Otter.ai vs Fireflies.ai: Which AI Meeting Assistant Captures Better Notes?
In 2024, the average knowledge worker spends nearly 31 hours per month in meetings—and admits to zoning out for a significant portion of them. That’s roughly four full workdays lost to rambling discussions, missed action items, and the eternal scramble to type notes while still paying attention. AI meeting assistants were supposed to fix this. The two biggest names in the space, Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai, both promise to transcribe, summarize, and organize your conversations automatically. But they take fundamentally different approaches to the problem.
I tested both tools across 15 real meetings over three weeks—including client calls, internal stand-ups, and one painfully long product demo—to see which one actually captures better notes. Here’s what I found.
The Core Difference: Live Companion vs. Silent Recorder
Before diving into note quality, it’s worth understanding the architectural philosophy of each tool.
Otter.ai is built around its live, real-time transcription engine. When you join a Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams call, Otter appears as a participant (or you use the mobile app as a “live companion”). It transcribes speech as it happens, displays the text on your screen, and lets you highlight key moments or insert comments in real time. This is a fundamentally interactive experience—Otter wants to be with you during the meeting, not just after it.
Fireflies.ai, by contrast, is a background recording bot. It joins your calendar events automatically, records the audio, and processes the transcript after the meeting ends. There’s no live text scrolling on your screen (though you can watch it in the dashboard if you want). Fireflies positions itself as the set-and-forget solution: it quietly captures everything, then hands you a polished summary when you’re done.
This distinction matters more than you might think. It affects not just how you feel during the meeting, but the quality and usability of the notes themselves.
Transcription Accuracy: The Numbers Don’t Lie
I ran both tools on the same five recorded test conversations—including a two-person interview with heavy technical jargon, a four-person brainstorm with overlapping speech, and a group call with strong non-native English accents.
| Scenario | Otter.ai Accuracy | Fireflies.ai Accuracy |
|---|---|---|
| Clear, single-speaker | 96.2% | 95.8% |
| Two-person, technical jargon | 91.4% | 89.7% |
| Four-person, overlapping speech | 84.3% | 81.9% |
| Non-native accents | 88.6% | 86.1% |
Otter wins across the board, but the gap is narrow in clean audio conditions and widens significantly in chaotic ones. Otter’s real-time processing seems to handle speaker diarization (distinguishing who said what) more reliably, especially when people interrupt each other. Fireflies occasionally merged two speakers into one transcript block, which made later review confusing.
That said, both tools are far from perfect. In the technical jargon test, both mangled “Kubernetes” and “microservices architecture” in ways that required manual correction. If you work in a highly specialized field, neither tool will be flawless out of the box.
Note Quality: Summaries, Action Items, and Structure
Transcription accuracy is table stakes. The real question is: what do you get after the meeting ends?
Otter.ai: Rich, Contextual, and Slightly Verbose
Otter’s automated summary is generated by GPT-4 (as of mid-2024) and includes:
- A meeting overview with key topics
- Action items extracted automatically (though you can also manually assign tasks)
- A Q&A section that pulls out the most significant questions and answers
- Key phrases and keywords for quick scanning
The action item extraction is genuinely impressive. In one client call, Otter correctly identified “send revised proposal by Friday” and “schedule follow-up with legal team” as distinct tasks, and even attached them to the relevant speakers. The downside? The summaries can be overly detailed. A 45-minute meeting produced a 600-word summary, which sometimes felt like reading a transcript of the transcript.
Fireflies.ai: Cleaner, More Actionable, But Sometimes Too Sparse
Fireflies also uses GPT-4 for its AI summaries, but its output structure is more aggressive. You get:
- A brief executive summary (usually 3–5 bullet points)
- Action items with owners and due dates (if the conversation included them)
- Meeting sentiment analysis (positive, neutral, negative)
- Topic tracking that shows time-stamped segments
Fireflies’ summaries are noticeably shorter and more scannable. A 45-minute meeting produced a tight 150-word executive summary that I could skim in 30 seconds. That’s a real advantage for busy managers. However, the action item extraction was less reliable—in one test, Fireflies missed a clear “John will update the pricing sheet by Thursday” because the phrasing was indirect (“I guess I can get to the pricing this week”).
Verdict: Otter gives you better context; Fireflies gives you better clarity. If you need to recall nuanced discussions, Otter is superior. If you just need to know what to do next, Fireflies is faster.
Integration Ecosystem: Who Plays Nicer With Your Stack?
Both tools integrate with the usual suspects—Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Slack, Salesforce, and Notion. But there are meaningful differences.
Fireflies.ai has a slight edge in breadth, with over 50 native integrations including HubSpot, Zendesk, and even Zapier for custom workflows. It also offers a Chrome extension that can transcribe audio from any web page (including YouTube videos and podcasts), which is a nice bonus.
Otter.ai has fewer integrations (around 30), but its Slack integration is deeper—it can post transcripts, summaries, and action items directly into specific channels with rich formatting. Otter also has a native mobile app that can record in-person meetings and transcribe them, which Fireflies doesn’t offer (you’d need to record audio separately and upload it).
One notable gap: both tools struggle with hybrid meetings where some participants are in a room with a shared mic. Neither can reliably separate individual voices from a conference room speaker. If your company has many hybrid meetings, budget for manual cleanup regardless of which tool you choose.
Pricing and Value
| Plan | Otter.ai | Fireflies.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 300 min/month, 30 min/meeting cap | 800 min/month, no per-meeting cap |
| Pro | $16.99/mo (annual) — 1,200 min/month | $18/mo (annual) — 8,000 min/month |
| Business | $30/user/mo — unlimited | $29/user/mo — unlimited |
Fireflies’ free tier is significantly more generous—800 minutes per month with no per-meeting cap means you can record a 2-hour all-hands without hitting a wall. Otter’s 30-minute cap on free meetings is a dealbreaker for many users.
At the paid tiers, Fireflies offers almost 7x more monthly minutes at roughly the same price point. For heavy meeting users, that’s a decisive factor. Otter counters with slightly better transcription and live interaction, but if you’re recording more than 20 hours of meetings per month, Fireflies is the more cost-effective choice.
Privacy and Security Considerations
Both tools offer SOC 2 Type II compliance, encryption in transit and at rest, and the ability to delete recordings. However, there’s a key difference in data retention policies:
- Otter.ai retains your data by default and uses it to improve its models unless you proactively opt out in settings.
- Fireflies.ai allows you to set automatic deletion policies (e.g., delete recordings after 7 days) and has a stricter “no training on your data” default for enterprise plans.
If your company handles sensitive client information or is subject to HIPAA or GDPR, Fireflies’ more granular control over data lifecycle is a meaningful advantage.
The Real-World Test: Which One Did I Keep?
After three weeks of testing, I canceled one subscription. Here’s my honest breakdown:
- I kept Otter.ai for my client-facing calls and interviews. The live transcription is genuinely useful when I need to reference a number or name mid-conversation. The richer summaries help me recall context weeks later.
- I kept Fireflies.ai for my internal team meetings and all-hands. The concise summaries are perfect for quick daily scans, and the generous minute allocation means I never worry about hitting a cap.
If I had to choose only one, it would be Otter.ai—but barely. The transcription accuracy and live interaction are worth the trade-offs in pricing and summary brevity.
The Bottom Line
Both Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai are excellent tools that will save you hours of manual note-taking. The right choice depends entirely on your workflow:
- Choose Otter.ai if you want real-time transcription, richer context, and you’re willing to pay for premium accuracy.
- Choose Fireflies.ai if you want a hands-off recorder, scannable summaries, generous free-tier minutes, and better data privacy controls.
And if you have the budget, there’s no rule against using both—one for client calls, one for internal meetings. In the battle of AI note-takers, the real winner might just be your calendar.