Short answer: Fireflies.ai is a strong meeting assistant for teams that live on video calls and CRMs. The best Fireflies.ai alternative depends on where your meetings happen: if they're mostly in the room — client meetings, interviews, one-on-ones — meaty is built for exactly that, records from any phone browser, and includes the summary and action items without an AI-credit meter. Free to start.
This is an honest comparison. Fireflies does more than it used to, and for some teams it's the right call — we say which below.
Fireflies.ai vs meaty at a glance
| Fireflies.ai | meaty | |
|---|---|---|
| Built around | Video calls: its notetaker joins Zoom, Meet and Teams from your calendar | The meeting in front of you: phone on the table, or a browser tab |
| In-person meetings | Yes, via the mobile app | Yes — the main use case, no app-store install |
| Free plan | 400 min of storage per seat, 20 AI credits | 120 min/month, recordings up to 40 min |
| Summaries & action items | Included; extra AI features draw on credits | Included on every meeting |
| Paid plans | Pro $10/seat/mo (annual) or $18 monthly; Business $19 or $29 | €6.50/mo (annual) or €8 monthly |
| Strengths | CRM sync, auto-join on every call, big integration catalogue | Room capture, EU hosting, audio deleted after two days |
Fireflies facts as of October 2026, from its free-plan guide, billing terms and AI-credits guide. Prices and limits change — check fireflies.ai for the latest.
What Fireflies.ai does well
Fireflies (its assistant is called "Fred") is one of the most complete meeting tools for teams that run on video calls. Connect your calendar and its notetaker joins Zoom, Google Meet and Teams on its own, transcribes, and files everything into a searchable library. Sales teams use it for what happens after the call: pushing notes and fields into the CRM, tracking topics across deals, and building soundbites to share.
It also covers more ground than its reputation suggests. The Fireflies mobile app can "record in-person meetings on the fly" with one tap, and you can upload audio or video files for transcription.
If your week is mostly scheduled calls and your notes need to land in Salesforce or HubSpot, Fireflies is a reasonable default.
What does Fireflies cost in 2026?
As of October 2026, per Fireflies' own help center:
- Free — 400 minutes of storage per seat (recordings, uploads and dialer calls share it; delete old files to make room), 20 AI credits (Fireflies' own pages describe these as monthly in one place and one-time in another), uploads up to 150 minutes per file, and no transcript downloads.
- Pro — $10 per seat a month billed annually, or $18 billed monthly.
- Business — $19 per seat a month billed annually, or $29 monthly. Unlimited storage starts here.
- Enterprise — $39 per seat a month, annual only.
Every admin or member counts as a billable seat, so a five-person team on Business pays for five.
About AI credits. Transcription and standard summary templates don't use credits. AskFred questions, AI soundbites, custom summary sections, and the Daily Digest and Meeting Prep features do. When a pool runs out you buy more in packs (50 credits for $5 a month and up), and purchased credits don't roll over. For light use this is fine. For a team asking a lot of questions of its meetings, it's a cost line worth watching.
Why people look for a Fireflies.ai alternative
These are the reasons that come up most, in our experience:
- Their meetings aren't on a calendar link. Fireflies' best features — auto-join, CRM sync, call analytics — assume a scheduled video call. If most of your important conversations are a client lunch, a site visit or an interview across a table, you're paying for machinery you don't use.
- The free plan fills up. 400 minutes of storage is about seven hour-long meetings, and the oldest must go before new ones fit. Transcript downloads also need a paid plan.
- Per-seat pricing for occasional users. Paying for every member is fair for a sales team. It's a lot for a consultant, a recruiter or a small practice where one person runs the meetings.
- Credits as a mental tax. Knowing a question might cost a credit changes how often you ask it.
- A visible participant isn't always welcome. Some clients and guests are uncomfortable when a notetaker shows up in the call roster.
None of this makes Fireflies bad. It makes it a tool built for a particular kind of week.
How meaty is different
meaty starts from the other end: the conversation in front of you.
- The room first. Open meaty in your phone's browser, put the phone on the table and tap record. There's no app-store install, which matters when the meeting starts in two minutes. If you lose signal, it keeps recording and uploads when you're back online. Here's how recording on your phone works.
- Calls too, from a browser tab. The Chrome extension captures both sides of any meeting running in a tab — Google Meet, a webinar, a browser-based Teams call — even on headphones, straight from your own browser.
- Notes, not just a transcript. When you stop, you get a speaker-labeled transcript, a title, a summary and action items with owners. That's every meeting, not a credit pool.
- Learns your words. Fix a name or a piece of jargon once and it's corrected across the meeting, then heard right in the next recording.
- Your audio doesn't linger. Recordings are deleted after two days; transcripts and notes stay. If you'd rather the audio were never stored at all, switch that off in settings. meaty is hosted in the EU.
And it's priced for one person running their own meetings: free to start, then a single plan rather than a per-seat ladder.
Where Fireflies is still the better choice
Being honest about this is the point of the page:
- Your meetings are scheduled video calls, all day. Auto-join from the calendar is genuinely convenient, and meaty doesn't join calls on its own.
- You need CRM sync. Pushing call notes and fields into Salesforce or HubSpot is a Fireflies strength; meaty sends notes to Notion and Slack, not to CRMs.
- You want team analytics. Talk-time ratios, topic tracking across many calls, conversation intelligence for a sales floor — that's Fireflies' territory.
- You need live transcription during the call. meaty transcribes after you stop.
If that list describes your work, stay with Fireflies. If your best conversations happen in a room, keep reading — or just try meaty on the next one.
How to decide in two minutes
- Where did your last five important meetings happen? Mostly on a calendar link: Fireflies. Mostly in person or mixed: meaty.
- How many people need their own account? A whole team that lives in the tool: per-seat pricing makes sense. One person who runs the meetings: you don't need seats.
- Where do the notes need to go? A CRM: Fireflies. Notion, Slack, or a share link someone can open without an account: meaty.
For a wider look at the field, see our ranked guide to the best AI notetakers for in-person meetings, or compare Otter as a Fireflies alternative.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best free Fireflies.ai alternative?
Can Fireflies.ai record in-person meetings?
How much storage does the Fireflies free plan include?
What are Fireflies AI credits, and does meaty use credits?
Is it legal to record an in-person meeting?
The bottom line
Fireflies.ai is a capable tool for teams whose meetings are scheduled calls and whose notes belong in a CRM. If yours happen across a table instead — or you're one person who'd rather not run a per-seat plan — meaty records the room from the phone you already have and hands you the summary and action items when you stop.
Try meaty free — record your next meeting from your phone and read the notes before you're back at your desk.
