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The short answer
Otter.ai is the cheapest way into a paid plan at $8.33 per user per month on annual billing. If budget is the deciding factor and your meetings are short, it wins on price alone.
tl;dv has the most generous free plan — unlimited recording and unlimited transcription, with AI notes metered rather than the transcription itself. It’s also the most sales-focused of the three once you reach its Business tier.
Fireflies.ai is the best all-rounder: 100+ transcription languages, meeting search that actually works across your history, and — unusually — API access even on the free plan.
There is no single winner here, which is why the table below has a different answer in almost every row. What decides it for you is whether you care most about price, free-tier headroom, or what happens to the transcript after the meeting ends.
Fireflies vs Otter vs tl;dv at a glance
| Feature | Fireflies.ai | Otter.ai | tl;dv | Best |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan transcription | ✓ Unlimited, 400 min storage | ✗ 300 minutes per month | ✓ Unlimited recording + transcription | tl;dv ✓ |
| Entry paid plan | $10/seat/mo annual | $8.33/user/mo annual | €18/seat/mo annual | Otter ✓ |
| Meeting length cap | ✓ None | ✗ 90 min Pro / 4 hrs Business | ✓ None | Tie |
| Transcription languages | ✓ 100+ | ✓ Multi-language | ✓ 30+ | Fireflies ✓ |
| API access on free plan | ✓ Yes | ✗ No | ✗ No | Fireflies ✓ |
| Storage at entry paid tier | 8,000 min/seat | ✓ Unlimited | ✓ Unlimited recordings | Otter ✓ |
| Sales coaching features | Conversation intelligence (Business) | Sales Notetaker (Enterprise) | ✓ Playbooks + objection handling (Business) | tl;dv ✓ |
| Currency quoted | USD | USD (stated on site) | ✗ EUR, no switcher | — |
| Zoom / Teams / Meet | ✓ All tiers | ✓ All tiers | ✓ All tiers | Tie |
| Best for | Breadth: languages, search, API | Lowest bill, short meetings | Free-tier volume, sales teams | — |
A note on prices
Two things worth flagging before you compare the numbers.
All three quote per seat, and default to annual billing. The headline figures below are annual-equivalent monthly prices. Paying monthly costs meaningfully more on every platform — Otter advertises 51% off for paying yearly, Fireflies roughly 45%.
tl;dv priced in euros for us. Otter’s page states “Prices in USD” outright; Fireflies quotes dollars; tl;dv showed euros from a European connection and offered no currency switch. tl;dv is a European company, so if you’re in the US you may see different figures. Check your own view before budgeting.
The free plans are not remotely equivalent
This is where the three diverge most, and where most comparison articles simply write “free plan available” and move on.
Otter Basic gives you 300 transcription minutes a month. That is five hours. For anyone in back-to-back meetings it is gone in a week, and the free tier also limits you to three lifetime audio or video file imports.
tl;dv Free gives unlimited recordings and unlimited transcription in 30+ languages. What’s metered is the AI layer: ten meetings with AI notes and ten Ask AI queries. You can record everything and pay only when you want the summarising done for you.
Fireflies Free gives unlimited transcription too, but caps storage at 400 minutes per team and limits AI summaries. Transcription is unrestricted; keeping the results is not.
If you intend to stay on a free plan for a while, that ordering — tl;dv, then Fireflies, then Otter — is the one that matters.
Meeting length limits catch people out
Otter caps individual meetings: 90 minutes on Pro, four hours on Business. For standups and client calls that is irrelevant. For workshops, training sessions or all-day planning, it is the difference between having a record and not having one.
Fireflies and tl;dv don’t impose comparable per-meeting caps — Fireflies meters storage minutes instead, which is a gentler constraint because it applies to your total rather than cutting off a session mid-sentence.
Which one for which job
Fireflies.ai — the all-rounder
Strongest on breadth. 100+ languages is the widest of the three, meeting search across your whole history is genuinely good, and API access on the free plan is unusual enough to matter if you want to pipe transcripts into something else. Business adds conversation intelligence and team analytics. At $10 per seat annually, Pro sits between Otter and tl;dv on price.
Otter.ai — the budget option
Cheapest paid entry at $8.33 per user per month, with unlimited storage from Pro and solid Salesforce, HubSpot and Zapier integrations. The trade-offs are the thin free tier, the per-meeting length caps, and a narrower feature set than the other two at comparable prices. If you know your meetings are short and you want the lowest bill, it is the rational pick.
tl;dv — the free tier and the sales team
The most usable free plan by a distance, and the most deliberately sales-oriented at the top. Business adds AI playbook monitoring, objection handling and scheduled AI reports — features aimed at coaching a sales team rather than just remembering what was said. Pro claims 5,000+ integrations. It is also the most expensive of the three per seat.
How to choose
Start with your meeting volume and length. Long sessions rule out Otter’s lower tiers. Heavy volume on a free plan rules out Otter entirely and points at tl;dv.
Then ask what happens to the transcript. If it gets read once and forgotten, buy the cheapest — Otter. If it feeds a CRM, a searchable archive or another system, Fireflies’ search and free-tier API earn their keep. If it feeds sales coaching, tl;dv’s Business tier is built for exactly that.
Finally, check the languages. If your meetings aren’t in English, Fireflies’ 100+ languages against tl;dv’s 30+ may settle it before anything else does.
Common questions
Which has the best free plan?
tl;dv, clearly. Unlimited recording and transcription, with only the AI features metered. Fireflies is second — unlimited transcription but tight storage. Otter is last, at 300 minutes a month.
Which is cheapest if I’m paying?
Otter Pro at $8.33 per user per month on annual billing, followed by Fireflies Pro at $10. tl;dv Pro is the most expensive of the three. Note all three charge per seat, so multiply by your team size.
Do they work with Zoom, Teams and Google Meet?
All three, on every tier including free. Platform coverage is not a differentiator here.
Can I switch later?
Reasonably easily — all three let you export transcripts on paid plans, and none holds your calendar hostage. The friction is in the accumulated searchable archive rather than the tool itself, which argues for testing properly on free plans before committing a team.
Try them
All three have free plans that let you record real meetings. Run the same week of calls through whichever two you’re torn between.
Related
- Best AI Meeting Assistants for Sales Teams — the wider category round-up
- Best Automation Tools for Marketing Teams — for piping transcripts into your other systems