Fireflies AI Alternatives in 2026: 7 Options Compared on Bots, Price, and Privacy

VoicePrivate individual monthly and annual plans include a 30-day money-back guarantee. If it is not right for you, email [email protected] within 30 days of your first payment for a full refund. Team plans are billed at purchase.

Why people look for a Fireflies.ai alternative like VoicePrivate

Fireflies.ai is a cloud meeting assistant. By default the Fireflies Notetaker bot joins Zoom, Google Meet or Teams, records the call, and stores the transcript and summary in your Fireflies workspace. Four complaints send people looking elsewhere, and VoicePrivate only answers some of them:

• The bot in the room. Clients notice a named bot in the participant list. Fireflies.ai now offers bot-free recording through its desktop app and Chrome extension, so this is less of a reason than it was.
• Where the audio lives. Every Fireflies.ai plan stores recordings on Fireflies servers. Its pricing page says the database is hosted in a virtual private cloud, and private storage is an Enterprise feature.
• Plan limits. Free and Pro cap recording at 2 hours per meeting, and Pro includes 8,000 minutes of storage per seat.
• Per-seat cost. Pro is $10 per seat per month billed annually or $18 monthly, Business is $19 or $29, and Enterprise is $39 per seat per month, annual only.

If the second point is the one that matters, the architecture is the question, not the vendor. VoicePrivate's explainer on on-device vs cloud transcription walks through that difference.

Fireflies.ai alternatives compared side by side, VoicePrivate included

This table compares Fireflies.ai and the seven alternatives on the points buyers ask about first. Every cell comes from the vendor's own pricing, apps, or security page on 30 September 2026, not from hands-on testing, and VoicePrivate is one of the products in the table rather than a neutral referee.

Read the table as two groups. Fireflies.ai, Otter.ai, Read AI, Fathom, tl;dv and Jamie send audio to a vendor cloud, whatever they do about the bot. VoicePrivate and Meetily keep transcription on your own hardware.

1. VoicePrivate: the Fireflies.ai alternative that keeps meeting audio on your device

VoicePrivate is not a meeting bot, and it is not trying to be Fireflies.ai. It is dictation and transcription software that runs on your own Mac or Windows PC. You bring it a recording, for example the local recording your meeting app saved, and VoicePrivate transcribes it on the machine. Nothing goes to a VoicePrivate server, and after the one-time model download it works offline.

• Transcribes imported audio and video recordings on the device (file import is on Annual and Team plans)
• Applies speaker labels to two-speaker recordings
• Exports to TXT, JSON, Markdown, SRT and VTT
• Dictates follow-up notes live into Word, Outlook, your practice software, or any other app
• Ships Legal, Healthcare, Finance and Insurance editions with their own vocabularies

What VoicePrivate does not do, stated plainly: it does not join calls, does not record the meeting for you, and does not produce automatic Fireflies.ai style summaries, action items, or CRM updates. Recordings with three or more people talking over each other are harder for every tool, VoicePrivate included. If you want a walkthrough of the file workflow, VoicePrivate's guide to transcribing a meeting recording on a Mac covers it step by step, and the VoicePrivate Windows dictation page covers the PC side.

For attorneys this is the point of the design: client-matter audio that stays on the firm's own computer leaves no transcription vendor holding a copy, and the VoicePrivate Legal Edition adds 12,000+ legal terms on the same local engine.

2. Otter.ai: the closest like-for-like Fireflies.ai alternative

Otter.ai does almost exactly what Fireflies.ai does, which also makes it the least like VoicePrivate. OtterPilot auto-joins Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, and Otter's desktop app can record without a bot in Slack Huddles, Zoom, Google Meet and in person. The free Basic plan includes 300 monthly transcription minutes and 3 lifetime file imports, and Pro is $16.99 per user per month billed monthly. Processing happens in Otter's cloud, so swapping Fireflies.ai for Otter.ai changes the vendor, not where the audio goes. VoicePrivate's Otter.ai comparison goes deeper on retention and the bot question.

3. Read AI: a Fireflies.ai alternative with broader app coverage

Read AI covers the same ground as Fireflies.ai and, unlike VoicePrivate, runs in the cloud. It joins calls as an assistant and also records bot-free through its desktop app. The free plan covers 5 meeting transcripts a month with a one-hour meeting cap. Pro is $15 per user per month billed annually or $19.75 monthly, and HIPAA compliance and custom data retention sit on the Enterprise+ tier, which requires 5 or more licenses. Read AI ships Windows, macOS, Android and iOS apps plus a web extension. Like Fireflies.ai it is a cloud service, which is the difference from VoicePrivate.

4. Fathom: a free Fireflies.ai alternative for individuals

Fathom is the cheapest way to replace Fireflies.ai for your own calls, but unlike VoicePrivate it is a cloud service. Its free plan is the most generous of the cloud options here: unlimited recordings and transcriptions, with a choice of bot capture or bot-free capture. The bot-free mode is a beta feature on Mac, where Fathom captures the audio locally on the device. Fathom does not say that transcription itself runs locally, so treat it as a cloud service. Premium is $16 per user per month billed annually or $20 monthly. If you only need live notes for your own calls and privacy is not the driver, Fathom is hard to beat on price. If privacy is the driver, VoicePrivate is built for that job instead.

5. tl;dv: a Fireflies.ai alternative for product and sales teams

tl;dv replaces Fireflies.ai for teams that want a shared call library, and like Fireflies it is a cloud service rather than an on-device tool like VoicePrivate. It sends a bot to your calls by default and adds a desktop app for Mac and Windows that records system audio with no meeting bot. Its pricing data lists Pro at €18 per seat per month billed annually or €29 monthly, and Business at €29 or €39, with a free plan. Recordings go to your tl;dv library in the cloud. Teams that mainly want a searchable library of recorded calls will find tl;dv familiar; teams leaving Fireflies.ai over where transcripts are stored will not, and VoicePrivate is the local option for them.

6. Jamie: a bot-free Fireflies.ai alternative with EU processing

Jamie is the bot-free Fireflies.ai alternative, but unlike VoicePrivate it processes audio in its cloud. Jamie runs on your device during the meeting and never sends a bot. The catch is where processing happens: Jamie states that storage and processing stay within the EEA, Switzerland and the UK, that audio is deleted after transcription, and that data is never used to train models. That is a cloud service with strong promises, not on-device transcription. Prices are in euros: a free plan with 10 AI notes a month, Plus at €21 per month billed annually or €25 monthly, and Pro at €39 or €47.

7. Meetily: an open-source, local Fireflies.ai alternative

Meetily is the other genuinely local option on this list besides VoicePrivate. It captures system audio on your Mac or Windows PC, and Meetily says transcription runs entirely on the device. Summaries run on a local model or on an AI provider you connect with your own API key, and choosing a cloud provider sends the transcript there. The Community edition is free under the MIT license; Pro is $10 per user per month billed yearly at $120, one device per license. Meetily suits technical users who want a free, local meeting recorder. VoicePrivate suits people who want a finished product with live dictation into any app, file import, and profession-specific editions.

Is Fireflies.ai free?

Fireflies.ai has a free plan, but it is not completely free for regular use, and VoicePrivate has no free tier at all. According to the Fireflies.ai pricing page on 30 September 2026, the free plan includes limited AI summaries, 400 minutes of storage per team, 20 AI credits, and a 2-hour cap per meeting. Fireflies.ai says accounts created on or after 1 September 2026 get 3 meeting transcriptions by default, and unlimited transcriptions only with Auto-join for calendar meetings turned on, which means the bot joins those calls. Paid plans are Pro at $10 per seat per month billed annually ($18 monthly), Business at $19 ($29 monthly), and Enterprise at $39, annual only. VoicePrivate costs $84 per year or $9.99 per month, with the 30-day money-back guarantee on individual plans.

Can Fireflies.ai be trusted with confidential meetings?

Fireflies.ai publishes a real security program, and it is worth reading before you compare it with an on-device tool like VoicePrivate. Its security page lists SOC 2 Type II and GDPR, 256-bit AES encryption at rest and TLS in transit, and a zero-day retention policy with its vendors and partners. On training, the same page says both that Fireflies does not train on customer data by default and that meeting data is never used for AI model training. Its pricing page lists HIPAA compliance, custom data retention and private storage as Enterprise only.

None of that changes the architecture: Fireflies.ai recordings and transcripts live on Fireflies infrastructure, so trusting it means trusting its controls. For lawyers, clinicians and financial advisors, the simpler answer can be to keep the audio off third-party servers entirely. That is the case VoicePrivate is built for, and VoicePrivate's ranking of the best dictation software for lawyers applies the same test to legal tools.

Read AI or Fireflies.ai: which is better?

Read AI and Fireflies.ai are closer than their marketing suggests, and neither works like VoicePrivate. Both send a bot by default, both offer a bot-free desktop app, and both process meetings in their own cloud. Fireflies.ai is cheaper on paper at $10 per seat per month billed annually against Read AI Pro at $15. Read AI's free plan is tighter at 5 transcripts a month, while the Fireflies.ai free plan limits new accounts to 3 transcriptions unless Auto-join is on, and caps storage and AI summaries. Pick on integrations and which free plan fits your meeting volume. If the real worry is that either one holds your client audio, VoicePrivate sidesteps the comparison by keeping it on your computer.

How to choose between Fireflies.ai and its alternatives

Three questions settle most Fireflies.ai decisions, and VoicePrivate is only the answer to one of them.

1. Does a bot bother the people on the call? If yes, use a bot-free mode. Fireflies.ai, Otter.ai, Read AI and tl;dv all offer one now, Fathom offers one in beta on Mac, and Jamie and Meetily never use a bot.
2. May the audio leave your computer? If the answer is no, the list shrinks to VoicePrivate and Meetily. Every other tool in this guide processes meetings in a vendor cloud.
3. Do you need automation or a transcript? Cloud meeting assistants like Fireflies.ai generate summaries and action items and send them to other tools. VoicePrivate gives you an accurate local transcript and live dictation, and you write the follow-up yourself.

If the recordings are becoming podcasts or training videos rather than notes, the editing tools in VoicePrivate's roundup of Descript alternatives fit better than any meeting assistant.

Fireflies.ai alternatives and VoicePrivate: frequently asked questions

More VoicePrivate comparisons for Fireflies.ai users

If your team is weighing Fireflies.ai against cloud meeting tools more broadly, VoicePrivate's page on cloud transcription software sets out what that architecture asks of you. Financial advisors comparing a specific pair can read VoicePrivate vs Otter.ai for financial advisors, and the VoicePrivate data privacy statistics page collects the breach and trust figures behind the on-device argument.