Fireflies.ai AI Playbook: AskFred, AI Skills and Credit Budgets

Fireflies.ai splits its AI layer into two halves. Transcription, standard summaries and summary templates spend no AI credits, though new Free accounts get only a few transcription credits unless auto-join is on. Everything that thinks on demand, from AskFred and AI Skills to Voice Agents and the Email and Slack Assistants, spends AI credits. The included pool is small and one-time: 20 credits on Free and Pro, 30 on Business and 50 on Enterprise, shared by the whole team rather than given per seat. After that, credits are a paid add-on from $5 a month for 50 credits, a team pool. Our verdict is simple. Buy a paid plan for the free summaries, then budget credits feature by feature before you switch anything on.

What runs free and what spends credits

Fireflies.ai charges for seats and meters intelligence separately. Pro costs $10 per seat per month billed annually or $18 per seat per month billed monthly, and Business costs $19 per seat per month billed annually or $29 per seat per month billed monthly.^[1] Neither price buys a monthly credit allowance. The plan credits arrive once, at sign-up, and stay with the workspace instead of multiplying with seats, so a five-seat Pro team still holds 20 credits, not 100.^[2] Upgrading replaces the pool rather than adding to it. Moving from Free to Business leaves you with 30 credits, not 50.

Summaries, templates and AskFred: the everyday core

The default General Summary covers keywords, an overview, notes, time-stamped notes and action items, and it runs on every plan, though Free is listed as limited. Prebuilt templates such as sales, 1:1 or BANT are free, and so is regenerating a summary. Custom work is where the meter starts. Your first custom template is free, each further one uses credits, and every extra custom section costs 1 credit per summary. Three extra sections on 60 meetings a month come to 180 credits, which by our arithmetic outgrows the 50-credit tier and lands on the 200-credit one at $20 a month. Admins can also enforce one template for the whole workspace.

AskFred is the chat layer. Inside a meeting it answers questions about that call. Global AskFred searches across past meetings and can also draw on connected apps such as Gmail, Slack and HubSpot, on custom MCP servers you add, and on web search, which is off by default. Every question spends credits. There is no fixed price per question, because Fireflies charges by the complexity of the request, the sources used and the number of meetings analysed. That rule rewards precision. You can narrow the context with @ mentions to specific meetings, people or user groups, so a question about one deal should cost less than a question about a whole quarter.

AI Skills, topic trackers and Soundbites

AI Skills, formerly called AI Apps, start on Pro. Fireflies says it offers 200+ templates across sales, recruiting, healthcare and finance, from BANT and MEDDIC scorecards to follow-up emails, and you can write your own. A skill runs after each meeting or on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule, and it can be limited by host, participants, title or internal versus external calls. Outputs go to Slack, email, Teams, HubSpot, Salesforce or Notion. Credit use varies per skill per meeting. The filters are your budget control: a skill that fires after every call multiplies its cost by your meeting count.

Admins can restrict skill creation to admins only, and on Business they can show skills to specific user groups. Deleting a skill is permanent; disabling it keeps its earlier outputs in the Feed. Topic trackers, also from Pro, highlight keywords you define and timestamp every mention, which suits tracking competitor names, pricing objections or a launch codename across calls. Voice commands are a kind of topic tracker that creates tasks in connected apps once a meeting is processed. Manual Soundbites, clipped from the transcript, are free on every plan. Magic and Keyword Soundbites find moments automatically and spend credits.

Live Assist, Sales Assist and the Personal Assistant

Live Assist is the real-time pane, and every user gets it on the web dashboard, the Chrome extension, the desktop app and mobile. It works with the bot or bot-free through the desktop app's system-audio capture. It shows a live transcript, nudges you about long monologues or speaking pace, and runs AI Skills through a slash command. Free users see four standard suggestions (Follow Up, Catch Up, Summarize So Far, Action Items); dynamic topic suggestions need a paid plan. Instant Summaries at the end of a call are free. AskFred questions in the pane are charged per query, and they can draw on the live call, your meetings from the last 30 days and the web.

Sales Assist answers in-call questions from a Knowledge Base you upload, such as playbooks, product docs or FAQs. It needs the bot in the meeting, does not work in bot-free system-audio mode, and charges credits per query. That pairing matters: reps who prefer bot-free capture lose Sales Assist, while Live Assist itself keeps working. Sales teams weighing it should read our Fireflies.ai guide for sales teams.

The Personal Assistant starts on Pro and has three parts. Meeting Prep is on by default and writes a brief about 3 hours before each scheduled meeting, spending credits each time; its company and participant insights work only for corporate email domains. Daily Digest spends credits once it is on, appears after 3 completed meetings and refreshes every 24 hours. Tasks is always on and free.

Voice Agents, Email and Slack Assistants

Voice Agents are the easiest AI feature to price, and long calls add up fast. They are available on all paid plans, and Free users can try them only if they have enough credits.^[3] The agent runs screening interviews, discovery calls, user research or check-ins on your behalf, on Fireflies' own browser link rather than Zoom or Meet. You share it by link, embed code, QR code or calendar invite. Sessions last 5 to 40 minutes, answers come only from a Knowledge Base, and Fireflies lists 32+ languages. Voice cloning is included at no extra cost, recorded live.

Each finished call is saved as a meeting with recording, transcript and summary, and AI Skills can score it after it ends. The cost is 1 credit per minute. Your first Voice Agent comes with a one-time bonus of 100 credits valid for 14 days, which by our arithmetic is ten 10-minute calls. Then the math gets real. Thirty 20-minute screening calls a month use 600 credits, so the smallest tier that covers them is 1,000 credits at $90 a month, or $72 a month billed annually. Recruiters can see the hiring workflow in our Fireflies.ai guide for recruiters.

The Email Assistant, also from Pro, connects Gmail or Outlook, sorts new mail, drafts replies and follow-ups with credits, and never sends anything on its own. The Slack Assistant answers when you tag @Fireflies, summarizes up to 90 days of a channel, and draws on your meetings and the web when asked. It cannot see private channels it has not been added to. Its queries spend credits by complexity.

Budgeting credits without surprises

Extra credits come in fixed tiers: 50 for $5 a month ($4 billed annually), 200 for $20 ($16), 1,000 for $90 ($72), 2,500 for $200 ($160), 5,000 for $375 ($300), 7,500 for $450 ($360) and 10,000 for $600 ($480). Annual billing is 20% lower and keeps the same monthly credit amount.^[4] Purchased credits are a monthly amount that does not roll over. By our arithmetic, one credit costs $0.10 on the smallest monthly tier and $0.048 on the largest annual one. Only paid plans can buy credits.

Size the tier to your steady need. Up to 50 credits a month fits the $5 tier. Up to 200 fits the $20 tier, which covers a sales team running Autofill CRM on 100 calls a month at 1 credit each. Anything above 200 and up to 1,000 credits needs the $90 tier. AskFred, AI Skills and the assistants have no fixed rate, so treat any figure for them as an estimate and measure it. Admins can see AI credit usage by feature and by teammate.

Running dry triggers an automatic purchase. On a paid plan with no credit subscription, Fireflies automatically subscribes the account to the $5-a-month tier (50 credits). Existing credit subscribers move up to the next tier, charged pro-rata on annual billing. Auto-Upgrade can be switched off in billing settings, and credit features then pause until the next cycle or a purchase. AI credits are non-refundable. The credit add-on is cancelled separately from the plan and runs to the end of its cycle; for the seat side of the bill, see our Fireflies.ai pricing guide.

The bottom line

Fireflies.ai gives away the part most teams use daily: on a paid plan, transcripts, standard summaries and templates cost nothing beyond the seat. The rest is metered, and the included pool of 20 to 50 one-time credits is a sample, not a budget. Start with AskFred and one filtered AI Skill, turn Meeting Prep off unless you read the briefs, and price Voice Agents by the minute before you publish one. Check the usage page after two weeks. Then pick the credit tier that covers your real monthly need, and decide deliberately whether to switch Auto-Upgrade off in billing settings.