Otter vs Fireflies (2026): Pick by Your Free-Plan Math
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Otter and Fireflies are the two names people shortlist first for AI meeting notes, and most comparisons of them read like two marketing pages stapled together. The actual decision comes down to two questions: how do you hit the free plan’s wall, and what languages are your meetings in?
The numbers side by side
| Tool | Best for | Starting price |
|---|---|---|
| Otter.ai Free: 300 min/mo, 30 min/conversation | English-only, lighter usage | $8.33/user/mo annual |
| Fireflies.ai Free: unlimited transcription, ~400 min storage | Heavy usage, multilingual teams | $10/seat/mo annual |
The free plans fail in opposite ways
Otter’s free plan meters the input: 300 minutes a month, no conversation longer than 30 minutes, and famously only 3 file imports — total, for the life of the account. You hit the wall mid-meeting, in month one.
Fireflies’ free plan meters the memory: transcribe as much as you want, but only ~400 minutes of it stays stored, and AI summary credits are limited. You hit the wall two weeks later, when you go looking for an old meeting that’s gone.
Which failure mode you can live with is genuinely personal. If you have two short meetings a week, Otter’s caps may never bite. If you transcribe daily but only care about this week’s action items, Fireflies free is effectively complete.
Languages: not close
Otter currently lists six transcription languages. Fireflies claims 100+. If any meaningful share of your meetings happens outside English, this section is the whole comparison — Otter isn’t an option, and your real decision becomes Fireflies vs Notta. Our meeting note-taker roundup covers that wider field, including Notta, tl;dv, and Fathom.
Paid tiers
At the paid level the gap narrows. Otter Pro ($8.33/user/month annual) raises you to 1,200 minutes a month with a 90-minute meeting cap. Fireflies Pro ($10/seat/month annual) gives ~8,000 storage minutes per seat, video recording, and unlimited integrations. Fireflies costs about 20% more and does meaningfully more; Otter is adequate for meeting notes in English and nothing beyond.
Our pick
For most teams, Fireflies — the free trial-by-actual-use, the language coverage, and the integration depth make it the safer default. Choose Otter if your usage is light, strictly English, and you value its simpler, familiar interface.
Start with Fireflies free
Unlimited free transcription means you can run the real comparison yourself on a week of your own meetings.
Prices and limits checked July 2026 — both vendors revise plans frequently, so confirm on their pricing pages before subscribing.