Is Fireflies.ai Free? Free Plan Limits and the 7-Day Trial

Yes, Fireflies.ai has a Free plan at $0, with no card and no time limit, but it is narrower in 2026 than its reputation. Accounts created on or after 1 September 2026 get only a few transcription credits (3 when you sign up on the web) unless calendar auto-join is on, which makes transcription unlimited. Storage stops at 400 minutes per team, a running total that never resets. Downloads, integrations and video capture are paid features. The only plan trial is 7 days of Business, and it needs a card. Free suits one person trying the bot. A team that records every week outgrows it fast.

What you get for $0

The Free plan records with the same visible bot the paid plans use, the Fireflies.ai Notetaker, on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex and other platforms. Bot-free capture is included too: the desktop app for macOS and Windows, the Chrome extension for Google Meet in Chrome, the mobile app for in-person meetings, and file uploads. Free uploads accept video up to 100 MB and audio up to 500 MB, at most 150 minutes per file, each using a transcription credit. Every meeting stops at 2 hours. The bot then leaves.

You also get editable transcripts, search, comments, bookmarks, manual soundbites and 3 public channels on top of the default ones. Fireflies Talk dictation is free and unlimited. AI summaries and AskFred are listed as limited on the pricing page ^[1], and the AI side runs on 20 AI credits granted once at sign-up and shared by the whole team. That is a one-time grant. When it runs out, Free shows a paywall and charges nothing, because extra credits can be bought only on a paid plan.

Developers get more than usual. The GraphQL API works on every plan, with Free limited to 30 requests a minute and 500 a day, after a first 14 days at Pro limits that start with your first request. Uploading audio through the API needs Pro or higher, though. The MCP server is free as well, giving AI assistants tools to search and fetch your meetings within the same rate limits. For a solo user who mainly wants searchable transcripts, that is a capable start.

The transcription-credit rule for new accounts

New Free accounts are rationed now. Sign-ups on or after 1 September 2026 receive transcription credits by entry point: 3 on the web, 5 through the Chrome extension and 10 for a new mobile user ^[2]. Each bot, extension or mobile meeting uses one credit to transcribe and summarize, and so does each uploaded file or dialer recording. Three web credits mean three meetings. Accounts created before that date keep unlimited free meetings, so an older colleague's account is not a guide to yours.

The way around the cap is calendar auto-join. With auto-join set to all meetings with a video link, only meetings you own, or only meetings with teammates, transcription on Free becomes unlimited. The fourth option, joining only when you invite fred@fireflies.ai, does not count. Inviting the bot by hand transcribes that one meeting without unlocking anything. Unlimited means raw transcripts. Summaries, recaps, action items and analytics still depend on the AI-credit balance. Upgrading, inviting teammates or the referral program adds credits.

That rule forces a choice before you connect a calendar. Right after sign-up, auto-join defaults to every calendar meeting with a video link, whether or not you host it. Choosing only meetings you own keeps unlimited transcription while keeping the bot out of calls other people run. Recording consent stays your responsibility under Fireflies' Terms, with the bot or without it. The narrower setting is easier to explain.

What Free leaves out

The missing pieces matter more than storage for many teams. Free cannot download a transcript, summary, audio or video file, so getting notes out in bulk means a full account export through Fireflies' data request form. The pricing page lists no integrations on Free, so nothing flows automatically into a CRM or project tool. There is also no bulk delete, no AI Skills, no Personal Assistant, no topic trackers and no talk-time analytics. The bot attends one meeting at a time.

The 7-day trial is Business, and it bills

The plan trial is 7 days of Business. A valid credit or debit card is required, even though nothing is charged on day one ^[3]. You choose monthly or annual billing at the start, with monthly preselected. If you do not cancel before day 7, the card is charged for Business, which costs $29 per seat per month billed monthly or $19 per seat per month billed annually. Starting it is a purchase with a week of grace.

Three rules decide how the week ends. Cancelling ends the trial at once and moves the account to Free with existing meetings kept. Teammates who accept invites during the trial become billable seats once it converts. And each account gets one trial; a cancelled trial cannot be restarted, so start it in a week full of meetings. An optional AI Credits trial may run alongside. It converts to a paid credit plan after 7 days unless you cancel it separately, and AI credits are non-refundable.

When Free stops being enough, in numbers

Storage usually runs out first. 400 minutes is about 6.67 hours for the whole team, and the total does not reset monthly. A team recording five hours of meetings a week fills it in under two weeks. At the limit, new meetings are still captured, but older ones must be deleted before the new ones open. Deleting a meeting returns its minutes. That delete-to-read cycle is the clearest signal to upgrade.

Pro lifts storage to 8,000 minutes per seat, pooled across the team ^[4]. That is about 133 hours per seat: at two recorded hours a week, one seat fills it in about 67 weeks, and at ten hours a week in about 13 weeks. Pro costs $10 per seat per month billed annually or $18 per seat per month billed monthly. Heavy recorders hit its ceiling within a quarter.

Monthly billing wins short pilots. By our arithmetic, six months of monthly billing on the cheaper paid plan comes to $108 per seat, below its $120 annual cost; from month seven, annual is cheaper. Business, at $19 per seat per month billed annually or $29 billed monthly, crosses over one month later. Fireflies says annual billing saves up to 44%, which holds for the cheaper plan. Business saves 34.5% by our arithmetic.

Three signals point past Pro to Business. Meetings longer than 2 hours need the 3-hour limit on Business, since the bot leaves at the cap on Free and Pro. Recording two meetings at once needs Business, where the bot attends 3 at a time. And a team recording ten hours per seat each week will keep deleting old meetings on Pro, while Business storage is unlimited. The step up adds $9 per seat per month on annual billing.

AI credits are the quieter limit. On Free, 20 one-time credits are the whole budget. Paid plans can add credits from $5 a month for 50, shared by the team. When a paid account without a credit subscription runs out, Fireflies subscribes it to that lowest tier; an account that already has one moves up to the next tier. Auto-Upgrade can be switched off in billing settings. Our Fireflies.ai pricing breakdown covers the larger credit packs and yearly costs at 5, 10 and 50 seats.

Settings to change on day one

The defaults cost privacy rather than money. By default the recap email goes to everyone on the calendar invite; you can set it to Only me in meeting settings, which does not change who can open the meeting. Recaps are shared with teammates and anyone with the link by default, so a forwarded link opens the notes. Tighten both before the first client call. Neither touches your credits.

Two more points catch Free users later. Cancelling a paid subscription does not stop the bot: the account drops to Free and keeps auto-joining until you change the setting, as our guide on how to remove Fireflies.ai explains. And HIPAA is available only on Enterprise, with Private Storage switched on and a signed BAA. Clinicians should keep patient conversations off a Free account entirely.

The bottom line

Fireflies.ai Free is a real plan for one person: the bot, bot-free capture, the API and the MCP server cost nothing, and auto-join removes the transcription cap for new accounts. Its walls are storage and output. Four hundred minutes per team fills in under two weeks at five recorded hours a week, and Free has no per-meeting downloads and no integrations. Start on Free with auto-join set to meetings you own. Move to Pro at the first delete-to-read cycle, and take the Business trial only in a week you can cancel on time.