Alternatives
7 best Fireflies.ai alternatives in 2026
Fireflies is a strong product with an unusually clean stance on AI training, so this page is not a privacy hit piece. People leave over the lifetime storage cap, the paywalled transcript download, and what bot-free recording costs them. Here are seven alternatives, ranked and honest about trade-offs.
Quick verdict
- Meetings that never leave your MacHyprcore
- Named speakers with no bot and the audio file keptHyprcore
- Meetings, dictation, walkthroughs, and notes in one appHyprcore
- The most generous free planFathom
- A signed HIPAA BAA without Enterprise pricingFathom
- The most polished meeting note-takerGranola
- Mobile apps and a browser-based workflowOtter.ai
- Transcribing audio files you already have, locallyMacWhisper
- CRM sync, Windows, mobile, and 50+ integrationsFireflies itself
- Build your own with full controlSelf-hosted Whisper
Why people leave Fireflies.ai
Not a reason to leave: AI training
Start with the thing most comparison pages get wrong. Fireflies' Terms of Service state the company "will not use your User Content to train, retrain, fine-tune or otherwise improve any generative artificial intelligence models," and its privacy policy adds that it does not use personal information for AI model training and contractually prohibits its vendors from doing so. It runs zero-data-retention arrangements with processing partners including OpenAI and Anthropic. That applies on every tier, free included, and it is firmer than what Otter, Fathom, or Granola offer. If training is your worry, Fireflies is one of the better answers in this category and you should stay.
400 minutes is a ceiling, not an allowance
The free plan advertises unlimited transcription. Storage is what runs out. Fireflies' own documentation says "Storage does not reset monthly – it's a total cap," and puts that cap at 400 minutes — under seven hours for the life of the account. New meetings still get captured once you hit it, but you have to delete older ones to reach them. Worth knowing: Fireflies' own pages conflict on whether the 400 minutes is per seat or per team, and one older help article still says 800. Treat the number as approximate and check it against your account.
Your transcripts are behind the paywall
Downloading transcripts requires a paid plan. Free users can read their meetings inside Fireflies but cannot take them out, which makes the free tier hard to evaluate and harder to leave. AI credits do not scale the way you would expect either: 20 on Free, still 20 on Pro, 30 on Business, 50 on Enterprise. Meeting length is capped at two hours on Free and Pro, three on Business, four on Enterprise.
Bot-free recording costs you names and the audio
The desktop app on Windows and Mac records without a bot, and the Chrome extension does the same on Google Meet. Two documented things disappear when you use it. Speakers stop having names and become Speaker 1 and Speaker 2. No audio or video file is saved at all — you get a transcript and a summary, and nothing to go back and listen to.
The bot cannot be hidden
If you want named speakers and a media file, you invite the bot, and Fireflies is blunt about what that means: "Can I hide the bot's presence? No. Fireflies is always visible in the participant list to ensure compliance." That is a defensible design decision rather than an oversight. It is still a decision you inherit in every external call you record.
The controls you want are Enterprise-only
Auto-delete is "exclusive to Fireflies Enterprise users." A HIPAA Business Associate Agreement is Enterprise only. Choosing where data is stored is Enterprise only, and processing stays in the United States regardless of where the bucket sits. Below that tier your meetings live in Fireflies' US cloud on AWS and GCP until you delete them by hand.
How we ranked these
- What the free tier actually gives you, including storage and export limits
- Model training — what the vendor commits to in writing, on which plans
- Whether meetings can be captured without a bot in the participant list, and what that costs
- Where audio, transcripts, and summaries are stored, and who can delete them
- Platform coverage — macOS, Windows, mobile, web
- Feature parity — live transcription, summaries, action items, speaker ID, search
- Only first-party sources: vendor pricing pages, terms, privacy policies, and help docs
The alternatives, ranked
Hyprcore
Best formacOS users who want meetings, dictation, walkthrough recordings, web captures, and an AI wiki in one native app — with the files on their own disk.
Hyprcore records meetings from your machine — system audio and mic — with a summary that rolls as the call happens, speaker identification, and the audio file kept. There is no bot in the architecture, so nothing appears in the participant list and nothing is traded away to avoid it. Around the recorder sits the rest of the app: streaming dictation into any app, Action Mode (say "Hyper, make this shorter" and it runs the instruction against your selected text), screen-and-mic recording notes with chapters and a click-to-seek transcript, web page and YouTube captures, and an AI wiki an agent can search, read, and write into.
- Pricing
- Free; Pro $19.99/mo; Team $39.99/mo (3 seats, flat).
- Platforms
- macOS (Apple Silicon native).
- Privacy
- Free tier transcribes on-device with a local speech model. Pro adds optional cloud STT (Deepgram, Groq), switchable per recording. Notes are portable markdown on your disk.
Standout
- Speaker identification without a bot, and the audio file is kept — the two things Fireflies makes you choose between
- On-device transcription with a local speech model on the Free tier
- No storage cap to run out of: notes are portable markdown on your own disk, exportable from day one
- Live rolling meeting summary that builds during the call
- Action Mode — voice commands that run against selected text instead of typing it
- Recording notes, web and YouTube captures, and an AI wiki sharing one searchable vault
- MCP integration brings meeting intelligence into Claude Desktop
Trade-offs
- macOS only — no Windows, no iOS or Android, no web app, and that is not changing
- No HIPAA BAA. If your compliance team needs one signed, Fireflies Enterprise or Fathom is the answer and Hyprcore is not
- No CRM sync and effectively no integration catalogue against Fireflies' 50+ on every plan
- No Zoom, Meet, or Teams bot for calls you are not personally in
- Smaller team, younger product
Fathom
Best forAnyone who wants the most generous free plan in this list, and teams that need HIPAA without Enterprise pricing.
Fathom gives away unlimited recording and transcription on its free plan, which is more than anyone else here including Fireflies. The Fathom 3.0 desktop app on macOS and Windows captures without putting a bot in the call, and the company is HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, and GDPR compliant without pushing you to Enterprise for it. The catch is the mirror image of Fireflies' strength: Fathom trains its own models on de-identified meeting content unless you go and turn that off.
- Pricing
- Free; Premium $20/mo ($16 annually); Team $19/user ($15); Business $34/user ($25).
- Platforms
- macOS and Windows desktop apps, plus web.
- Privacy
- All data stored in the United States, retained until actively deleted, and 30 days after account closure. Trains its own in-house models on de-identified Meeting Content by default, with an opt-out in account settings. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are explicitly barred from training on it. Retention policies are a Business-plan feature.
Standout
- Unlimited recordings and transcription on the free plan
- Desktop capture with no bot in the participant list
- HIPAA compliant, plus SOC 2 Type II and GDPR
- Bars OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google from training on your content
- Runs on Windows as well as macOS
Trade-offs
- Trains its own models on de-identified meeting content unless you opt out — the opposite of Fireflies' default
- Advanced summaries, action items, and the conversational assistant need Premium
- US storage, kept until you actively delete it
- Retention policies are Business-plan only
- No dictation, no wiki
Granola
Best forPeople who want the most polished single-purpose meeting note-taker and never want a bot in the call.
Granola listens from your machine, transcribes in the cloud, and turns your rough typing into structured notes using opinionated templates. It never joins the call as a participant, which solves the same problem Fireflies solves badly. The UX is among the best in the category. What it does not do is keep anything you can re-listen to, because it stores no audio.
- Pricing
- Basic $0; Business $14/user/mo; Enterprise $35/user/mo. Monthly billing only — no annual discount.
- Platforms
- macOS and Windows desktop, plus iPhone and Android.
- Privacy
- US AWS VPC. Stores no audio at all — transcript only. Trains on anonymised data by default with a one-click opt-out on every plan, off by default on Enterprise. States it is not HIPAA compliant and gives no timeline.
Standout
- No bot, on any platform it supports
- Beautifully crafted desktop UX with opinionated templates
- Stores no audio at all, which is a real privacy position
- One-click training opt-out on every plan, including free
- Mobile apps on iPhone and Android
Trade-offs
- Free plan shows only the last 30 days of notes in the app
- No audio file ever — if you need to hear what was said, it is gone
- Trains on anonymised data unless you opt out
- Not HIPAA compliant, with no stated timeline
- Monthly billing only, so no annual saving
- No dictation, no wiki
Otter.ai
Best forTeams that need mobile apps and a browser-first workflow more than they need strong defaults.
Otter is the most widely recognised name here and has the broadest platform coverage after Fireflies. It is also the one that reads worst against Fireflies on the training question: de-identified audio and transcripts feed Otter's own models by default, and the documented way to stop that is an Enterprise workspace setting. If you are leaving Fireflies for privacy reasons specifically, this is the wrong direction.
- Pricing
- Basic free; Pro $16.99/user/mo ($8.33 annually); Business $30/user ($19.99 annually).
- Platforms
- Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Chrome extension.
- Privacy
- AWS S3 in the US. Trains on de-identified audio and transcripts by default. The opt-out is documented at Enterprise, where it is the default; below that there is no documented self-serve toggle. HIPAA is an Enterprise-only add-on.
Standout
- Widest platform coverage in this list alongside Fireflies
- Mature mobile apps and a genuinely good web experience
- Live transcription with a strong search index across past conversations
- Cheapest annual per-seat price of the cloud tools here at $8.33
Trade-offs
- Free tier is 300 minutes a month with no rollover, 30 minutes per conversation, three file imports for the life of the account, and only the 25 most recent conversations visible
- Trains on de-identified audio and transcripts by default, with no documented self-serve opt-out below Enterprise
- HIPAA is an Enterprise add-on arranged through an account manager
- Cloud-only — no on-device option
- No dictation into other apps, no wiki
tldv
Best forTeams living inside Zoom and Google Meet who want a simple, focused recorder.
tldv joins Zoom and Google Meet as a bot, records, transcribes, and clips the moments you mark. It is the simplest product in this list and the one people pick when Fireflies feels heavier than the job requires. It is also a bot-based tool, so it does not solve the participant-list problem that pushes many people off Fireflies in the first place.
- Pricing
- Free tier plus paid plans. We have not re-verified tldv's current prices or quotas, so we are not quoting any here.
- Platforms
- Web, Chrome extension, and meeting bots for Zoom and Google Meet.
- Privacy
- Cloud-based. We have not re-verified tldv's current training, retention, or residency terms, and would rather leave the row blank than guess.
Standout
- Focused, uncluttered UX
- Native bot support for Zoom and Google Meet
- Clip-and-share moments from a call
Trade-offs
- Bot-based — the same visible-participant trade-off you may be leaving Fireflies over
- Cloud-only, with no on-device path
- Lighter on conversation intelligence than Fireflies
- We have not verified its current pricing or privacy terms, so treat both as open questions
- No dictation, no wiki
MacWhisper
Best formacOS users who want to transcribe audio files they already have, entirely on-device.
MacWhisper runs OpenAI's Whisper model against local audio files on your own machine. It is not a meeting product in the way the rest of this list is: there is no live capture, no calendar, no summary pipeline across meetings. If what you actually need is a transcript of a recording you already hold, and you want it to never touch a server, it does that job cleanly and cheaply.
- Pricing
- Free tier plus a paid Pro licence.
- Platforms
- macOS only.
- Privacy
- Fully local — runs Whisper on your Mac, so nothing is uploaded.
Standout
- Fully local transcription with nothing uploaded
- Multiple Whisper model sizes to trade speed against accuracy
- Drop-in file transcription with a decent editor
Trade-offs
- macOS only
- File transcription, not continuous meeting capture
- No meeting intelligence layer, no search across meetings
- Not open source
- No dictation, no wiki
Self-hosted Whisper
Best forDevelopers who want total control over the pipeline and can build everything above the model themselves.
Whisper is OpenAI's open speech recognition model, and running it yourself is the only option here with no vendor in the loop at all. There is no app, no meeting capture, no calendar, no summaries, no export format — unless you write them. For a team with engineering time and a hard requirement that audio never leaves their infrastructure, that is a fair trade.
- Pricing
- Free — compute is your responsibility.
- Platforms
- Anywhere you can run Python or whisper.cpp.
- Privacy
- Fully local if you run it locally. Nothing leaves your hardware unless you send it somewhere.
Standout
- Total control over models, storage, and retention
- Open source
- Free to run on hardware you already own
Trade-offs
- You are the engineering team
- No app, no meeting capture, no summaries out of the box
- Significant setup and ongoing maintenance
All seven, side by side
Verified July 15, 2026.
| Feature | Hyprcore | Fireflies | Fathom | Granola | Otter | tldv | MacWhisper |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | ✓ | 400 min total | Unlimited | 30-day history | 300 min/mo | Unverified | Limited |
| Free storage resets monthly | n/a — local files | No — total cap | n/a — unlimited | 30-day view | Yes — 300 min | Unverified | n/a |
| On-device transcription | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — | ✓ |
| Trains on your data by default | — | No — barred in Terms | Yes — settings opt-out | Yes — 1-click opt-out | Yes — Enterprise opt-out | Unverified | — |
| Records without a bot | ✓ | Partial | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | n/a |
| Keeps an audio recording | ✓ | Bot only | Unverified | No — transcript only | ✓ | Unverified | Local files |
| Named speakers without a bot | ✓ | No — Speaker 1 / 2 | Unverified | Unverified | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Export transcripts on the free plan | ✓ | No — paid only | Unverified | Unverified | Unverified | Unverified | ✓ |
| Native macOS app | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Windows | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Web | — |
| iOS / Android | — | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ | Unverified | — |
| HIPAA | — | Enterprise | ✓ | No — not compliant | Enterprise | Unverified | n/a |
| Auto-delete / retention policy | Your disk | Enterprise | Business | Unverified | Enterprise | Unverified | n/a |
| Live transcription | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| AI summaries | ✓ | ✓ | Premium | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Pro |
| Cross-meeting search | ✓ | ✓ | Partial | ✓ | ✓ | Unverified | — |
| System-wide dictation | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Voice commands (Action Mode) | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Screen + mic recording notes | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Web / YouTube captures | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| AI wiki / pages | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Zoom / Meet bots | — | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Third-party integrations | MCP only | 50+ on every plan | ✓ | Unverified | Business+ | Unverified | — |
Frequently asked questions
Does Fireflies.ai train AI models on my meetings?
No, and this is the part of Fireflies worth defending. Its Terms of Service state the company "will not use your User Content to train, retrain, fine-tune or otherwise improve any generative artificial intelligence models," and its privacy policy says it does not use personal information for AI model training and contractually prohibits vendors from doing so. Zero data retention is in place with processing partners including OpenAI and Anthropic. It applies on every plan, free included. Otter, Fathom, and Granola all train on your content by default and ask you to opt out.
What is the Fireflies free plan storage limit?
400 minutes, documented by Fireflies as a total cap that does not reset monthly — under seven hours for the life of the account. When you reach it, new meetings are still captured but you must delete older ones to access them. Fireflies' own pages conflict on whether the 400 minutes is per seat or per team, and one older help article still says 800, so check the figure against your own account rather than trusting any single page.
Can I download my transcripts on the Fireflies free plan?
No. Downloading transcripts requires a paid plan. You can read meetings inside Fireflies on the free tier, but taking them out is gated. Hyprcore writes every note to your Mac as portable markdown, so there is nothing to unlock.
Can Fireflies record without a bot?
Yes, through the desktop app on Windows and Mac, and through the Chrome extension on Google Meet. Two documented costs: speakers are labelled Speaker 1 and Speaker 2 instead of by name, and no audio or video file is saved at all — just a transcript and a summary. With the bot, Fireflies is explicit that it cannot be hidden from the participant list. Hyprcore captures from the machine with named speakers, keeps the audio, and has no bot to hide.
What is the best free Fireflies.ai alternative?
Fathom, if you want the most recording for nothing — unlimited recordings and transcription on its free plan, with advanced summaries and the assistant reserved for Premium. Hyprcore Free is the better answer if you want the audio and transcript to stay on your Mac, since it includes a local speech model, system-wide dictation, and basic meeting recording with no storage cap to exhaust.
Which Fireflies alternative offers HIPAA compliance?
Fathom is HIPAA compliant without an Enterprise contract. Fireflies offers a BAA on Enterprise only, and Otter treats HIPAA as an Enterprise add-on arranged through an account manager. Granola states it is not HIPAA compliant and gives no timeline. Hyprcore does not offer a BAA either — what it offers instead is a local speech model, so the audio need never reach a server.
How does Hyprcore pricing compare to Fireflies?
Hyprcore is Free, Pro $19.99/mo, or Team $39.99/mo for 3 seats flat. Fireflies is Free, Pro $18/seat/mo ($10 billed annually), Business $29/seat/mo ($19), and Enterprise $39/seat/mo annual-only. Fireflies is cheaper per seat, especially annually. Hyprcore's flat price is aimed at replacing a meeting recorder, a dictation app, and a notes tool at the same time.
Should I actually leave Fireflies?
Not if you need Windows, mobile, or CRM sync, and not if a contractual no-training commitment is your main criterion — Fireflies wins on all four. Leave if the 400-minute lifetime cap is squeezing you, if paying to download your own transcripts feels wrong, if you need named speakers and the audio file without a bot in the participant list, or if auto-delete and data residency matter to you and Enterprise pricing does not fit.
Sources
Every claim we make about a competitor on this page comes from their own pricing page, privacy policy, security page, or documentation — checked on July 15, 2026. Products change. If you find something here that has gone stale, tell us and we will fix it.
- Fireflies pricing and plan limits
- Fireflies Terms of Service — no generative model training
- Fireflies privacy policy — no AI training on personal information
- Fireflies security — HIPAA, SOC 2, and compliance
- Fireflies help centre — meeting storage limits
- Fireflies help centre — recording without a bot
- Fireflies help centre — how the bot joins your meetings
- Fireflies help centre — auto-delete is Enterprise only
- Fathom pricing
- Fathom privacy policy — AI training and retention
- Granola pricing
- Granola security — no audio stored, US AWS
- Otter pricing and free-plan limits
- Otter privacy policy — training on de-identified data
More comparisons and guides
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Try Hyprcore free.
The Mac-native alternative to Fireflies.ai. Free tier transcribes on-device — no credit card required.
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