Fireflies.ai vs Otter.ai: Prices, Limits, Bots and AI Compared

Fireflies.ai and Otter.ai cost almost the same at matching billing terms, so the choice turns on limits, not price. Billed annually, Fireflies Pro is $10 per seat per month and Fireflies Business $19 per seat per month ^[1]; Otter Pro is $8.33 per user per month and Otter Business $19.99 per user per month ^[2]. Pick Fireflies if you want no monthly transcription cap on bot meetings, an API on every plan and 100+ languages (Fireflies says). Pick Otter if you are a team of five or fewer that wants the cheapest annual Pro seat and fits inside 1,200 minutes a month. Both send a visible bot by default.

Prices at the same billing term

Billed annually, Fireflies Pro costs $10 per seat per month and Otter Pro costs $8.33 per user per month, a gap of $1.67 a month in Otter's favor. One seat for a year comes to $120 against $99.96 by our arithmetic. At Business level the order flips. Fireflies Business is $19 per seat per month billed annually and Otter Business is $19.99 per user per month billed annually, so Fireflies is $0.99 a month cheaper, or $228 against $239.88 a year by our arithmetic. Otter caps Pro at 5 billed users ^[2], so a sixth person moves an Otter team to Business.

Billed monthly, Fireflies Pro is $18 per seat per month and Otter Pro is $16.99 per user per month, $1.01 apart, or $216 against $203.88 a year by our arithmetic. Fireflies Business is $29 per seat per month billed monthly, against Otter Business at $30 per user per month billed monthly, which is $348 against $360 a year by our arithmetic. Otter offers first-time subscribers on monthly Business $24 per user per month for the first 3 months only. Then the list price applies. Fireflies Enterprise is $39 per seat per month, billed annually only, while Otter Enterprise is sold by quote.

For a five-person team on annual billing, Pro runs $600 a year on Fireflies and $499.80 on Otter. Business runs $1,140 on Fireflies and $1,199.40 on Otter, again by our arithmetic. The plan names line up. The limits behind them do not, and a cheaper seat only saves money if its cap fits your calendar. Plan-by-plan detail, add-ons and trial terms sit in our Fireflies.ai pricing guide and Otter.ai pricing guide.

Monthly minutes versus a storage total

Otter meters time each month; Fireflies meters what you keep. Otter Basic gives 300 transcription minutes per user a month and Pro gives 1,200, as a shared pool with no rollover. Otter Business is unlimited for meetings, with 6,000 import minutes a month. Fireflies Pro has no monthly transcription cap on bot meetings, but its storage is a running total of 8,000 minutes per seat, pooled across the team, that does not reset ^[3]. At the limit, new meetings are still captured, yet you must delete older ones to open them. Fireflies Business and Enterprise store without limit. Uploads and imports on paid Fireflies plans are capped at 3,000 minutes per user per source a month, and uploads and imports above the monthly limit cost $0.01 per minute.

The arithmetic decides which cap hurts. Otter Pro's 1,200 minutes equal 20 hours of meetings a month, refilled every month. Fireflies Pro's 8,000 minutes fill in about 6 months at 5 hours of meetings a week, or about 3 months at 10 hours a week, by our arithmetic. Deleting a meeting returns its minutes. So a steady user under 20 hours a month can stay on Otter Pro indefinitely. Someone at 10 hours a week outgrows both Pro plans within a quarter, and at Business level Fireflies has the lower list price on both billing terms.

Meeting length is the second cap. The Fireflies bot records up to 2 hours per meeting on Free and Pro, 3 on Business and 4 on Enterprise, then leaves. On Otter Basic, recording continues, but only the first 30 minutes of each conversation are viewable until you upgrade; Pro allows 90 minutes per conversation and Business 4 hours. For sessions up to 4 hours, Otter Business records one conversation; Fireflies Business stops at 3 hours, so you re-add the bot for a second part, and Enterprise allows 4. The Fireflies bot attends one meeting at a time on Free and Pro and three on Business and Enterprise; Otter's notetaker handles 1, 2, 3 and 3 concurrent meetings across its plans.

The free tiers differ in kind. Otter Basic gives 300 minutes per user a month, 3 lifetime imports and the 25 most recent conversations. Fireflies Free stores 400 minutes for the whole team, not per person. Accounts created since September 2026 also get only a few transcription credits (3 when you sign up on the web) unless calendar auto-join is on, which makes transcription unlimited. Read those terms before you invite anyone.

Bots by default, and the bot-free routes

Both products lead with a meeting bot. Neither bot hides. The Fireflies bot, named Fireflies.ai Notetaker, auto-joins every calendar meeting with a video link right after sign-up and always shows in the participant list. By default, recap emails go to everyone on the invite and recaps open for anyone holding the link. Cancelling a Fireflies subscription does not stop it: the account drops to Free and keeps auto-joining. Otter's notetaker auto-joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet from a Google or Microsoft calendar and posts a link in the chat; any participant can remove it or type stop otter. On Fireflies, /ff leave in the chat does the same.

The bot-free routes are close but not identical. Fireflies offers a desktop app for macOS and Windows that records system audio, though it saves no audio or video file and labels speakers generically. Its Chrome extension covers Google Meet in Chrome, audio only, and the mobile app handles in-person meetings, alongside a web recorder and file uploads. A Google Meet SDK integration also records Google Meet audio and video without a visible bot, once a Google Workspace admin authorizes it, with video from up to three active participants at a time. Otter offers a bot-free desktop app on macOS 12.3+ and Windows 10+, a Chrome extension for Zoom and Meet links, plus web, iOS and Android apps. Recording consent remains your job under Fireflies' Terms, bot or no bot.

AI credits against query caps

The AI layers are metered in opposite ways. Fireflies gives each plan a one-time allotment of AI credits shared by the whole team: 20 on Free and Pro, 30 on Business, 50 on Enterprise. AskFred, AI Skills, the Personal Assistant, Voice Agents at 1 credit per minute, Autofill CRM, Live Assist answers and the Slack and Email Assistants all draw on them. Transcription, standard summaries and templates do not. Extra credits are a paid add-on from $5 a month for 50 credits, a team pool, with annual billing 20% lower.

Otter caps AI Chat queries per user each month instead: 20 on Basic (3 per conversation), 50 on Pro and 200 on Business. That allowance refills. Fireflies' plan credits do not. A team that leans on chat across meetings should expect to buy the Fireflies add-on, and because Fireflies charges each query by complexity, measure usage in a pilot before sizing a pack. On a paid Fireflies plan, running out of credits puts an account without a credit subscription on the lowest tier ($5 a month for 50 credits) and moves one with a subscription up to the next tier. Auto-Upgrade can be switched off in billing settings. AI credits are non-refundable.

Languages, exports, API and compliance

Language range is the widest gap. Fireflies says it transcribes 100+ languages, and its Multi-language Mode (beta), on Business and Enterprise, follows several languages within one call. Otter transcribes English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese Simplified, with German and Chinese in beta, one language at a time. For developers, Fireflies opens its GraphQL API on every plan, with rate limits that rise by plan (Free gets 30 requests a minute and 500 a day). Otter keeps its API and webhooks on Enterprise. Both run an MCP server on every plan, so AI assistants can search and fetch your meetings.

Healthcare buyers face conditions on both sides. Fireflies offers HIPAA only on Enterprise, with Private Storage switched on and a signed BAA ^[4]. Otter sells HIPAA as an Enterprise add-on with a BAA. On training, Fireflies' Terms say it will not use customer content to train generative AI models, though its DPA allows deidentified data to improve products. Otter trains on de-identified data, controlled by a Help improve Otter setting, with Enterprise opted out by default. Otter's Terms make fees non-refundable; a Fireflies downgrade turns unused value into account credit.

Which one fits your situation

Ratings map what users praise and complain about; they do not settle features. The caps above do. A solo user or a team of up to five with under 20 hours of meetings a month pays least on Otter Pro billed annually, and the minutes refill. A team of six or more is pushed to Otter Business, where Fireflies Business has the lower list price on both billing terms and adds unlimited storage. Heavy users who meet more than 20 hours a month need Otter Business; on Fireflies Pro they fill the 8,000-minute storage within months, then delete old meetings or move to Business.

Multilingual teams and developers lean toward Fireflies: more languages, mixed-language calls on Business through Multi-language Mode (still in beta), and an API without an Enterprise contract. Teams that run sessions longer than 3 hours fit Otter Business, which allows 4 hours per conversation. Regulated teams land on Enterprise on both, so compare the conditions: Fireflies ties HIPAA to Private Storage, while Otter sells it as an add-on. Our Otter.ai review covers the rest of Otter's plan detail.

The bottom line

At the same billing term, Fireflies and Otter sit within about $1 to $1.67 of each other per seat a month, so price alone settles little. Otter wins for small teams on annual Pro who meet under 20 hours a month and want a monthly allowance that refills. Fireflies wins for teams of six or more, for mixed-language calls (a beta mode on Business) and for anyone who needs an API before Enterprise, at the cost of a storage total on Pro and AI credits that do not refill. Whichever you pick, set the auto-join rules before connecting your calendar.