Otter.ai vs Fireflies (2026)
Never miss what was said in a meeting again. Which AI transcription tool captures it better?
⚡ Quick Verdict
Choose Otter.ai for real-time transcription, live collaboration, and Zoom-native integration.
Choose Fireflies for CRM integration, sales workflows, and cross-platform meeting support.
Otter is more polished for individuals. Fireflies is more powerful for sales teams.
Head-to-Head Comparison
| Feature | Otter.ai | Fireflies |
|---|---|---|
| Transcription Accuracy | ★ Excellent | Very good |
| Real-Time Transcription | ★ Excellent (live view) | Post-meeting only |
| AI Summaries | Good | ★ Excellent (action items) |
| CRM Integration | Basic | ★ Deep (Salesforce, HubSpot) |
| Meeting Platforms | Zoom, Meet, Teams | ★ More platforms + dialers |
| Collaboration | ★ Live commenting + highlighting | Async sharing |
| Free Tier | ★ 300 min/mo | Unlimited transcripts (limited features) |
| Pro Price | $16.99/mo | $18/mo |
Transcription Quality
Otter.ai has a slight edge in raw transcription accuracy, especially with multiple speakers and technical jargon. Their speaker identification is excellent — it learns voices and gets better over time.
Fireflies is very good but occasionally struggles with heavy accents or overlapping speech. For most business meetings, both are accurate enough to be useful.
Real-Time vs Post-Meeting
Otter's real-time transcription is genuinely useful. Watch words appear as people speak, add comments inline, highlight key moments — all during the meeting. For accessibility or following along in noisy environments, this is valuable.
Fireflies processes after the meeting ends. You get the transcript fast (usually within minutes), but you can't interact with it live. For most workflows, this is fine — you're reviewing notes after anyway.
Sales Team Features
Fireflies wins here. Deep CRM integration pushes call summaries, action items, and insights directly to Salesforce or HubSpot. The "conversation intelligence" features — talk ratios, sentiment analysis, topic tracking — are built for sales managers.
Otter has CRM integration but it's not as deep. If your workflow is "record call → update CRM → follow up," Fireflies streamlines that better.
Individual vs Team Use
Otter feels more polished for individual productivity. The interface is cleaner, real-time features are more developed, and it just works well for "I need notes from my meetings."
Fireflies is built for teams. Shared workspaces, conversation analytics across reps, deal intelligence — it's designed for organizations, not solo users.
The Bottom Line
- Sales teams: Fireflies (CRM integration + conversation intelligence)
- Individual professionals: Otter.ai (polished UX + real-time)
- Customer success: Fireflies (account history + handoffs)
- Accessibility needs: Otter.ai (live captions)
- Zoom-heavy workflows: Otter.ai (native integration)
- Multi-platform calls: Fireflies (broader support)
Try Both Free
Both have generous free tiers. Record the same meeting with both and compare outputs.