Fireflies.ai Review (October 2026): Pricing, AI Credits and Consent Risks

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By Lennit Herrera, founder and editor, AI Tool Stack Reviews  ·  Last updated October 11, 2026

The verdict: Fireflies.ai is a sensible meeting recorder for a small team that wants searchable transcripts and summaries without paying much per seat. Pro costs $10 a seat a month on annual billing ($18 monthly), Business $19 ($29 monthly), and the Free plan is a real way to try it. The part that needs care is not the headline price. Fireflies meters its newer AI features in pooled “AI credits” that come as a one-time grant, run out, and then push you toward a paid credits plan. And because its notetaker joins meetings as a participant, it raises consent questions for the other people on the call. Both points are covered below.

Plans, prices, credit rules, security statements and the privacy policy were read on Fireflies’ own pages on October 11, 2026. Competitor prices were read on Otter’s and Fathom’s own pricing pages the same day. Lawsuit details come from the court complaint, linked below. We do not test meeting tools ourselves, so this page makes no accuracy or speed claims.

On this page

• Fireflies at a glance
• Pricing: four plans, per seat
• The AI credits catch
• What it does
• Security, privacy and what the policy says
• The consent problem, and one lawsuit
• What we like and what to watch out for
• Fireflies vs Otter and Fathom
• Who should buy it, and who should skip it
• How we researched this review
• Frequently asked questions

Fireflies at a glance

What it is: an AI meeting assistant that joins Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls (and others), records them, and produces a transcript, summary and action items  ·  Starting price: Free, then $10/seat/month (Pro, annual)  ·  Languages: transcription in 100+ languages, per its pricing page  ·  Also: a Chrome extension that records without the bot, a desktop app, mobile apps, file upload and an API  ·  Compliance: SOC 2 Type II and GDPR; HIPAA on the Enterprise plan  ·  Company: Fireflies.AI Corp.

See Fireflies’ current plans on its own site →

Pricing: four plans, per seat

Fireflies sells per-seat plans. The figures below are from its pricing page and billing guide on October 11, 2026, and both agree with each other. Fireflies does not meter transcription minutes on paid plans; its pricing page lists transcription as unlimited on Pro and above and meters storage and AI credits instead.

Note on the Free plan: the pricing page says 400 minutes of storage “per team.” Fireflies’ own help-center articles on the Free plan have given 400 and 800 minutes and have described the limit as per seat. We could not reconcile them, so treat the Free storage figure as approximate and check the pricing page before relying on it. Once you reach the limit, older meetings have to be deleted to make room, according to the help-center material.

What counts as a seat. Per Fireflies’ billing guide, a seat is created the moment a teammate is added to your workspace, and every admin or member counts as one billable seat. Removing someone lowers the count going forward and does not refund the current cycle. You can share an individual meeting’s recap link with people outside the workspace without adding them as seats. Fireflies says buyers of more than 50 seats should contact it about volume discounts.

Cancelling. Cancelling a paid plan drops you to Free at the end of the billing cycle, and you keep paid features and your data until then, per the billing guide. A separate AI-credits subscription is cancelled separately (see below).

The AI credits catch

This is the part most people miss when they compare per-seat prices. Fireflies’ billing guide says AI credits power its “advanced AI features”: AI Skills, Personal Assistant, Voice Agents, Sales Assist, the Slack Assistant, Autofill CRM, AskFred on Live Assist and Magic Soundbites. It also says summaries, transcription and recap emails are never charged in credits, so the core job (record, transcribe, summarise) does not draw on them.

The rules that matter, all from that guide:

• The grant is one-time. “Every Fireflies account includes one-time credits on sign-up, based on your plan.” The pricing page shows 20 on Free and Pro, 30 on Business and 50 on Enterprise.
• Credits are pooled. They are shared across the whole workspace and do not increase as you add teammates. Ten Business seats share 30 credits, not 300.
• Upgrading does not stack them. The guide’s example: moving from Free to Business gives you 30 credits, not 50.
• Usage is dynamic. You are charged per query, and the number of credits depends on the sources referenced, the meetings analysed and how complex the request is.
• When they run out, you see a paywall and a prompt to buy a paid AI-credits plan. No charge happens unless you accept, or unless you have Auto-Upgrade on.
• Trial conversion. If you start an AI-credits free trial, it converts to a paid subscription of $5 a month after 7 days (or whichever plan you chose at the start), and Auto-Upgrade is on by default. Fireflies says it sends a reminder before conversion.
• No refunds. The guide states that AI credits are non-refundable, and that credits bought through a credits subscription do not carry over at the end of the cycle.

In practice: if all you want is meeting recordings, transcripts and summaries, the credits probably never come into it. If you want the assistant features, budget for a credits plan on top of the seat price, and turn Auto-Upgrade off in Settings → Billing until you understand your usage. Fireflies’ own pages contradict each other in places (the Free-plan help article has described credits as monthly, the billing guide calls them one-time), so we have followed the billing guide and the pricing page, which are the most recent and the most specific.

What it does

All of the following comes from Fireflies’ pricing and plan pages, not from our own use of the product.

Recording and transcription. The bot joins your calendar meetings automatically or when invited, and the plans list real-time notes and live transcription, transcription in 100+ languages, auto-language detection, uploading audio and video files, and a Chrome extension that records without the Fireflies bot. Business adds a multi-language mode.

Summaries and notes. Free includes limited AI summaries; Pro and above list unlimited summaries, action items and a task manager, video recording, and the ability to download transcripts, summaries and recordings.

Search and AskFred. Every plan lists meeting search and AskFred, its AI assistant, though the plan comparison marks AskFred as limited on Free.

Team features. Business adds conversation intelligence, team analytics for admins, user groups and public meeting access. Enterprise adds a rules engine, SSO and SCIM, audit logs, private storage, custom data retention and a transcript-and-summary-only mode.

Integrations. Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams are named on the pricing page, with more behind “unlimited integrations” on Pro and above. API access is listed on every plan with rate limits that rise by tier.

Security, privacy and what the policy says

Fireflies’ security page states that it is certified for GDPR, SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA compliance, that meeting notes and transcripts are protected by 256-bit AES encryption at rest and TLS in transit, and that “we don’t train on [your data] by default.” Its pricing-page FAQ says the same about encryption and names SOC 2 and GDPR; HIPAA compliance appears on the Enterprise plan in the plan comparison, so assume a business associate agreement is an Enterprise matter and ask Fireflies before using it for regulated data. For organising and searching notes after the meeting, see Mem AI vs Notion AI.

Its privacy policy says it does not use personal information for AI model training and contractually prohibits its vendors from doing so. It describes a zero-day-retention arrangement for meeting content: audio, video, transcripts and summaries are not stored by a third-party vendor after processing, not accessed by one, and not used to train internal or external models. It says it deletes account personal information within 30 days of an account closing, and lets you control who can view each recap (link, workspace teammates, participants, or only you).

The same policy also says Fireflies collects device information and the account, calendar and email data that comes with signing in through Google or Microsoft, and that some categories of personal information are disclosed for targeted advertising under US state privacy laws. These are Fireflies’ own statements. We have not audited them and have not read its SOC 2 report.

The consent problem, and one lawsuit

A meeting bot records everyone on the call, not just the person who installed it. That is a practical and legal issue regardless of vendor. Different US states set different consent rules for recording conversations, and any participant can object. Fireflies’ pricing FAQ says you can have its notetaker auto-join calendar meetings, which makes the question easy to forget.

One specific legal risk has been alleged in court. On December 18, 2025, a plaintiff filed a putative class action against Fireflies.AI Corp. in the US District Court for the Central District of Illinois, case number 3:25-cv-03399 (read the complaint). It alleges that Fireflies’ speaker-identification feature creates voiceprints of every meeting participant, including people who never made a Fireflies account, without the written notice and consent that the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) requires. The complaint quotes Fireflies’ own marketing line that it “identifies different speakers in meetings and audio files.”

These are allegations in a complaint, not findings. We have not found a ruling or settlement and do not know how the case ended, and Fireflies has not conceded any of it in the documents we read. We mention it because it is a concrete example of what the bot-in-the-room model can mean for the people on the other end of your call, and because law firms have reported similar suits against other AI notetakers. If you work with clients, patients or employees in Illinois, or you are a lawyer, our guide to AI tools for lawyers covers the confidentiality side. The safe habit for anyone is the same: tell people on the call you are recording, and get a yes.

What we like and what to watch out for

Fireflies vs Otter and Fathom

The two tools people most often compare it with are Otter and Fathom. Prices below were read on each company’s own pricing page on October 11, 2026; Otter’s row was re-read on November 5, 2026. For the wider field see our best AI meeting note takers guide and the transcription tools roundup.

The honest read: on price alone Otter’s Pro tier is a little cheaper than Fireflies’ and Fathom’s Free plan is the most generous on recordings, per each vendor’s page. Fireflies’ case rests on its team features and integrations at a mid-range seat price, not on being cheapest. Otter’s two monthly Business figures are a promotion: $30 a month, with 20% off ($24) for the first three months for first-time subscribers, per its page on November 5. Fathom’s page marks bot-free capture as in beta. For the full head-to-head on November 2026 prices, limits, languages and privacy, see Otter vs Fireflies.

Who should buy it, and who should skip it

Buy it if you run a small team that lives in video calls, you want searchable transcripts and summaries, and you are happy to leave the credit-metered assistant features alone or pay for them knowingly. Start on Free to see whether the summaries suit you, then move to Pro. Annual billing is the cheaper way to pay, but read the billing terms before committing a year for a whole team.

Skip it if your meetings involve confidential, regulated or Illinois-based participants and you have no clear consent routine, if you need the assistant features at scale (the pooled credits will not stretch), or if you want one vendor that publishes a single consistent set of plan terms. Also skip it if you only need to record your own voice notes; a plain recorder is enough.

How we researched this review

We read Fireflies’ pricing page, billing guide, security page and privacy policy, and the Free-plan help material that conflicts with them, on October 11, 2026. We read Otter’s and Fathom’s pricing pages the same day, and the court complaint in the Illinois case. We compared three tools in the table and did not try a long list. We do not use or test these products ourselves. Every performance or accuracy claim would need a named independent test, and we did not find a current one we trusted, so the page makes none. Competitor review sites we saw while searching disagree with each other on Free storage and credit terms, which is why we cite only the vendor’s pages.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Fireflies.ai cost?

On October 11, 2026: Free at $0; Pro at $10 per seat a month billed annually or $18 monthly; Business at $19 annually or $29 monthly; Enterprise at $39 per seat, annual billing only. Prices are per seat.

Is there a free plan?

Yes. Free lists unlimited transcription, limited AI summaries, about 400 minutes of storage per team (its help pages have said 400 or 800) and 20 AI credits.

What are AI credits?

A pooled, metered allowance that powers features such as AI Skills, Personal Assistant, Voice Agents and Autofill CRM. Per Fireflies’ billing guide, summaries and transcription never use them, the plan grant is one-time, and credits are non-refundable.

Can Fireflies record without a bot in the meeting?

Its plan comparison lists a Chrome extension that records without the Fireflies bot. We have not tried it.

Does Fireflies train AI on my meetings?

Its security page and privacy policy say it does not train on your data by default, and its policy states meeting content is not used to train internal or external models. These are company statements.

Is Fireflies legal to use on calls?

That depends on where participants are and what they have agreed to. Recording-consent rules vary by US state and country. A BIPA class action over voiceprints was filed against Fireflies in December 2025; it is an allegation, and we do not know its outcome. This is not legal advice.

Is Fireflies better than Otter?

Neither wins on every point. Otter Pro is cheaper per seat on annual billing, per its page; Fireflies lists more team and integration features. Read both plan pages for your use case.

Bottom line

Fireflies.ai earns a trial for a small team that wants affordable meeting transcripts and summaries, and Free costs nothing. Treat the AI credits as an optional extra with a real price, and treat recording consent as your job, not the bot’s. Read the billing guide before you turn on Auto-Upgrade.

This page is for information, not legal or compliance advice. Plans and prices change; confirm on Fireflies’ own pages before you buy.

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