Otter.ai vs Fireflies.ai: Detailed Comparison
Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai are the two biggest players in AI meeting transcription. Both record calls, generate transcripts, and provide AI insights — but they serve different workflows. We tested both head-to-head to help you choose.
Quick Verdict
Otter.ai wins for individual users and small teams who prioritize accuracy and simplicity. Fireflies.ai wins for sales teams and organizations that need searchable meeting archives and CRM integration. Both are excellent — the right choice depends on your workflow.
Overall winner: Otter.ai
| WinnerOtter.ai | Fireflies.ai | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall Rating | 8.0/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Accuracy | 7.5/10 | 7.5/10 |
| Speed | 9/10 | 8.5/10 |
| Ease of Use | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Value for Money | 7.5/10 | 7/10 |
| Pricing | freemium | freemium |
| Starting Price | $0 | $0 |
| Platforms |
|
|
| Offline Support | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| AI Powered | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Local Processing | ✗ No | ✗ No |
Transcription Accuracy
Otter.ai achieved 90-94% accuracy in our meeting tests, compared to Fireflies.ai's 89-93%. The difference is small but consistent — Otter handles overlapping speech and accented English slightly better. Both tools struggle with heavy background noise and low-quality microphones.
Search & Knowledge Management
This is where Fireflies pulls ahead. Its cross-meeting search indexes every word from every call, letting you search for topics, names, or phrases across your entire meeting history. Otter offers search within individual transcripts but lacks the global archive search that makes Fireflies valuable for sales and support teams.
AI Features
Otter's AI Chat lets you ask questions about individual meetings conversationally — "What did Sarah say about the budget?" Fireflies' AskFred offers similar functionality but extends across multiple meetings. Fireflies also provides sentiment analysis and conversation intelligence metrics that Otter doesn't offer.
Integrations
Fireflies integrates with 40+ tools (Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot, Notion, Asana). Otter offers fewer integrations but has deeper native support for Zoom, Meet, and Teams. For CRM-heavy workflows (sales teams), Fireflies' Salesforce/HubSpot integration is a major advantage.
Pricing
Otter Pro costs $16.99/month with unlimited transcription. Fireflies Pro costs $10/seat/month. For individual use, Fireflies is cheaper. For teams, both use per-seat pricing — a 10-person team costs $170/month (Otter) vs $100/month (Fireflies Pro) or $190/month (Fireflies Business). Otter's free tier (300 min) is more generous than Fireflies' limited free plan.
Who Should Choose Which
Choose Otter.ai if: you're an individual user, you want the simplest setup, or English-only accuracy matters most. Choose Fireflies.ai if: you need cross-meeting search, CRM integration, conversation intelligence, or you're buying for a sales/support team.
Otter.ai — Pros & Cons
Pros
- ✓ Excellent Zoom/Meet/Teams integration
- ✓ Real-time transcription with speaker labels
- ✓ AI meeting summaries and action items
- ✓ Generous free tier (300 min/month)
- ✓ Searchable transcript archive
Cons
- ✗ Accuracy drops with accents and cross-talk
- ✗ No offline mode — requires internet
- ✗ Speaker identification not always accurate
- ✗ Pro plan pricing adds up for teams
Fireflies.ai — Pros & Cons
Pros
- ✓ Searchable meeting archive across all calls
- ✓ 40+ integrations including CRM and project tools
- ✓ AI summaries and action item extraction
- ✓ Natural language search with AskFred
- ✓ Supports Zoom, Meet, Teams, and Webex
Cons
- ✗ Transcription accuracy slightly below Otter.ai
- ✗ Per-seat pricing gets expensive for teams
- ✗ Free plan is very limited
- ✗ Bot joining can feel intrusive to other participants
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