.ai Enterprise is worth evaluating for agencies with heavy cross-channel communication needs — the unified meeting-email-chat analysis is unique in the category.
How to choose: a decision framework
Start with capture model. If your meetings involve parties who might object to a visible bot, your shortlist shrinks to Granola (bot-free by default) and Fathom (bot-free in beta since 3.0). Every other tool on this list uses a bot-join model.
Then filter on language requirements. If more than 10% of your calls involve non-English speakers, Notta with 58 languages is the clear leader. tl;dv and Sembly AI are solid secondary options. Fathom supports 25 languages. Most others are primarily English-focused.
Then price it out honestly — not the headline entry price, but the all-in cost for your actual team size. For Avoma especially, always add the Conversation Intelligence add-on before comparing to other tools. A tool at $14/seat/month with all the features you need beats a tool at $10/seat/month that requires two add-ons to reach parity.
Finally, weight the integration stack. If you are on Salesforce, verify the specific integration depth before committing. Fireflies, Avoma, Otter, and Fathom Business all have strong Salesforce support. Granola integrates with HubSpot and Attio, not Salesforce, as of mid-2026. Check your CRM before you sign.
One critical note on data policies: Otter trains on your data by default without Enterprise terms. Granola and Fathom do not, per their published policies. Fireflies makes this configurable. For calls involving confidential client information, the data policy question belongs in your evaluation, not as an afterthought.
Common mistakes when switching
Choosing based on the free tier you test, not the paid tier you will use. Fathom’s free tier is the strongest in the category. But if you run daily calls, you will be on a paid plan within weeks. Evaluate the tier you will actually pay for.
Ignoring storage and history policies. tl;dv auto-deletes recordings after 3 months on the free plan. Granola’s free tier locks after 25 meetings lifetime. Fireflies caps storage at 800 minutes on the free tier. Losing six months of sales call history mid-quarter is a serious operational disruption.
Underestimating CRM integration depth. Tools advertise “Salesforce integration” and mean anything from “we drop a text summary in an activity” to “we write structured data into custom fields.” Verify the specific field-level behavior before migrating a sales team.
Skipping a parallel run. Run any candidate tool in parallel with your current setup for two weeks before cutting over. Transcription accuracy on your specific speakers, vocabulary, and meeting types matters more than benchmark numbers. Speaker attribution errors specifically break action item assignment workflows.
Ignoring migration friction. Switching means re-training custom vocabulary, rebuilding Zapier flows, and re-establishing calendar permissions. Block time for this — teams that switch without a plan routinely lose weeks of clean data.
FAQ
Is there a genuinely free Fireflies alternative?
Yes. Fathom’s free plan offers unlimited recordings and transcription with no expiration — the only constraint is that advanced AI summaries are capped at 5 calls per month. tl;dv also offers unlimited transcription free, though recordings auto-delete after 90 days. Sembly AI’s personal plan provides useful access for light users at no cost.
Which alternative works without a meeting bot?
Granola is the clear choice — bot-free capture is the core product architecture. Fathom added bot-free recording in beta with its 3.0 release in April 2026. Both require installing a desktop app that captures device audio locally. Everything else on this list uses a bot-join model.
Can any of these tools replace Gong for a small sales team?
Avoma is the most direct Gong alternative for mid-market teams. The Startup plan at $19/seat/month annual combined with the Conversation Intelligence add-on at $29/seat/month delivers coaching metrics and deal signals at roughly $48/seat/month — compared to Gong’s effective $100–$250/seat/month all-in. The feature gap narrows each quarter. Sembly AI’s cross-meeting Semblian analysis is also worth evaluating for teams that primarily need pattern recognition across calls, not full pipeline forecasting.
Which tool has the best multilingual support?
Notta supports 58 languages and offers bilingual transcription — capturing two languages simultaneously in a single call, a feature unique in this category. tl;dv has strong multilingual support across major languages. Fathom supports 25 languages. Otter.ai, Granola, and Avoma are primarily English-focused.
What do I do about my Fireflies meeting archive when switching?
Most AI meeting tools have no native import path from Fireflies. Options: export Fireflies transcripts manually before canceling, keep Fireflies active in read-only mode for archive access, or accept that old meetings stay on Fireflies and only new recordings move to the new tool. If you have compliance or audit requirements, verify retention obligations before switching and plan a parallel run rather than a hard cutover.
Do these tools work with Microsoft Teams?
Most do. Otter, Fathom, tl;dv, Read.ai, Avoma, Sembly, MeetGeek, and Notta all support Teams via bot join. Granola works with any meeting platform via local audio capture — fully platform-agnostic by design. Krisp works across all platforms through system-level audio processing. Confirm bot compatibility with your Teams admin policies before committing.
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