Fireflies.ai
Otter.ai
| Feature | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free / from $18/mo | Free / from $16.99/mo |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Rating | 4.4 / 5 | 4.3 / 5 |
| Best For | sales-teams, recruiters, managers, customer-success, consultants | remote-teams, managers, sales-teams, journalists, students |
| Founded | 2016 | 2016 |
| Transcription | ✓ | ✗ |
| Ai Summary | ✓ | ✗ |
| Crm Sync | ✓ | ✗ |
| Conversation Intelligence | ✓ | ✗ |
| Ask Fred | ✓ | ✗ |
| Topic Tracking | ✓ | ✗ |
| Sentiment Analysis | ✓ | ✗ |
| Live Transcription | ✗ | ✓ |
| Meeting Summary | ✗ | ✓ |
| Action Items | ✗ | ✓ |
| Speaker Id | ✗ | ✓ |
| Zoom Integration | ✗ | ✓ |
| Search | ✗ | ✓ |
| Highlights | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ Fireflies.ai Pros
- Integrates with 40+ tools including CRM
- Conversation intelligence metrics
- AskFred AI chatbot for meeting queries
- Automatic meeting log to CRM
✗ Fireflies.ai Cons
- Audio quality affects transcription
- Can feel intrusive to meeting participants
- Advanced analytics only on higher plans
✓ Otter.ai Pros
- Real-time transcription during meetings
- Joins Zoom/Teams/Meet automatically
- AI-generated action items and summaries
- Searchable transcript archive
✗ Otter.ai Cons
- Accuracy drops with accents or crosstalk
- Free tier limited to 300 minutes/month
- Occasional missed speaker attribution
The Verdict
Fireflies.ai is built for sales teams and recruiters, with a focus on transcription and ai-summary. Otter.ai targets remote teams and managers and leads with live-transcription and meeting-summary.
Pricing is close: Otter.ai starts at $16.99/mo versus $18/mo for Fireflies.ai — not a deciding factor on its own.
Both offer free plans, so you can test each with your real workflow before committing to a subscription.
Both tools are a solid fit for sales teams, managers — in those cases, the decision often comes down to workflow style and how your team prefers to organize work.
This is a genuinely close comparison. If you can, sign up for both free trials (where available) and run a one-week test with your actual team tasks before deciding.