Fireflies vs Otter vs Granola: AI Meeting Notes Compared
Bot-joins-the-call vs on-device capture — accuracy, privacy, CRM sync, and which tool fits which operator. Current pricing included.
Three tools dominate the “AI will take my meeting notes” conversation: Fireflies, Otter, and Granola. They’re often treated as interchangeable, but the architectural difference between them — a bot that joins your call versus software that captures audio on your device — changes almost everything downstream: accuracy, privacy posture, CRM wiring, and who ends up frustrated. Here’s how they stack up as of mid-2026.
How They Actually Work
Fireflies and Otter both operate as meeting bots. Fireflies.ai is an AI note-taker that automatically records, transcribes, and summarizes your meetings — it joins video calls, takes notes in real time, and stores everything in a searchable format. Otter works the same way. It joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet to automatically write and share notes. Every participant on the call sees the bot listed as an attendee.
Granola takes the opposite approach. Granola captures audio directly from your computer’s system audio output, so no bot joins the meeting — other participants have no way of knowing you are recording. This is Granola’s key differentiator from Fathom, Fireflies, tl;dv, and Otter.ai, which all join meetings as a visible participant.
That single architectural decision has real downstream effects, which we’ll get into.
Pricing
All three have free tiers with real limits.
Fireflies has four plans: Free ($0), Pro ($10/seat/month billed annually), Business ($19/seat/month billed annually), and Enterprise ($39/seat/month, annual only).
The annual plans save up to 44% compared to monthly billing: Pro drops from $18 to $10 per user/month, while Business drops from $29 to $19. The catch: its AI features run on credits that run out, so heavy users spend more than the base price.
Otter caps free users at 300 minutes per month and Fireflies limits total free storage to 800 minutes.
Otter’s four plans are: Basic at $0/month with 300 minutes, Pro at $8.33/month annual ($16.99 monthly) with 1,200 minutes, Business at $19.99/user/month annual ($30 monthly) with unlimited meeting transcription and up to 6,000 imported-file minutes per user, and Enterprise at custom pricing. Beware the hard caps: when you hit your monthly limit on Basic or Pro, the service stops working entirely — you can’t transcribe another minute until your plan resets or you upgrade.
Granola restructured its tiers in 2026. The current lineup is: Free Basic with AI meeting notes and limited history, Business ($14/user/month) with unlimited meeting history and integrations with Notion, HubSpot, Slack, and Zapier, and Enterprise ($35/user/month) with SSO, team-wide model training opt-out, and API access.
No bot joins calls on any plan. One privacy wrinkle worth flagging: organization-wide opt-out of AI model training is gated to the Enterprise tier at $35 per user per month — on Basic and Business, every meeting contributes to training unless each person on your team flips the switch themselves.
Accuracy
Most tools achieve 85–95% accuracy under good audio conditions with clear English speech and minimal crosstalk. Performance degrades with background noise, overlapping speakers, and non-English content. Within that band, independent testing in 2026 puts Otter ahead on transcription accuracy and speaker recognition — approximately 93–95% under clean conditions versus Fireflies at 90–93%. Fireflies has strong CRM integrations, including native connections to Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive, but its AI summary credits are capped on lower tiers, which creates friction for high-volume teams.
The gap narrows when Fireflies has prior meeting history with repeat participants, improving its speaker recognition over time.
Granola takes a different design stance: it positions itself as an AI notepad rather than a bulk transcription service — you jot rough notes during the meeting (key decisions, questions that need follow-up, action items), then Granola enhances your notes with relevant context from the transcript. You control the structure; AI fills in supporting details. The quality ceiling is higher when the user participates, but it’s a more effortful workflow.
A hard constraint: Otter supports transcription in English, French, and Spanish, so teams working in other languages may need a second tool and pay full price for partial coverage. Fireflies supports a broader language set, making it the safer pick for multilingual teams.
CRM Sync
This is where the bot-vs-on-device split really bites.
Fireflies has the deepest native CRM catalog. It connects to thousands of apps via Zapier, plus native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Notion, Asana, and Slack.
Fireflies syncs meeting notes, summaries, and action items directly into HubSpot under contacts, companies, and deals, and can automatically create new contacts or leads when a meeting participant isn’t found in your CRM.
Otter covers the core integrations well. Both Otter and Fireflies integrate with Salesforce and HubSpot. On Enterprise, Otter maps AI-extracted BANT and MEDDIC signals directly to custom Salesforce Opportunity fields and creates Salesforce tasks from meeting action items. For sales teams with structured methodologies, that Enterprise-tier Salesforce depth is genuinely useful — but it’s an enterprise contract.
Granola has HubSpot natively (Business and Enterprise only) and Attio and Affinity as well, but no native Salesforce connector. Granola does not offer a native Salesforce connector as of early 2026 — the supported path runs through Zapier, which routes enhanced notes into Salesforce objects like Opportunities, Contacts, and Tasks.
The field mappings live in Zapier instead of Granola, and the workflow remains review-first: the rep must click “Enhance notes” and review the AI output before the Zap fires. For Salesforce shops, that’s a real gap compared to Fireflies.
For a head-to-head on the notetaker comparison, see our Fireflies vs Granola comparison and our full reviews of Fireflies, Otter, and Granola.
Privacy and Compliance
Granola’s architecture gives it the strongest default privacy story — no audio leaves your device after transcription. The Enterprise plan includes SOC 2 Type 2 certification completed in July 2025, achieved in just three months instead of the typical 12–18 months because their architecture deletes audio immediately after transcription.
Granola is SOC 2 Type 2 certified and GDPR compliant, but does not currently offer HIPAA compliance or BAA agreements — making Fireflies (Enterprise) or Otter (Enterprise) the relevant options for healthcare organizations.
There’s also the consent optics issue. A visible bot in a meeting signals “this is being recorded.” For some teams (sales, recruiting, negotiation contexts) that transparency is desirable or legally required. For others, the bot creates friction that kills candor. With Granola, no visible participant joins your Zoom, Meet, or Teams call — no recording announcement plays. For any meeting where discretion matters, this distinction is as important as the price.
Who Each Tool Fits
Fireflies is the right pick for teams running a high volume of external calls and wanting a full, hands-off CRM pipeline: bot joins, transcript syncs, tasks auto-create. The credit system is annoying, but the integration breadth is hard to beat at the price point.
Otter earns the nod for teams already deep in a structured sales motion — BANT, MEDDIC, custom Salesforce fields — who are willing to pay for Enterprise-tier depth. Its accuracy edge in clean audio conditions is real, and the minute caps on Pro are a liability if your team is meeting-heavy.
Granola is the strongest fit for solo operators, founders, and individual contributors who want frictionless on-device capture without a bot announcement, are primarily on Mac/Windows, and are comfortable with a more active note-taking workflow. Granola currently supports macOS, Windows, and iOS — there is no Android app yet, which rules it out for Android users and Chromebook-based teams. If Salesforce is your system of record, budget for the Zapier plumbing.
If you’re building out a broader meeting intelligence stack, also look at how these tools compare with dedicated conversation tools like those listed in our Fireflies vs Granola and Fireflies vs Otter breakdowns.
Bottom Line
The bot-vs-on-device question is the real decision here, not feature checklists. Fireflies wins on CRM automation breadth and multilingual support; Otter wins on structured sales-intelligence depth at Enterprise; Granola wins on privacy architecture, price per seat, and no-bot discretion — at the cost of a Salesforce integration gap and a workflow that requires you to actually take notes. Pick based on your recording consent context and your CRM, not on whose pricing page looks cleanest.