We build CraftNote, a bot-free AI note taker, so we're upfront about the comparison angle. Fireflies.ai is one of the most established bot-based meeting assistants — it joins your call as a participant to record, transcribe, and summarize, with a strong sales/CRM-oriented feature set on top. CraftNote takes a different approach: bot-free capture on every platform, extended to lectures, in-person conversations, and phone calls that Fireflies isn't built around. Figures below are checked against Fireflies' own pricing page as of 2026-08-26.
Overview
CraftNote
CraftNote is a bot-free AI note taker on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and the web. It records meetings, lectures, in-person conversations, and phone calls directly from your device — no visible bot joins the call — and also transcribes uploaded audio, video, PDFs, YouTube links, and podcasts.
Fireflies.ai
Fireflies.ai is a bot-based meeting assistant that joins Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and 10+ other platforms to record, transcribe, and summarize automatically. It leans into sales use cases with Conversation Intelligence, keyword tracking, and voice agents on its higher tiers.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | CraftNote | Fireflies.ai | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capture method | Bot-free on every platform — records from your own device, no visible call participant. | Bot-based by default — Fireflies' notetaker joins the call as a visible participant across Zoom, Meet, Teams, and other platforms. | ✓ |
| Free plan structure | 2 hours of recording + 10 uploads/imports per week, ongoing, no lifetime cap and no storage eviction. | Unlimited transcription, but only 400 minutes of storage shared across the whole team — older recordings can be bumped out once you exceed that cap. | ✓ |
| Entry-level paid pricing | $9.99/month, or $8.33/month billed annually ($99.99/year), recordings up to 4 hours. | Pro plan: $18/month billed monthly, or $10/month billed annually, with 8,000 minutes of storage per seat and unlimited transcription. | ― |
| Beyond scheduled meetings | Built for lectures, in-person conversations, phone calls, and uploaded audio/video/PDF/YouTube/podcasts as first-class use cases. | Built around scheduled video calls a bot can join; non-meeting capture isn't the core product design. | ✓ |
| Language support | 100+ languages for transcription and translation. | 100+ languages for transcription, with Multi-language Mode gated to the Business tier and above. | ― |
| Sales/CRM conversation intelligence | Not a focus — CraftNote's chat feature works per-note, not across a sales pipeline. | Conversation Intelligence, keyword tracking, and CRM-oriented analytics, purpose-built for sales teams. | ✓ |
| AI assistants beyond notes | Chat with your notes, answering questions about a single note's content. | Personal Assistant, Email Assistant, and Voice Agents on Pro and above — a broader set of AI agent features. | ✓ |
| Enterprise compliance | No specific compliance certifications currently claimed. | Enterprise tier includes SSO/SCIM and HIPAA compliance, plus private storage and custom data retention. | ✓ |
| Speaker identification | Speaker diarization with renameable labels, persistent across recordings. | Mature automatic speaker identification, refined across a large volume of production meetings. | ― |
Who Should Pick Which?
Choose CraftNote if…
Anyone who wants a single bot-free tool across meetings, lectures, in-person conversations, and phone calls, without a visible participant joining every call and without a storage cap that can bump out older recordings.
Choose Fireflies.ai if…
Sales teams, recruiters, and organizations already standardized on bot-based recording who want Fireflies' Conversation Intelligence, CRM integrations, and enterprise compliance options like HIPAA and SSO/SCIM.