Context Rankings
Meetings · Head-to-Head

Otter vs. Fireflies for AI Meeting Notes

Two AI notetakers most teams have already shortlisted in 2026. We ran them side by side on the same meetings and looked past the marketing at what actually lands in your notes, your CRM, and your bill.

Tested by Hannah Osei · August 1, 2026 · 4 rounds
Otter
Otter.ai
1round
82 / 100 overall
vs
Fireflies
Fireflies.ai
3rounds
85 / 100 overall
The verdict

For most teams in 2026, Fireflies is the better default. It's cheaper at every paid tier, its free plan is more usable, it transcribes in 100+ languages against Otter's six, and its Business plan bundles the CRM sync and video that Otter still gates to Enterprise. Otter is the better pick in two specific cases: if you present a lot from slides and want them captured inside the transcript, or if your team is all on Zoom in English and values a simpler interface over integration depth. Either tool will produce a competent transcript and summary of an English Zoom call. Where they part ways is what happens next: where the notes go, how many languages they cover, and how much you pay to move them into the tools you already use.

Otter and Fireflies are the two names that come up on every AI-notetaker shortlist in 2026, and they've spent the last year converging on the same feature set. A bot joins Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, transcribes in real time, writes a summary with action items, and pushes some of that into a CRM. The question isn't "which one takes notes" anymore. It's "which one fits the team you actually have, the languages you actually speak, the CRM you actually use, and the budget you can actually defend."

We ran both tools side by side for three weeks on the same meetings: a mix of internal standups, client calls in English and Spanish, a recruiting screen, and two sales discovery calls we later needed to find in Salesforce. We graded four rounds (transcription and language coverage, meeting summaries and post-call intelligence, CRM and workflow integration, and price and data policy), each with a specific procedure. Round wins reflect our testing; your mileage will vary if your workflow leans hard on a feature we weighted lightly.

Round by round

Transcription accuracy and language coverage
WinnerFireflies

How we testedWe ran both bots on the same 20 recorded meetings (mix of English, Spanish, and one French client call), then hand-checked a five-minute window from each for word-level errors, speaker attribution mistakes, and handling of overlapping speech. We also compared the total languages each product supports for transcription.

In English on clean audio, both tools land in the same neighborhood. The gap opens on language coverage and messy calls. Fireflies advertises transcription in 100+ languages while Otter still supports only English, French, and Spanish, which matters the moment you have a client call outside those three. On the Spanish and French calls in our sample, Fireflies produced usable transcripts without a second tool. Otter handled them, but its supported set is narrow enough that a multilingual team will end up buying something else alongside it.

Meeting summaries and post-call intelligence
WinnerOtter

How we testedFor each of the 20 meetings we compared the two auto-generated summaries side by side against a human-written note we produced independently. We scored each on action-item recall (did it catch the commitments?), decision capture, and whether the summary was specific enough to be forwarded without editing. We also tested cross-meeting search: ten natural-language questions about things said across multiple past calls.

This is the one round where Otter's product decisions pay off. Otter AI Chat searches across months of past meetings with source attribution and isn't throttled by a monthly credit cap, and automatic slide capture pairs the visuals from a screen-share into the same searchable record. That's useful when the useful part of the meeting was on a slide, not in what anyone said. Fireflies' AskFred is the equivalent surface and can also pull context from email and Slack, but on Pro and Business it draws down a shared pool of AI credits (20/month on Pro, 30 on Business), and heavy users report paying above the sticker price once those run out. On raw summary quality the two were close; Otter's edge is that the summaries stay useful weeks later.

CRM, integrations, and workflow
WinnerFireflies

How we testedWe connected each tool to a HubSpot sandbox and a Salesforce sandbox and ran the same two sales discovery calls through both. We scored whether meeting notes, action items, and deal signals landed on the right record automatically, how many native integrations each product listed, and which tier we had to buy to unlock CRM sync at all.

Fireflies' Business plan at $19/user/month (annual) is where the CRM story clicks: unlimited storage, video recording, conversation intelligence, and native sync with HubSpot and Salesforce, plus roughly 100+ integrations and post-meeting AI Skills that push action items to Slack, update CRM fields, and create tasks in Asana or Jira. Otter's Business tier at $20/user/month (annual) is fine for capture, but the sales-specific piece (custom Salesforce field mapping, BANT/MEDDIC extraction, the Sales Notetaker) is gated to Enterprise, which third-party pricing data pegs in the mid-four to low-five figures annually. For a team that just wants notes flowing into HubSpot next month, Fireflies gets you there without an Enterprise conversation.

Price, plan limits, and data policy
WinnerFireflies

How we testedWe compared published pricing at every tier on both vendors' current pricing pages, the real usage limits (minutes, storage, AI credits, seat minimums), and each vendor's stated policy on training AI models with customer meeting data. We modeled a year of cost for a 10-person team on the tier we'd actually recommend for that team.

Fireflies is cheaper at every tier and more generous on the free plan. Its Free plan gives every user unlimited transcription and AI summaries with an 800-minute storage cap; Otter's Basic caps you at 300 transcription minutes per month and 30 minutes per conversation. Fireflies Pro is $10/user/month annual against Otter Pro at $8.33. Otter is a dollar-fifty cheaper but caps you at 1,200 minutes while Fireflies removes the transcription limit. At the team tier, Fireflies Business is $19/user/month annual with unlimited storage, video, and CRM sync; Otter Business is $19.99/user/month annual with a 5-seat minimum on the checkout page. Data policy is the other lever: Fireflies publishes a guarantee that customer meeting data is not used to train its models, while Otter's default is to train on de-identified customer audio and transcripts, a policy that has drawn a federal lawsuit and is worth understanding before you sign an annual contract.

This is the comparison most teams evaluating AI notetakers in 2026 are actually making. Otter and Fireflies do the same core job (a bot joins the call, transcribes it, and writes a summary) and both have added AI search, CRM push, and light workflow automation on top. The interesting differences are one layer deeper.

Where Fireflies wins

Fireflies is the value pick and the multilingual pick. Its four plans in 2026 (billed annually) are Free at $0 with 800 storage minutes and 20 AI credits per month, Pro at $10/user/month with unlimited transcription and 8,000 storage minutes, Business at $19/user/month with unlimited storage, video recording, analytics, and CRM sync, and Enterprise at $39/user/month with custom onboarding and SSO.

Every plan includes unlimited transcription and unlimited AI summaries, so the core meeting-capture experience is the same regardless of what you pay. The difference between tiers is storage, automation depth, team analytics, and security controls.

The language coverage is the other thing that keeps coming up in our testing. Otter’s supported language count is six, compared to Fireflies’ 100+. If your team ever has a client call in Portuguese or a candidate interview in German, that gap decides the round on its own.

On integrations, Business adds unlimited storage, video recording, Conversation Intelligence, CRM sync with HubSpot and Salesforce, team analytics, and video Soundbites, which is enough for most sales and CS teams to stop shopping. The catch worth knowing: each plan includes a shared workspace credit pool for AI features (Pro: 20, Business: 30, Enterprise: 50), and teams that rely heavily on AI summaries, action items, and AskFred should factor in add-on credit bundles that auto-renew monthly unless paused, at roughly $0.06-$0.10 per credit. If you use AskFred every day, your real bill will sit above the sticker.

Where Otter wins

Otter’s edge in our testing was the archive and the slides. Otter AI Chat surfaces context across months or years of meetings with source attribution and isn’t throttled by a monthly credit cap or lookback window, and automatic slide capture pairs visual context with the transcript in the same searchable record. If your team runs meetings that lean heavily on shared decks (internal reviews, sales demos, all-hands), that slide-in-transcript capture is a real feature Fireflies doesn’t match.

Otter’s pricing is close to Fireflies at the individual tier and slightly above at the team tier. Otter.ai has a free Basic tier capped at 300 monthly transcription minutes, with transcript access capped at 30 minutes per conversation; Pro runs $16.99 per user per month, or $8.33 per user per month on annual billing; Business runs $30 per user per month, or $19.99 per user per month annual, with unlimited meetings; Enterprise is custom and adds SSO, SCIM, HIPAA add-on, and Otter API access. On paper, Otter Pro is the cheapest paid seat in the category. In practice, a team with daily standups burns through the 300-minute free cap in about two weeks and then hits a hard stop mid-month; at that point the choices are Pro at $16.99/month with a 1,200-minute cap or a tool without minute caps.

The sales-specific features are the other thing to know. The Enterprise plan is the only tier that includes Otter Sales Notetaker (also called Otter for Sales), Otter’s AI app designed for sales teams to extract deal insights and sync notes to Salesforce or HubSpot. If that’s what you’re buying the tool for, Fireflies gets you there at the Business tier for $19/user/month and Otter does not.

The data-policy question

The one area we’d encourage every buyer to look at before signing an annual contract is what each vendor does with your meeting data. Otter still trains its AI on customer data by default, and that policy is now the subject of a federal lawsuit. Fireflies’ position on training is different, and Fireflies publishes a flat guarantee that customer data never trains a model. If your meetings include client information, health information, or anything under a confidentiality clause, that difference is worth a conversation with your legal team.

Who should pick which

Pick Fireflies if you want the cheaper paid seat, the more usable free plan, coverage in more than three languages, or CRM sync without an Enterprise contract. That covers most teams we tested with.

Pick Otter if your meetings are mostly English Zoom calls, you present a lot from slides and want them captured with the transcript, or you value a simpler interface over integration breadth. Individual users on Otter Pro who fill the 1,200-minute bucket will pay less per hour than they will on Fireflies Pro; teams that need CRM push will pay more.

And skip both if your problem is really “I need a transcript of one meeting a month.” Fathom’s free plan handles that for individuals without a subscription decision, and neither of these tools is worth the annual commitment for occasional use.

Sources