Fireflies.ai is a US meeting assistant that joins Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and several other platforms as a bot, records and transcribes the conversation and, at the end, delivers a summary, decisions and next steps. You can also upload a recorded audio or video file. What sets it apart from competitors is its support for a very large number of languages and its broad integrations with work tools such as CRMs, project management tools and workplace messengers.

What is Fireflies.ai good for?#

  • Automatic meeting minutes: a startup team with weekly online meetings gets a summary and a task list after every meeting with no effort.
  • Transcribing a recorded meeting: upload a meeting recorded on another platform and get a transcript and summary.
  • Sales calls: a salesperson sees the key points and next step logged in the CRM after a customer call.
  • Asking questions of your meeting archive: a manager asks "what did customers complain about most in recent meetings?"
  • User interviews and research: a UX researcher searches and categorizes recorded conversations.

Strengths and weaknesses#

Strengths:

  • Support for a very large number of languages
  • Many integrations with work tools, plus an API
  • Search and questions across all past meetings
  • File upload, not just live meetings

Weaknesses:

  • Accuracy in non-English languages is lower than in English, and summaries can sound translated
  • The auto-joining bot, if not configured properly, can violate other people's privacy
  • Many useful features are behind paid plans

Free version and pricing#

Fireflies is freemium. The free plan gives basic transcription and summaries with limited storage and limited credits for AI tools. Paid plans unlock more storage, video recording, advanced search, integrations with work tools and team features. Check the official site for current prices.

Language support#

Fireflies supports dozens of transcription languages and gives usable results for clear audio and measured speech. In noisy meetings, fast conversational speech and meetings that mix languages, errors increase. Always read summaries before sending them, especially names and numbers.

Getting started in three steps#

  1. Sign up and connect your calendar, but leave automatic joining of all meetings turned off for now.
  2. Set the default transcription language.
  3. Transcribe a short test meeting and check its accuracy before serious use.

Fireflies.ai alternatives#

  • Otter.ai: strong live transcription for English, with fewer languages.
  • Fathom: a more generous free plan for recording, with fewer languages.
  • Notion AI: if your team works in Notion, it builds the meeting notes right there.

Before entrusting confidential meetings to any online service, read What never to give an AI: keys, passwords and customer data. For connecting summaries to the rest of your work, Automating repetitive work with AI: where to start is also useful.