If you sit in more than a couple of meetings a day, you've probably already tried an AI note-taker. The two names that come up most often are Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai. Both join your call, transcribe what's said, and hand you a summary afterward. But they're built for slightly different jobs, and picking the wrong one means either overpaying for features you won't use or hitting a wall the first time you need something specific, like syncing notes to your CRM.
Here's a straight comparison based on what each tool actually does well, where the free tiers run out, and which one fits which kind of workday.
What both tools do the same way
Before the differences, the overlap: both Otter and Fireflies join Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams calls on their own once connected to your calendar, transcribe in real time, generate an AI summary with action items, and let you search transcripts by keyword. Both also offer a Chrome extension or bot that can sit in on a call even if you forget to invite it manually. If your only requirement is "record my calls and give me a summary," either one clears that bar.
The differences show up once you look at pricing, language support, and what happens to the transcript after the meeting ends.
Pricing: where each one actually lands
Otter's free plan gives you 300 transcription minutes a month, which covers roughly ten hour-long meetings. Its Pro tier runs about $8–10 a month per user (billed annually), and Business sits around $20 a month per user with a bigger monthly minute allowance.
Fireflies' free plan is more generous on minutes, and its paid tiers — Pro, Business, and Enterprise — land in a similar $10–$39 per user range depending on the plan and billing cycle. At the Business tier, Fireflies tends to include unlimited storage and CRM sync, features that push Otter users into the Enterprise conversation instead.
The practical takeaway: if you're an individual or a two-person team taking occasional meeting notes, Otter's free tier is likely enough on its own. If you're recording meetings daily across a sales or recruiting team, run the numbers on Fireflies' Business tier before you assume Otter is cheaper — the per-minute value tends to favor Fireflies once volume goes up.
Where Otter wins
Otter is built for simplicity. The interface is clean, the mobile app is genuinely good for reviewing notes on the go, and it integrates tightly with Zoom in a way that feels native rather than bolted on. If your main use case is "I want a searchable transcript of my one-on-ones and team meetings, with minimal setup," Otter gets you there with almost no configuration.
Otter also handles live captioning well, which matters if you or someone on your team benefits from real-time text during a call rather than just a summary afterward.
Where Otter falls short: language support is limited to a handful of languages, and its integration list is much shorter than Fireflies'. If your team works across multiple languages, or if you need meeting data flowing straight into a CRM, project tool, or Slack channel, you'll bump into Otter's ceiling faster than expected.
Where Fireflies wins
Fireflies leans into being a work tool rather than just a transcription app. It supports far more languages, which matters for distributed or international teams. Its integration list is long — CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot, project tools like Asana and Trello, and Slack — so meeting notes and action items can land where your team already works instead of sitting in a separate app you have to remember to check.
Fireflies also offers what it calls "AI Skills" — pre-built workflows for specific roles, like pulling deal-relevant details out of a sales call or flagging candidate concerns from a recruiting screen. If you're on a sales or recruiting team, this is the more purpose-built option.
The tradeoff is that Fireflies has more surface area, which means more setup if you want to use it well. If you just want "record and summarize," you'll be paying for features you're not touching.
A simple way to decide
Ask yourself three questions:
- Do meeting notes need to end up somewhere else on their own — a CRM, a project board, a shared doc? If yes, lean Fireflies. If you're fine copying a summary into an email by hand occasionally, Otter's simplicity wins.
- Does your team meet in more than one or two languages? Fireflies' language coverage is the clear differentiator here.
- How many meetings are you actually recording per week? Under 10 a month, Otter's free tier probably covers you completely. Above that, do the per-user math on both paid tiers before committing — the "cheaper" plan on paper isn't always cheaper at your actual volume.
If none of those questions point clearly one way, start with whichever tool's free tier you can test for two weeks of real meetings. The summary quality and how naturally it fits your team's habits will tell you more than any feature comparison chart.
Setting either one up in under ten minutes
Regardless of which tool you pick, the setup is nearly identical:
- Sign up and connect your calendar (Google or Outlook) so the tool knows which meetings to join.
- Turn on the "auto-join" or "always join my meetings" setting if you want it there by default — otherwise you'll need to invite the notetaker bot manually each time.
- Connect your CRM or project tool now if you plan to use that integration, rather than after you've built a habit of copying notes by hand. Rules you set up once save far more time than the transcription itself.
- Test it on a low-stakes internal meeting first. Check the summary against what was actually said before you trust it on a client call.
- Set a reminder to review your usage after two weeks. Minute limits and per-seat costs add up fast once a whole team is using the tool — check that you're still on the right plan before it renews.
When not to bother
If your meetings are short, infrequent, or highly confidential (legal discussions, HR matters, anything covered by strict confidentiality obligations), think twice before adding a third-party bot to the call. Not every meeting needs a permanent transcript, and the convenience isn't worth it if the content shouldn't be recorded at all. In those cases, taking your own notes — or simply not recording — is still the right call.
For everything else — status updates, client calls, interviews, team syncs — either tool will save you the time you'd otherwise spend writing things down during the conversation instead of actually listening to it.
