All posts
5 Best Free Fireflies.ai Alternatives for Smarter Meetings
Content
TL;DR
The best free Fireflies.ai alternatives provide superior features like video recording, enhanced privacy, and more generous usage limits. Top choices include tl;dv for its unlimited free video recording, Fathom for its completely free plan for individuals, and Otter.ai for its accurate real-time transcription. The right tool for you will depend on your specific needs, such as the importance of video clips, bot-free operation, or integration with your existing workflow.
Why Look for a Free Fireflies.ai Alternative?
While Fireflies.ai is a solid tool for recording and transcribing meetings, many users seek alternatives to overcome its limitations, particularly in the free tier. Although it offers unlimited transcription, its free plan is capped at 800 minutes of storage and, most notably, does not include video recording—a feature many competitors offer for free. This pushes users who need to capture visual context into more expensive paid plans.
A significant pain point for many is the intrusive nature of the Fireflies bot, often named "Fred," which joins your calls to record them. This can feel awkward or unprofessional, especially in client-facing meetings, and raises privacy concerns for organizations handling sensitive data. Many users prefer a less conspicuous recording method that doesn't require a third-party participant to join the call, leading them to seek out bot-free alternatives like Jamie AI.
Furthermore, users have reported issues with transcription accuracy, especially in conversations involving technical jargon, strong accents, or multiple speakers talking at once. Correcting these inaccuracies can be time-consuming, defeating the purpose of an automated assistant. For teams that rely on precise documentation, the potential for error is a major drawback. These factors combined—limited free features, privacy concerns, and accuracy issues—drive the search for more robust and user-friendly free Fireflies.ai alternatives.
Top 5 Free Fireflies.ai Alternatives: A Detailed Comparison
Navigating the landscape of AI meeting assistants can be challenging. To simplify your decision, we've compared the top free alternatives to Fireflies.ai, focusing on the features that matter most to users: video recording capabilities, privacy, and overall value in the free plan.
| Tool | Key Free Feature | Video Recording (Free) | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| tl;dv | Unlimited video recordings & transcripts | Yes | Sales and user research teams needing video clips |
| Fathom | Unlimited recordings for individuals | Yes | Solo users and freelancers |
| Otter.ai | High-accuracy real-time transcription | No | Students and individuals needing live notes |
| Jamie AI | Bot-free and offline operation | No (Audio only) | Privacy-conscious users and offline meetings |
| Meetily | Open-source and self-hosted | No (Audio only) | Developers and organizations needing full data control |
1. tl;dv
As a leading Fireflies.ai alternative, tl;dv stands out with an exceptionally generous free plan. It offers unlimited video recordings and transcriptions for Google Meet, Zoom, and MS Teams calls. This is a significant advantage over Fireflies, which locks video recording behind a pricey Business tier. The ability to create and share video clips and highlight reels directly from the transcript makes it invaluable for sales teams reviewing demos or user researchers sharing key feedback.
2. Fathom
Fathom is another excellent choice, particularly for individuals. Its free-for-personal-use model includes unlimited video recording and transcription without storage limits, making it one of the most generous offerings available. You can generate AI summaries, highlight key moments during the call, and create shareable video clips. While its team features require a paid plan, its robust free offering makes it a perfect starting point for freelancers, consultants, or anyone wanting to test out an AI meeting assistant without commitment.
3. Otter.ai
Otter.ai is a veteran in the transcription space, known for its clean interface and highly accurate real-time transcription. While its free plan is more limited in minutes (300 per month) and lacks video recording entirely, its strength lies in capturing live conversations with precision. This makes it a favorite among students, journalists, and anyone who needs a reliable text record of a live event. Its ability to identify speakers and generate a searchable transcript as the meeting happens is a key differentiator.
4. Jamie AI
For users prioritizing privacy, Jamie AI offers a compelling bot-free experience. Instead of a bot joining your call, Jamie records your computer's audio locally, ensuring meeting confidentiality. It also works offline, which is a major benefit for meetings on the go or in areas with poor connectivity. While its free plan is limited in the number of meetings, its focus on privacy and local operation makes it a unique and valuable alternative for those wary of cloud-based bots.
5. Meetily
Meetily carves out a niche as a free, open-source, and self-hosted alternative. This approach gives users complete control over their data, as everything is stored on their own hardware. It is designed for privacy-conscious organizations, developers, and teams with strict data compliance requirements. While it requires technical knowledge to set up and maintain, it eliminates subscription fees and third-party data storage, offering unparalleled privacy and customization for those willing to manage it themselves.
Key Features to Evaluate in a Free AI Meeting Assistant
Choosing the right free AI meeting assistant goes beyond just transcription. To find a tool that truly enhances your productivity, you need to evaluate a few critical features that differentiate the great options from the merely good ones. Your specific workflow—whether in sales, research, or internal management—will determine which of these features are non-negotiable.
Transcription Accuracy: The primary function of any meeting assistant is to provide an accurate text record. Look for tools that handle different accents, technical industry terms, and multiple speakers without frequent errors. Some tools, like Otter.ai, are renowned for their real-time accuracy, while others may require more post-meeting cleanup. Always test a tool with one of your typical meetings before committing.
Video Recording & Clipping: Audio-only transcripts miss crucial visual cues and context. Alternatives like tl;dv and Fathom offer free video recording, allowing you to capture the full meeting experience. The ability to create short, shareable video clips from key moments is a game-changer for sharing customer feedback, training new hires, or creating highlight reels without forcing stakeholders to watch an entire hour-long recording.
AI Summary Quality: A simple transcript is useful, but a smart summary is powerful. Evaluate the quality of the AI-generated summaries. Do they accurately identify key decisions, action items, and important takeaways? The best tools provide concise, structured summaries that you can share immediately. As the technology evolves, tools are moving beyond basic summaries. For those looking to transform meeting insights into structured content, a multimodal copilot like AFFiNE AI can help turn notes into mind maps or presentations, representing the next step in workflow automation. You can explore its capabilities at affine.pro/ai.
Integrations: A meeting assistant shouldn't be an information silo. Check for integrations with the tools you already use, such as Slack, Notion, or your CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot). The ability to automatically push meeting notes, clips, and action items to your project management or sales software saves significant administrative time and ensures insights are put to use.
Privacy and Security: How a tool records your meeting is a critical consideration. Bot-based assistants like Fireflies.ai have a visible presence in the call, which can be intrusive. In contrast, bot-free tools like Jamie AI or self-hosted options like Meetily offer greater privacy by recording locally without a third-party entity joining the meeting. This is especially important for organizations in regulated industries or those that handle sensitive client information.
Specialty Alternatives: The Rise of Open-Source & Privacy-First Tools
Beyond the mainstream SaaS solutions, a growing category of specialty alternatives is emerging to address key user concerns: data privacy and cost. For users who are technically inclined or work in organizations with strict data sovereignty rules, open-source and self-hosted tools present a powerful alternative to cloud-based services like Fireflies.ai.
The primary advantage of a self-hosted solution is complete data control. When you use a tool like Meetily, your meeting transcriptions and summaries are processed and stored on your own local server or private cloud. This eliminates the risks associated with third-party data storage and ensures compliance with regulations like GDPR or HIPAA. This approach directly counters a major drawback of cloud services, where sensitive conversations are sent to external servers.
Meetily is a prime example of this trend. As an open-source project, it is completely free to use for those who self-host it. It operates without a bot joining meetings and runs locally on your machine, using advanced models like Whisper.cpp for high-accuracy transcription. This makes it ideal for developers, startups, and enterprises that prioritize privacy above all else and have the technical resources to manage their own infrastructure.
However, the trade-off for this control and cost-saving is the need for technical setup and maintenance. Unlike a SaaS product that works out of the box, a self-hosted tool requires installation, configuration, and ongoing updates. This makes it less suitable for non-technical users. Nonetheless, for the right audience, the benefits of unparalleled privacy, zero subscription fees, and full customization make open-source alternatives a compelling choice in the search for the perfect meeting assistant.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Is Fireflies.ai free?
Yes, Fireflies.ai offers a free plan. It includes unlimited transcription but has significant limitations, such as an 800-minute storage cap per seat and no video recording. Advanced features like full AI summaries and CRM integrations are reserved for paid tiers, which start at $10 per user per month when billed annually.
2. What is the alternative to Fireflies.ai?
There are many excellent alternatives to Fireflies.ai, depending on your needs. The best options include tl;dv for its unlimited free video recording, Fathom for its completely free plan for individuals, Otter.ai for superior real-time transcription, and Jamie AI for a private, bot-free experience. Each tool offers a different combination of features, pricing, and privacy controls.
3. Which is better, Fathom or Fireflies?
For individuals and those on a budget, Fathom is often the better choice because its free plan is more generous, offering unlimited video recording and transcription. Fireflies, on the other hand, may be better suited for larger organizations that need its extensive integration options and advanced analytics in its paid plans. Fathom is praised for its user-friendly interface, while Fireflies offers deeper, though often paywalled, features for team-wide analysis.