Tool Field Test

Last updated: November 8, 2026

Pricing checked: November 8, 2026

Hands-on test: Fireflies Free, completed November 5, 2026

The short answer

As of November 8, 2026, Fireflies lists four plans. Free is $0. Pro is $18 per seat/month on monthly billing or $10 per seat/month billed annually. Business is $29 per seat/month or $19 per seat/month billed annually. Enterprise is annual-only at $39 per seat/month billed annually.

That means the base annual commitments are $120 per Pro seat, $228 per Business seat, and $468 per Enterprise seat, before tax, foreign-exchange costs, and add-ons. Paying month to month for a full year would total $216 per Pro seat or $348 per Business seat at the prices checked November 8, 2026.

The listed price is not necessarily the workflow cost. Fireflies separately meters storage, uploaded-file activity, and advanced AI features. Its current help documentation says AI credits are used by features such as AI Skills, custom summary sections, Magic or keyword Soundbites, Voice Agents, and some assistant functions; transcription itself is not charged in AI credits. Paid AI-credit packages start at $5/month for 50 credits as of November 8, 2026.

Our hands-on result was simpler but revealing. On November 5, 2026, three uploads on Fireflies Free cost us $0, then the account displayed “0 free meetings left.” Free was sufficient for one controlled three-repeat test, but not for another same-account upload retest.

Bottom line: Fireflies Free can support a real evaluation, but it is not a durable free workflow for repeated file uploads. For one user who needs recurring uploads and downloadable transcripts, the current documentation makes $18 for one month of Pro the base subscription floor. We did not buy or test Pro. Add seat costs, AI-credit add-ons, and staff review time to estimate what the workflow will actually cost.

Fireflies.ai pricing at a glance

Prices and selected limits below were checked on Fireflies' first-party pricing and help pages on November 8, 2026. Amounts are USD. Annual totals are arithmetic based on the displayed per-seat monthly equivalents.

Plan	Listed price	Annual base cost	Selected current limits and features	Best fit
Free	$0	$0	3 starting transcription credits from website signup; unlimited eligible auto-join transcription; 400 stored minutes/seat; uploads up to 100 MB and 150 minutes per file; transcript downloads require paid plan	Evaluation and light meeting capture
Pro	$18/seat/month, or $10/seat/month billed annually	$216/seat on monthly billing; $120/seat on annual billing	Unlimited transcription and AI summaries; 8,000 stored minutes/seat; up to 2 hours/meeting; downloads	Individuals and small teams with recurring workflows
Business	$29/seat/month, or $19/seat/month billed annually	$348/seat on monthly billing; $228/seat on annual billing	Unlimited transcription, summaries, and team-wide storage; up to 3 hours/meeting; conversation intelligence and additional administration	Growing teams needing analytics and controls
Enterprise	$39/seat/month, billed annually only	$468/seat/year	Business features plus SSO, SCIM, private storage, custom retention, compliance options, and enterprise administration	Organizations with governance and procurement requirements

These are base-plan figures as of November 8, 2026. Confirm seat count, billing interval, tax, currency, renewal terms, AI-credit settings, and any implementation or compliance requirements at checkout or in a written quote.

What “free” meant in our test

We uploaded the same 11-minute synthetic noisy meeting to Fireflies Free three times. The evidence cutoff for these observations is November 5, 2026.

• Direct subscription cost: $0. We did not start the card-gated Business trial or buy an upgrade.
• The account began with three free meetings. Each accepted upload consumed one. After run 3, Fireflies displayed “0 free meetings left.” The current Free-plan help page, checked November 8, 2026, says website signup supplies three transcription credits. One credit is used either to transcribe an uploaded file or to summarize a meeting captured through the bot, extension, or mobile app; the separate unlimited auto-join claim applies to eligible transcription, not necessarily unlimited summaries.
• All three uploads completed. The observed processing upper bounds were four minutes, five minutes, and under one minute. Exact completion seconds were not instrumented.
• Generated Notes were strong. They preserved all 10 frozen ground-truth items in every repeat.
• The raw transcript repeated one material date defect. In all three runs, both spoken November 20 references lost the day 20. Generated Notes and AskFred independently restored the correct date.
• Action selection varied. The dedicated Action Items surface produced 5, 7, and 5 grounded to-dos. All three runs retained the three fixed assignees and tasks, but exact deadlines were not always shown on the dedicated Action Items surface; the Notes retained them. Fireflies also inconsistently promoted undated coordination statements into actions.
• Follow-up and retrieval remained useful. Follow-up scored 9/9, 8/9, and 8/9 under the frozen strict rubric; retrieval scored 5/5, 5/5, and 4/5.
• The attempted Markdown transcript download required an upgrade. Fireflies showed Transcript, Summary, and Audio choices plus PDF, DOCX, SRT, CSV, JSON, and Markdown formats, but we tested only the Markdown transcript path. It opened “Upgrade to download meeting.” We did not test the other export paths or generate a downloaded file.

These are tested observations, not universal Free-plan promises. We used uploaded English synthetic audio, not a live meeting bot. Human handling time was not separately instrumented, so the benchmark does not support a complete labor-cost figure.

For the full score table, method summary, and limitations, see our hands-on comparison of Otter Basic and Fireflies Free and the underlying repeated-run benchmark.

Listed plan price versus effective workflow cost

1. Base subscription cost

As of November 8, 2026, the lowest paid base plan is Pro at $18 for one seat for one month or $120 for one seat for a year. That is the number most pricing comparisons show.

For our exact three-upload workflow, one Pro month creates a simple allocation example: $6 per processed meeting if those three meetings are the only work done that month. This is not Fireflies' per-meeting price; it is $18 divided by three. Higher utilization lowers the allocated subscription cost per meeting.

2. Seat multiplication

Fireflies says any teammate added to a paid workspace counts as a seat. At rates checked November 8, 2026, five Pro seats cost $90 for one monthly-billed month or $600/year on annual billing. Five Business seats cost $145 for one monthly-billed month or $1,140/year on annual billing. Sharing an individual meeting recap link does not, according to the current pricing FAQ, require adding the recipient as a paid teammate.

3. AI-credit add-ons

Advanced AI usage can add a second recurring bill. As of November 8, 2026, Fireflies' AI-credit guide lists these monthly packages: 50 credits for $5, 200 for $20, 1,000 for $90, and larger tiers. Annual AI-credit billing is listed at 20% less per month. Purchased credits do not roll over.

The same November 8, 2026 help page says paid workspaces can be automatically subscribed to the lowest AI-credit tier when included credits run out, and existing credit subscriptions can be automatically upgraded to the next tier unless auto-upgrades are paused. Free users see a paywall and are not auto-charged. Buyers should review this setting before enabling credit-consuming features.

Fireflies' current documentation is inconsistent about included AI credits. The Free-plan page says 20 AI credits per month, while the dedicated AI-credit guide says plan credits are one-time on signup and do not expire. The Pro and Business guides describe starting credits per seat, while the dedicated AI-credit guide says credits are pooled at team level and do not increase with added teammates. Because those first-party pages conflicted when checked November 8, 2026, do not build a cost model around the frequency or seat scaling of included credits without confirming the workspace balance and renewal behavior inside your account.

4. Storage, uploads, and overage

As of November 8, 2026, Fireflies describes storage as a total retained-minute allowance, not a monthly transcription allowance: 400 minutes on Free, 8,000 minutes per Pro seat, and unlimited team-wide storage on Business and Enterprise. Its rate-limit guide separately lists 3,000 uploaded minutes per source per month for individuals and, for teams, 3,000 minutes multiplied by users per source/month, capped at 150,000 minutes per source. It lists overage at $0.01/minute, but does not make the plan-by-plan overage mechanism clear; confirm availability in the account before treating overage as universally purchasable. Live bot meetings, Chrome-extension Google Meet capture, and mobile recordings are listed as outside that upload-source rate limit.

That separation matters: “unlimited transcription” does not mean every ingestion route, storage pool, download, or advanced AI action is unmetered.

5. Labor and risk cost

The effective workflow cost is:

base plan + paid seats + AI-credit add-ons + upload overage + tax/FX + setup, review, correction, export, and administration time

Our November 5, 2026 evidence shows why review time belongs in the equation. Notes recovered the correct launch date, while every raw transcript dropped the day. Action lists also changed between identical uploads. A team using Fireflies for deadlines or assignments should verify the dedicated actions, summary, and source transcript rather than treating any single surface as definitive.

Which Fireflies plan is worth it?

Choose Free to evaluate the workflow

As of November 8, 2026, Free offers core transcription, summaries, collaboration, 400 minutes of storage per seat, and uploaded files up to 100 MB or 150 minutes per file. The current help page says website signup starts with three transcription credits, while eligible auto-join transcription can be unlimited. Downloads require a paid plan. Free is useful for evaluation, but the three-credit starting allowance makes repeated uploaded-file testing short-lived.

Choose Pro for recurring individual or small-team use

As of November 8, 2026, Pro adds unlimited transcription and AI summaries, 8,000 minutes of storage per seat, two-hour recordings, transcript and recording downloads, API access, and unlimited integrations. At $18 monthly or $120 annually per seat, it is the documented starting tier for our recurring upload-and-export use case. We did not buy or hands-on test Pro, so this is a first-party plan-documentation conclusion rather than a paid-tier benchmark result.

The annual rate saves $96 per seat compared with keeping monthly Pro for 12 months at the November 8, 2026 prices. That saving only matters if the annual commitment matches actual usage.

Choose Business for storage, analytics, and controls

As of November 8, 2026, Business costs $29 per seat/month month to month, or $19 per seat/month billed annually ($228/year), and adds unlimited team-wide storage, longer meetings, conversation intelligence, team insights, user groups, private channels, integration permissions, and priority support. The case for Business rests on team operations and governance, not merely getting a transcript.

Choose Enterprise when governance drives the purchase

As of November 8, 2026, Enterprise is $39 per seat/month billed annually. Fireflies lists SSO, SCIM, private storage, custom retention, compliance options, invoice payment, onboarding, and dedicated support; its current help page says dedicated Account Manager support applies at 20 or more seats. HIPAA and FERPA support require a request and signed BAA or DSA, respectively. Confirm minimum seats, compliance scope, storage architecture, support, add-ons, and renewal terms in writing before purchase.

Costs buyers often miss

Annual prices are monthly equivalents

The $10, $19, and $39 figures displayed for annual Pro, Business, and Enterprise on November 8, 2026 are per-seat monthly equivalents billed annually. The corresponding base commitments are $120, $228, and $468 per seat for a year.

“Unlimited” has boundaries

As of November 8, 2026, Fireflies uses “unlimited transcription” while separately publishing storage allowances, upload-source limits, paid-plan-gated downloads, and AI-credit charges. Model the exact capture route and output you need, not the headline alone.

Free export is not part of the tested workflow

The current Free-plan guide says transcript downloading requires a paid plan, and our attempted November 5, 2026 Markdown transcript download enforced that boundary. If portable records are required, Pro is the current documented subscription floor and export should still be tested end to end in your own account. We did not hands-on test Pro exports.

Sign-up can have calendar and onboarding cost

In our November 5, 2026 setup, Fireflies offered Google, Microsoft, or SSO login. Google OAuth requested profile, email, read-only Calendar access, and offline access. We proceeded only after explicit approval for an isolated venture calendar and configured the bot to join only when invited. This is not a subscription charge, but it is setup and privacy-review work that a buyer may need to budget.

Is Fireflies.ai worth the price?

For teams that want readable generated notes and searchable meeting knowledge, Fireflies can be worth paying for. In our November 5, 2026 test, its Notes preserved all 10 critical facts in every repeat, and constrained retrieval remained strong.

The recommendation is conditional. The repeated raw-date defect, changing action-list membership, paid export gate, exhausted Free upload allowance, and unmeasured review time mean the sticker price understates the total workflow cost. Pro is the clearest value point for one user who regularly uploads and exports meetings. Business is justified when storage, analytics, private channels, and administrative controls matter. Free is best treated as an evaluation tier for uploaded-file work.

Before subscribing, compare the plan claims with our hands-on meeting-assistant benchmark, Otter alternatives guide, and Otter.ai pricing analysis.

Use the free AI Meeting Assistant Buyer's Scorecard to calculate effective cost alongside accuracy, repeatability, privacy, and export controls. No email address is required.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Fireflies.ai cost per month?

As of November 8, 2026, Free is $0. Pro is $18 per seat on monthly billing or $10 per seat/month billed annually. Business is $29 per seat monthly or $19 per seat/month billed annually. Enterprise is $39 per seat/month and annual-only.

Is Fireflies.ai really free?

Yes, the Free plan has no subscription fee as of November 8, 2026. But “free” has operational limits. The current help page says website signup starts with three transcription credits, uploads use one credit each, storage is capped at 400 minutes per seat, and transcript downloads require a paid plan. Our November 5, 2026 test consumed all three observed free meetings.

What is the cheapest paid Fireflies plan?

As of November 8, 2026, Pro is the cheapest publicly listed paid plan: $18 for one seat for one monthly-billed month, or $10 per seat/month billed annually, equal to $120 per seat/year before tax and add-ons.

Does Fireflies charge for AI features separately?

Some advanced features use AI credits separately from transcription. As of November 8, 2026, paid add-on packages start at $5/month for 50 credits. Current first-party pages conflict over whether included plan credits recur or are one-time, so verify the account balance, renewal behavior, and auto-upgrade setting before relying on them.

Does Fireflies charge per meeting?

Fireflies does not list a universal per-meeting cash price as of November 8, 2026. It charges paid plans per seat, while transcription credits, upload-source rate limits, storage, AI credits, and overage rules can affect usage. Your effective cost per meeting depends on plan utilization and review time.

Can the Free plan handle recurring uploaded meetings?

Not for long on the tested setup. Our November 5, 2026 account had three free meetings and displayed zero remaining after three uploads. The current November 8, 2026 Free-plan guide also says website signup supplies three transcription credits and each uploaded file uses one. Eligible auto-join meetings are described separately as unlimited.

Disclosure

We tested Fireflies Free using a venture-only account and synthetic audio. Fireflies did not sponsor the test, provide payment or benefits, review this article, or influence the conclusion. We paid no subscription fee. If affiliate links are added later, they will be labelled clearly and will not change the test method, evidence, or recommendation. No paid Fireflies upgrade was purchased for this article.

Method and limitations

The benchmark used one frozen 11-minute synthetic meeting containing four speakers, noise, overlap, corrections, negation, names, dates, a budget, decisions, owners, and deadlines. We uploaded the identical MP3 three times to Fireflies Free and graded the retained outputs against a prewritten answer key.

File SHA-256 (join the two displayed lines):

ab4fc24531a1d83f9a9511a96e2475e0
c489663059af9e12620394f1b78a3db4

Evidence status is partially executed as of November 5, 2026 because human handling time was not separately instrumented and Free did not permit us to generate a downloaded export file. We tested uploaded English audio, not live-bot participant notices or real meetings. Product behavior, limits, help documentation, and prices can change after the dates stated in this article.

Sources

Current first-party Fireflies sources for mutable pricing, limits, and billing claims (accessed November 8, 2026):

1. Fireflies.ai, Pricing — displayed base-plan prices, seats, plan comparison, and pricing FAQ.
2. Fireflies Help, What's included in the Fireflies Free plan — starting transcription credits, uploads, storage, downloads, and Free features.
3. Fireflies Help, Learn About Fireflies Pro Tier Features — Pro prices, storage, duration, downloads, integrations, and API.
4. Fireflies Help, Fireflies Business tier pricing and features — Business prices, storage, analytics, channels, and controls.
5. Fireflies Help, Learn about the Fireflies Enterprise plan — annual Enterprise price, governance, compliance, storage, billing, and support.
6. Fireflies Help, AI Credits Pricing and Overview — credit uses, add-on prices, expiry, pooling, and auto-upgrade behavior.
7. Fireflies Help, Learn about storage, and rate limits — upload-source limits, overage, and storage allowances.

Retained hands-on evidence (evidence cutoff November 5, 2026):

8. runs/fireflies/m1-m6/aggregate-review.md — repeat timing, output findings, quota use, export gate, and direct test cost.
9. runs/fireflies/m1-m6/run-1/metadata.md, run-2/metadata.md, and run-3/metadata.md — account state, fixture, processing, costs, and retained artifacts per run.
10. meeting-intelligence-comparison.md — frozen weighted results and buyer guidance.
11. methodology.md — benchmark execution and evidence-status rules.
12. fixtures/meeting-v0.1-noisy-96k.mp3 — frozen input fixture; SHA-256 stated above.