About 22; min
AI meeting assistants join your Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet calls, transcribe everything, and generate summaries with action items. Otter.ai, Fireflies, and tl;dv are the three most popular options — but they differ on pricing, transcription quality, and what they do with your meeting data after the call ends.
Quick Pricing Comparison
| Plan | Otter.ai | Fireflies.ai | tl;dv |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 300 min/mo, 30 min/conversation | 800 min storage, limited AI summaries | Unlimited recordings, 10 AI credits/mo |
| Pro/Individual | $16.67/user/mo | $18/user/mo | $18/user/mo |
| Business | $30/user/mo | $29/user/mo | $59/user/mo |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Otter.ai: The Pioneer
Otter was the first mainstream AI transcription tool and still has the most natural meeting experience. OtterPilot joins your call as a participant, transcribes in real-time, and generates a summary with action items within minutes of the call ending.
Otter’s Strengths
- Real-time transcription: See the transcript as people talk — useful for attendees who join late or need to catch up mid-meeting
- Speaker identification: Otter learns voices and labels speakers accurately after 2–3 meetings. Most accurate speaker diarization of the three
- OtterPilot for Sales: Business plan extracts sales-relevant insights — customer pain points, competitor mentions, next steps, and deal blockers — formatted for CRM entry
- Collaborative notes: Team members can highlight, comment on, and add notes to transcripts. The transcript becomes a shared meeting record
Otter’s Limitations
- Minute limits: Even Pro caps at 1,200 min/month (20 hours). A team that meets 4 hours/day burns through this in a week
- English-only focus: Otter’s transcription quality drops for non-English languages. Fireflies and tl;dv handle more languages
- Per-conversation limits: Free: 30 min. Pro: 90 min. Long workshops or all-hands meetings get cut off
Fireflies.ai: Best for Search and Integration
Fireflies differentiates with search depth and integrations. After transcribing your meeting, Fireflies lets you search across all your meetings with AI — “What did the customer say about pricing in last week’s call?” finds the exact moment with a clickable timestamp.
Fireflies’ Strengths
- Cross-meeting search: Search across your entire meeting history with natural language queries. Find decisions, action items, and topics across months of conversations
- AskFred (AI chatbot): Chat with your meeting data. “Summarize all product feedback from customer calls this month” produces a compiled report from multiple meetings
- Integration depth: Native integrations with Slack, Notion, Asana, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, and 30+ tools. Meeting summaries auto-post to the right channel or CRM record
- Unlimited transcription on Pro: No minute limits on paid plans. Otter caps at 1,200–6,000 min/month. Fireflies processes as many meetings as you have
- Multi-language: Supports 60+ languages. Better for international teams than Otter’s English focus
Fireflies’ Limitations
- Storage limits (free/Pro): 800 min on free, 8,000 min on Pro. Old recordings get deleted when you hit the limit unless you export them
- Transcription accuracy: Slightly less accurate than Otter for English conversations with heavy accents or technical jargon
- Speaker identification: Less reliable than Otter — sometimes attributes sentences to the wrong speaker
tl;dv: Best for Clips and Sharing
tl;dv’s free tier is the most generous: unlimited recordings and transcripts forever. The 10 AI credits/month limit means you get 10 AI-generated summaries per month for free — the actual recordings and transcripts are unlimited.
tl;dv’s Strengths
- Best free tier: Unlimited recordings + transcripts at $0. Otter caps at 300 min. Fireflies caps at 800 min storage. tl;dv stores everything for free
- Clips and highlights: Mark moments during or after a meeting and share short clips with a link. “Here’s the 45 seconds where the customer described their pain point” — shareable without watching the full 60-min recording
- Multi-meeting reports: Pro plan compiles insights across multiple meetings. “What are the top 5 objections from this week’s sales calls?” pulls from all your recorded calls
- Timestamp markers: Team members can click a button during the live meeting to bookmark important moments. After the call, jump directly to bookmarked segments
tl;dv’s Limitations
- No Microsoft Teams on free: Free plan supports Zoom and Google Meet only. Teams requires a paid plan
- Business plan expensive: $59/user/month is 2x Fireflies Business. The premium buys sales-specific features (playbooks, objection tracking) most non-sales teams don’t need
- AI credits on free: 10 summaries/month is tight for active meeting schedules. You get transcripts but need to manually review them without AI summaries
Cost Comparison
Individual user (10 meetings/week)
| Tool | Plan Needed | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| tl;dv | Pro (unlimited AI) | $18 |
| Otter | Pro (1,200 min) | $16.67 |
| Fireflies | Pro (unlimited) | $18 |
Sales team (5 reps, 20 calls/week each)
| Tool | Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otter Business | $30/user | $150 | $1,800 |
| Fireflies Business | $29/user | $145 | $1,740 |
| tl;dv Pro | $18/user | $90 | $1,080 |
| tl;dv Business | $59/user | $295 | $3,540 |
tl;dv Pro at $18/user covers most sales teams’ needs (recordings, transcripts, summaries, CRM sync). The Business plan ($59) adds sales-specific coaching features that only dedicated sales organizations need.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Otter.ai | Fireflies | tl;dv |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free recordings | 300 min/mo | 800 min storage | Unlimited |
| Real-time transcript | Yes (best) | Yes | Yes |
| Speaker identification | Best | Good | Good |
| AI summaries | All paid plans | All paid plans | 10 free/mo, unlimited paid |
| Cross-meeting search | Good | Best (AskFred) | Good |
| Clips/highlights | Basic | Basic | Best |
| Multi-language | English focus | 60+ languages | 20+ languages |
| CRM integration | Salesforce (Business) | HubSpot, Salesforce (Pro) | HubSpot, Salesforce (Pro) |
| Zoom support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Google Meet | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Microsoft Teams | Yes | Yes | Paid plans only |
| API access | Business | Pro | Business |
Who Should Pick What
Pick Otter.ai If:
- English-language meetings are your primary use case
- Real-time transcription during meetings matters (best live transcript)
- Speaker identification accuracy is critical for your records
- Collaborative note-taking on transcripts is part of your workflow
Pick Fireflies If:
- Searching across months of meeting history is a frequent need
- Integration depth (Slack, Notion, CRM) matters for your workflow
- Unlimited transcription without minute caps is important
- Your team is international (60+ language support)
Pick tl;dv If:
- Budget is tight — unlimited free recordings can’t be beat
- Sharing meeting clips and highlights is a core use case
- You’re a sales team that wants call recording + CRM sync at the lowest per-user cost ($18 Pro)
- Multi-meeting reports would save your managers hours of call review
Best free tier: tl;dv — unlimited recordings and transcripts at $0. No other tool comes close for free meeting documentation.
Best transcription quality: Otter.ai — the most accurate English transcription with the best speaker identification and real-time display.
Best for teams: Fireflies Pro at $18/user — unlimited transcription, cross-meeting AI search, and the deepest integration library. The most capable overall platform.
Best for sales: tl;dv Pro at $18/user — clips, multi-meeting reports, and CRM sync at the lowest price. tl;dv Business ($59) only if you need sales coaching features.
FAQ
Do meeting participants know they’re being recorded?
All three tools announce their presence when joining a call. A notification appears saying “Otter/Fireflies/tl;dv is recording this meeting.” In most jurisdictions, all-party consent is required for recording. The tools handle notification but you’re responsible for ensuring compliance with local laws.
Can I use these without a bot joining the call?
Otter and Fireflies can work via browser extension (no visible bot) on some platforms. tl;dv requires the bot to join. If meeting participants are uncomfortable with a visible AI attendee, check each tool’s non-bot recording options.
How accurate are the transcripts?
All three achieve 90–95% accuracy for clear English audio. Accuracy drops with: heavy accents, cross-talk (multiple people speaking), background noise, and technical jargon. Otter leads slightly in English accuracy. Fireflies leads in multi-language accuracy.
Are my meetings private?
All three store recordings on their cloud servers. Otter and Fireflies use AWS. tl;dv uses European hosting. For sensitive meetings (legal, HR, board), check each tool’s data processing agreement and ensure compliance with your company’s security policies. Some Enterprise plans offer data residency options.
