Fireflies alternative

Without Fred the bot, and without the seat-based bill.

Fred — Fireflies' notetaker bot — joins your call. The transcript lives in Fireflies' cloud. Smart Search and AskFred sit behind Pro ($18/seat) and Business ($29/seat). Quietly captures audio on-device, writes plain Markdown to a folder you choose, ships an MCP server for Claude / Cursor, and is $49 once.

Download free trial Compare side-by-side
macOS 13+ No bot Markdown export MCP-native
What you get
A folder of meetings.

Plain .md. Front-matter has attendees, calendar, duration. Body is Whisper output.

14:32
2026-05-04-q3-launch-review.md 42 min · 5 attendees
2026-05-05-1on1-jane.md 28 min
2026-05-06-customer-acme.md Recording
Why people leave Fireflies

Fred in the call. Cloud after. $18–29 per seat per month.

“Fred has joined the meeting.” Fireflies' notetaker bot announces itself in every Zoom, Meet, and Teams call you take.

All audio in Fireflies' cloud. Recordings, transcripts, summaries — stored, indexed, and analyzed server-side. Privacy-sensitive teams hate this.

$18/seat Pro, $29/seat Business. A 5-person team is $1,080–$1,740/year. Forever, just to keep your own notes.

AskFred lives in Fireflies. Your transcripts can't natively flow to Cursor, Claude Desktop, or your Obsidian vault.

Side-by-side

Quietly vs Fireflies.

Quietly Fireflies
No bot joins the call “Fred” joins every call
Where audio lives Your Mac Fireflies' cloud
Search across meetings Your editor + MCP Smart Search (Pro+)
Ask AI about meetings Claude / Cursor via MCP AskFred (Pro+)
CRM push Markdown → your script Business tier
Open in Obsidian / VS Code
Works offline (after activation)
Pricing (5 people) $199 once $1,080–$1,740 / year
Honest take

Where Fireflies is better.

Honest list. If you need these, stay on Fireflies.

Coaching

Sales conversation analytics.

Fireflies' Conversation Intelligence (talk ratio, sentiment, topic tracker) is mature. Quietly gives you the transcript; coaching analytics are out of scope.

CRM

50+ integrations.

Fireflies pushes into Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Slack, Notion natively. Quietly hands you Markdown — you wire it.

Cross-platform

Web + mobile + Windows.

Fireflies works anywhere there's a browser. Quietly is macOS-only today.

Why people switch

Where Quietly wins.

No bot

No more Fred.

No third-party participant in your meeting. Quietly captures system + mic audio locally; the call has no extra “attendee” to explain.

Local

Audio stays on your Mac.

Fireflies records and stores everything in their cloud. Quietly transcribes locally with Whisper and writes Markdown to disk — nothing leaves your machine.

$49 once

Two months and you're ahead.

Fireflies Pro = $216/seat/year. A team of 5 = $1,080. Quietly = $199 once for 5 seats. You break even before the next renewal.

MCP-native

AskFred, but local.

Quietly's MCP server lets Claude Desktop or Cursor natively answer “what did we decide about Q3?” — running on your model, on your transcripts.

In-person

No meeting link required.

⌘R starts mic capture from the menu bar. Drop any .m4a, .wav, .mp3 to transcribe. Fireflies needs a calendar event with a meeting URL.

Plain Markdown

Open in anything that reads files.

Notes are .md in your Obsidian vault, your iCloud folder, your repo. No proprietary database, no migration if Fireflies pivots.

Migration

Move off Fireflies in 10 minutes.

01

Export from Fireflies. Settings → Data Export. You get transcripts and summaries as a download.

02

Disable Fred for upcoming calendar events. Fireflies → Meetings → toggle off auto-join. Then remove Fred from any pending invites.

03

Drop the export into your Quietly folder. Cursor, Claude Desktop, and Obsidian pick it up. New meetings save next to old ones.

Need help with the Business-tier export? Email support@meetquietly.com.

FAQ

Things people ask before switching.

What about AskFred — can Quietly answer questions about my meetings?
Yes, but better. Quietly ships a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, so Claude Desktop, Cursor, and other MCP-aware tools natively read your meeting notes. You can ask “what did we decide about pricing in last week's standup?” — running on Claude or GPT directly, with your transcripts, no Fireflies tier required.
Does Quietly do conversation intelligence (talk-time, sentiment)?
Not today. If you rely on Fireflies' coaching analytics for sales reps, stay on Fireflies. Quietly's wedge is “your meetings, your files, no vendor.” Coaching analytics on top of that is something we'd build with a partner, not internally.
How does Quietly compare on pricing for a team?
Fireflies Pro is $18/seat/mo = $216/seat/year. A 5-person team pays $1,080/year, every year. Quietly's team license is $199 once for 5 seats — you save the equivalent of 4–8 years of Fireflies in the first year, depending on tier.
Will Quietly join my Zoom calls automatically?
Quietly never sends a bot to your call. It captures system audio (Zoom, Meet, Teams, Slack Huddle) directly on your Mac via BlackHole. Calendar integration tells Quietly when you're in a meeting; capture starts on your Mac, not in the call.
Can I import my Fireflies history?
Fireflies supports a full account export. Drop the resulting files in your Quietly folder and Cursor / Claude / Obsidian see them immediately. A one-click importer is in the works.

No Fred. No seats. No subscription.

7-day trial, no card. 30-day refund. Lemon Squeezy checkout.

$ 49 once · 2 Macs
Download free trial

Or $199 once · 5 team seats