[00:00]// Alternatives

The 4 Best Fireflies.ai Alternatives in 2026

Published 2 July 2026 · Updated 2 July 2026

The best Fireflies.ai alternative depends on what pushed you out. If it’s the bot appearing in the participant list, Granola and SpeekSearch never send one. If it’s the free plan’s storage cap, Fathom records unlimited calls for free. And if what you actually want is help during the conversation — not a summary after it — SpeekSearch surfaces live research on the people, products and topics being mentioned while you talk. Below: four alternatives compared honestly, pricing checked July 2026, and a straight answer on who should simply stay on Fireflies.

Why people look for a Fireflies alternative

Fireflies.ai is genuinely capable — transcription in 100+ languages, unlimited free transcription, and one of the biggest integration catalogues in the category, with CRM connectors, Slack, Notion, Zapier and an API available even on the free plan. The complaints that push people to this page are more specific:

• The uninvited bot.Fireflies’ notetaker (“Fred”) joins calls as a visible participant by default, and if any attendee uses Fireflies, the bot can join and record everyone. Press coverage includes reports of it disrupting 12-step recovery meetings, and of removal requiring calendar or Zoom-admin changes rather than a simple app setting.
• Bot-free capture is paywalled. The Fireflies desktop app (Mac and Windows, November 2025) records system audio locally with no bot — a real fix — but it isn’t available on the free plan.
• Free-plan small print.The headline is unlimited transcription and AI summaries, but storage is capped — listed as “400 mins of storage/team” on the pricing page at check time — with no video recording or downloads, and 20 AI credits gating the AI assistant. The pricing page doesn’t spell out what a single credit buys.
• A legal cloud. A class action (Cruz v. Fireflies.AI Corp.) was filed in Illinois in December 2025, alleging Fireflies collected biometric voiceprints without written consent. Those are allegations, not findings — but they land on top of the consent worries the bot already raises.

Fireflies.ai at a glance

Fireflies vs the alternatives: quick comparison

Pricing below is each vendor’s published USD rate as of 2 July 2026, with approximate AUD alongside. SpeekSearch is priced in AUD natively.

The best Fireflies.ai alternatives, by what you actually need

1. SpeekSearch — best if you want live research, not just notes

SpeekSearch is a different species of tool. Instead of a bot that writes minutes after the meeting, it’s a live research copilot: hit record in the browser during a podcast, interview or meeting and it transcribes in real time from your microphone — no bot joins, nothing appears in any participant list, and in-person conversations work exactly the same way. As people, places, products and topics come up, research cards surface alongside the transcript; each one can be pinned, deep-dived with Ask AI, or bounced to Google or YouTube. For podcasters, journalists and anyone running interviews, that means the “who did they just name-drop?” moment gets answered mid-conversation instead of hours later.

Honest limits: SpeekSearch is nota meeting-minutes product. It won’t join your Zoom call, doesn’t integrate with Zoom, Teams, Meet or your CRM, and doesn’t generate post-call summary documents — you finish with the full transcript and the cards you pinned. If your workflow is “summary and action items pushed to the CRM after every sales call”, Fireflies still fits you better (see who should stay).

Pricing is simple and in AUD: a free 15-minute lifetime trial with no card, then Starter at A$12/month for 2 hours or Pro at A$25/month for 8 hours of live AI research, with A$5 one-hour top-ups. It runs in the browser, including Safari on iPhone.

2. Granola — best bot-free meeting notes

Granola is the closest like-for-like swap if the bot is your whole problem. It never sends one — the desktop app captures your computer’s audio and mic locally, invisible to other participants, and works with Zoom, Meet, Teams or anything else. Its “AI notepad” model blends the notes youtype with the transcript into enhanced notes. It’s no longer Mac-only: Windows shipped in June 2025, iOS in April 2025, and an Android app landed on 1 July 2026. The free Basic plan has no cap on meetings but only lets you access notes from the last 30 days; Business is US$14/user/month (~A$21), billed monthly only.

Watch-outs: there’s no browser recording — you must install the desktop app, which rules out locked-down work machines and Chromebooks. Transcripts don’t attribute speakers, so three-plus-person calls become one unlabelled block, and Granola doesn’t store audio at all, so you can’t replay a moment to verify what was said. More detail in our Granola alternatives round-up.

3. Fathom — best free tier

Fathom’s free plan is the most generous volume-wise in the category: unlimited recordings, transcription in 38 languages and unlimited storage. The catch is real, though — advanced AI summaries only apply to your first five calls each month, after which you get the standard template. Since Fathom 3.0 (April 2026) you choose per meeting between bot capture with video or bot-free audio capture, with the bot-free modes currently live on the Mac desktop app — Windows users get the bot or web today, with the new desktop app “coming soon”. There’s no mobile app yet (iOS was “almost here” as of early July 2026), so in-person meetings are off the table for now. Paid plans start at US$15/user/month billed annually for Team, or US$16/month annual (US$20 monthly, ~A$24–30) for individual Premium.

If you’re weighing these two head-to-head, we referee it properly in Fathom vs Fireflies.

4. Otter.ai — most established real-time transcription

Otter is the highest-recognition name in the space, and live real-time transcription has always been its differentiator. It runs on the web, iOS, Android and a Chrome extension, and the mobile apps make it a solid in-person recorder. The free tier is tight: 300 transcription minutes a month, a 30-minute cap per conversation and three file imports — for life. Pro is US$8.33/user/month billed annually (~A$12.50), or US$16.99 monthly (~A$25.50), which makes it the cheapest paid plan on this page.

Know what you’re walking into: Otter’s bot auto-joins calendar meetings and auto-emails summaries to participants — etiquette complaints mirror Fireflies’ — users describe cancellation as difficult, and Otter is defending its own consolidated federal privacy class action, ongoing as of July 2026. If you’re leaving Fireflies over the bot or the lawsuit, Otter is a sideways move on both. See our full Otter.ai alternatives guide, or the direct Fireflies vs Otter comparison.

Who should stay on Fireflies

Honestly? Plenty of people. Stay if any of these describe you:

• Your workflow runs on integrations.Summaries and action items pushed into a CRM, Slack, Notion or a task manager is Fireflies’ home turf — nothing on this page matches its catalogue, and the API is available even on the free plan.
• You work across many languages. 100+ languages beats every alternative here.
• Your team wants conversation intelligence. Talk-time analytics and team insights on the Business plan (US$19/seat/month annual, ~A$28.50) have no equivalent in Granola, Fathom’s lower tiers or SpeekSearch.
• The bot was your only gripe and you’re on a paid plan. The desktop app already records bot-free on Mac and Windows — you may not need to switch at all.

FAQ

Competitor pricing, free-tier limits and platform availability were checked directly on the fireflies.ai, otter.ai, fathom.ai and granola.ai pricing pages on 2 July 2026 and may have changed since. Legal matters referenced (Cruz v. Fireflies.AI Corp.; In re Otter.AI Privacy Litigation) are pending allegations, not findings. We build SpeekSearch, so we’ve flagged plainly where we’re the wrong fit — the notetakers above are better at post-call summaries than we are.