Fireflies.ai vs Read AI

Fireflies.ai is an AI meeting assistant founded in 2016 and based in San Francisco. Its bot, called Fred, joins calls on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex and other platforms to record, transcribe and analyze conversations, and it can also process uploaded audio and video files. Transcription supports more than 100 languages, including Turkish.

After each meeting Fireflies produces a summary, action items, outline and topic trackers, and AskFred lets users ask questions about one meeting or across their whole meeting history. Conversation intelligence shows talk time, sentiment and question counts, which sales and customer success teams use for coaching. Notes and tasks can be pushed automatically into Salesforce, HubSpot, Asana, Notion, Slack and many other tools. The free plan offers limited transcription, AI summaries and storage, while paid seats on Pro, Business and Enterprise add unlimited summaries, more storage, video recording, analytics, SSO and compliance options.

Fireflies fits teams that want a searchable archive of meetings at a low per-seat cost. Accuracy depends on audio quality and accents, and some participants dislike a bot joining the call. Otter.ai is a close competitor focused on live transcription, Gong is a far more expensive revenue intelligence platform, and Granola or Krisp take notes without a bot by capturing audio on the user's device.

Recent additions include a mobile app, AI apps that generate specific outputs such as sales notes or interview scorecards, and real-time AI assistance during meetings.

Read AI is an AI meeting assistant made by Read AI, Inc., a Seattle startup founded in 2021 by David Shim, the former CEO of Foursquare, with Rob Williams and Elliott Waldron. It now joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet to produce transcripts, summaries, action items and highlights. The company has raised $81 million, including a $50 million Series B led by Smash Capital in October 2024.

What sets Read AI apart is scope: besides meetings it summarizes email and chat from Gmail, Outlook and Slack, and Ask Read answers questions across all of them with citations. Speaker Coach measures talk time, pace and engagement, mobile apps capture in-person meetings. Free allows 5 meetings a month with a one-hour limit. Pro unlocks unlimited transcripts and reports, Enterprise adds playback, video highlights and premium support for teams of five or more, and Enterprise+ adds HIPAA, SAML, SCIM and custom retention.

Read AI fits professionals in back-to-back calls across several platforms who want one searchable record of meetings, email and chat. Engagement scores feel intrusive to some guests, a bot joining calls needs clear consent practices, and playback is not part of Pro. Otter is strong for live transcription and in-person notes, Fireflies goes deeper on CRM sync and conversation analytics, and Granola records without a bot, which many prefer for external calls.

A practical tip: Pro costs $19.75 monthly or $15 a month billed annually, but video playback starts at Enterprise, which needs at least five licenses. Read AI also works as a connector in Claude and ChatGPT.