Fireflies.ai vs Otter.ai

Both capture Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, and both offer a bot-free path — Otter via its Mac/Windows desktop app and Chrome extension, Fireflies via a Chrome extension for Google Meet plus desktop and mobile apps for in-person audio. Fireflies adds Webex as a recorded platform; Otter's listed platforms stop at the big three. Fireflies transcribes 100+ languages with auto-language detection and a Multi-language Mode for mixed-language meetings (Business tier and above); Otter lists multi-language transcription with speaker identification but no comparable mixed-language mode in the data. Fireflies accepts uploaded MP3/MP4/WAV/M4A files; Otter's file import is capped at 10 per month on Pro. On the intelligence layer they diverge: Otter leads with pre-call briefings (prior discussions, open action items), Live-Assist coaching from history and playbooks, Otter AI Chat across meetings and apps, and an MCP Server so ChatGPT and Claude can query your meeting knowledge. Fireflies counters with AskFred across meetings, documents and connected apps, a Knowledge Base/Search, Meeting Search that returns the exact sentence and timestamp, Expand Summary Notes, and Live Assist inside the call. Integration-wise Fireflies' list is wider (Slack, Asana, Trello, Greenhouse, Webex); Otter's includes Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier, Google Drive, Gmail, Notion and Jira. Fireflies publishes HIPAA BAA, SSO + SCIM, API audit logs and private storage; Otter's SSO, SCIM and Domain Capture are Enterprise-tier only, and its workspace tops out at 25 members below Enterprise.

Both are freemium, and the free tiers differ in shape: Otter gives 300 minutes per month to an individual, while Fireflies' 400 minutes are per team — better for a small group testing together, and note that Fireflies' free plan caps storage rather than granting permanent free storage. Otter's Pro tier imposes two constraints a heavy user will feel: 10 file imports per month and a 90-minute meeting cap. Fireflies gates its most valuable language feature — Multi-language Mode — at Business tier and above, and its enterprise-grade controls (HIPAA BAA, SSO + SCIM, API audit logs, private storage) are enterprise-tier items, with Enterprise sold annual-only, which rules out month-to-month buyers. Otter's security features (SSO, SCIM, Domain Capture) are likewise Enterprise-only, and workspaces larger than 25 members must move to Enterprise. The practical cost question is seats versus minutes: a solo user burning 300+ minutes fits Otter's free-to-Pro path; a five-person team that talks a lot gets more headroom per dollar from Fireflies' team-wide free minutes. Neither vendor's data discloses exact per-seat paid prices here, so model your own monthly minute volume before committing.