Head-to-head comparison
Fireflies.ai vs Otter.ai
Two of the transcription tools podcasters reach for. Here's how they differ on pricing, features, audience, and the trade-offs that actually matter day-to-day.
Meeting notes from Zoom, Meet, and Teams
Best for: Sales, customer success, and product teams who want every meeting transcribed and summarised.
Real-time transcription and meeting notes with sharable highlights.
Best for: Meeting-heavy teams
At a glance
The honest trade-offs
Fireflies.ai
Pros
- Deep CRM and project management integrations
- Topic and action-item extraction
- Free tier with unlimited meetings
Watch-outs
- Bot-in-meeting model still feels intrusive to some
- Free tier missing AI summaries
- Speaker labels can mis-attribute
Otter.ai
Pros
- Auto-joins Zoom, Meet, and Teams calls
- Real-time captions with speaker ID
- Solid free tier for casual users
Watch-outs
- Only English, French, Spanish
- Pro caps at 1,200 minutes/month
- Built for meetings more than podcasts
Which one should you pick?
Pick Fireflies.ai if
You’re building around sales, customer success, and product teams who want every meeting transcribed and summarised.. Fireflies joins meetings as a bot and produces searchable transcripts, summaries, and topic tags. CRM integrations to Salesforce, HubSpot, and Notion are the real differentiators against Otter.
Pick Otter.ai if
You’re building around meeting-heavy teams. Otter pivoted hard into meetings and away from straight transcription, which makes it great if you live in Zoom/Meet/Teams and want auto-summaries plus action items — and slightly awkward as a pure podcast transcription tool. The free plan caps you at 300 minutes and 30 minutes per file.
Also worth comparing
Or see all Fireflies.ai alternatives.
Frequently asked
What does Fireflies.ai do better than Otter.ai?
Fireflies.ai's standout is "Deep CRM and project management integrations". Otter.ai doesn't make that promise — it leans into "Auto-joins Zoom, Meet, and Teams calls" instead. If the first sentence describes your workflow, pick Fireflies.ai; if the second does, pick Otter.ai.
What are the trade-offs?
Fireflies.ai: bot-in-meeting model still feels intrusive to some. Otter.ai: only english, french, spanish. Whether either matters depends entirely on what you actually need — neither is a deal-breaker by itself.
Do they support the same platforms?
Otter.ai works on macOS, Windows where Fireflies.ai doesn't. If you're on a specific OS or device, that may decide for you.
Can I use Fireflies.ai and Otter.ai together?
Both are transcription tools so most teams pick one. Some workflows do combine them — for example, using Fireflies.ai for one show or episode type and Otter.ai for another. Worth trying both free tiers before committing.