Fireflies.ai vs Trellus
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
Still shortlisting? Browse the best in AI Meeting Note Takers and the best in Conversation Intelligence for every option we track, with award winners called out.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentTrellus compared with Fireflies.ai
Fireflies is a broad, cheap capture platform that records and transcribes everything across a whole company with a light conversation intelligence layer. Trellus is narrow and deep on one motion, cold calling, and does nothing outside it. Buy Fireflies to build a company-wide record of conversations; buy Trellus to make an outbound team's dials actually connect and convert.
Choose Fireflies.ai if
Multilingual teams and startups that want one vendor covering transcription, conversation intelligence, task routing, and automation across sales, recruiting, and support, and who are willing to model minute and credit consumption rather than buying on the headline price.
Choose Trellus if
Outbound SDR and BDR teams running high-volume cold calling inside an existing sales engagement platform, and individual reps or founders who want parallel dialing plus live coaching for $34.99 a month without changing any of their tooling.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Fireflies.ai | Trellus |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Meeting Notes | Call Coaching |
| Starting price | $0 (Free), then $10 per user per month billed annually (Pro; $18 monthly) | $34.99 per user per month (promotional rate on Power and Parallel) (free trial) |
| Pricing model | Per-seat subscription across four tiers, metered on two axes: storage minutes and monthly AI credits. Annual billing is roughly 35 to 45 percent cheaper than monthly. | Per-user monthly subscription on two published individual plans bought through Stripe, plus a quoted Business plan for team analytics and conversational intelligence. |
| Free plan | Free forever with unlimited transcription and limited AI summaries, 400 minutes of storage per team, 20 AI credits, Zoom, Meet, and Teams support, 100-plus language transcription, real-time notes, search, AskFred, and audio or video upload. | No |
| Free trial | No fixed trial period published; the free-forever tier is the evaluation path | A free trial is offered on the individual plans; the vendor steers most buyers to self-serve checkout rather than a demo |
| Best for | Multilingual teams and startups that want one vendor covering transcription, conversation intelligence, task routing, and automation across sales, recruiting, and support, and who are willing to model minute and credit consumption rather than buying on the headline price. | Outbound SDR and BDR teams running high-volume cold calling inside an existing sales engagement platform, and individual reps or founders who want parallel dialing plus live coaching for $34.99 a month without changing any of their tooling. |
| Setup time | Fifteen minutes for basic capture: connect a calendar, confirm which meetings the bot should join, and install the Chrome extension if you use Google Meet. Configuring CRM field mapping, AI Skills, and topic trackers adds a few hours. | Fifteen minutes. Install the Chrome extension, sign in, connect it to the platform you dial from, and start. There is no data migration because Trellus is an overlay rather than a system of record. |
| Learning curve | Moderate, and higher than any other product in this set purely because of surface area. The transcription and summary layer is immediately obvious; AI Skills, conversation intelligence, the rules engine, and voice agents each need their own learning session. | Very low for the dialer, moderate for the coaching. Reps take a few days to stop finding live prompts distracting and start using them, and the practice calls need a manager to define which scenarios matter or they go unused. |
| Platforms | Web app, Desktop application, iOS and Android apps, Chrome extension for Google Meet, Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, Aircall and RingCentral dialers, MCP server | Chrome extension, Web app, Overlay on Salesloft, Outreach, HubSpot, Salesforce, Apollo, Amplemarket, Zoho, VanillaSoft, Clay, and Google Sheets |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, HIPAA (Enterprise tier), Zero data retention for AI training | SOC 2 Type II |
| Founded | 2016 | 2020 |
| Headquarters | Miami, Florida, United States (previously Pleasanton, California), with a distributed team across 20 countries and 47 cities | New York, New York, United States |
| Ownership | Venture-backed | Venture-backed (Y Combinator, pre-seed) |
Strengths and limitations
Fireflies.ai
Strengths
- The broadest capture coverage in the category: bots for the major platforms, email invitation, Chrome extension, mobile and desktop apps, dialer integrations, and file upload.
- More than 100 transcription languages with auto-detection, plus a multi-language mode for calls that switch mid-conversation, which no competitor here matches.
- Pro at $10 per seat annually is remarkable capability per dollar, including video recording, AI Skills, voice agents, and unlimited integrations.
- AskFred and AI summaries are available on the free tier, so the assistant is not held hostage to an upgrade, though summaries are limited until you pay.
Limitations
- Dual metering on storage minutes and AI credits makes real cost hard to forecast, and the free tier's 400-minute pool is shared across the entire team rather than per user.
- The product is built around the meeting bot; bot-free recording exists through the Chrome extension and desktop app, but the bot remains the default workflow.
- Product sprawl is real: voice agents, an email assistant, a task manager, 200-plus AI Skills, and conversation intelligence in one subscription means an unavoidable navigation cost and inconsistent polish across surfaces.
- Customer-count claims are inconsistent across the vendor's own pages, more than 1 million companies on the homepage against more than 500,000 on the about page, which is not a great signal for a data-driven buyer.
Trellus
Strengths
- Real-time coaching during the call is a capability almost nobody else in this category offers, and it changes outcomes rather than documenting them.
- Delivered as a Chrome extension inside the tools reps already use, so adoption requires no migration, no new login, and no change to the existing workflow.
- Parallel dialing on five lines plus included phone numbers and spam remediation replaces a separate dialer subscription, which is where most of the cost saving comes from.
- Unlimited AI practice calls are a genuinely useful ramp tool that no meeting-focused conversation intelligence vendor provides.
Limitations
- The team layer is not self-serve: conversational intelligence, team analytics, and custom reporting all sit on a quoted Business plan, so a manager cannot buy the manager features with a card.
- The published prices are steep promotional discounts off $99.99 and $149.99 list, and there is no published commitment about what renewal costs.
- Scope is the dial. If your selling happens in scheduled meetings, most of what you are paying for is irrelevant, and a meeting-focused product will serve you far better.
- No structured scorecard engine with named methodology templates, so this does not replace Avoma or Demodesk for qualification scoring.
Pricing compared
Fireflies.ai
Per-seat subscription across four tiers, metered on two axes: storage minutes and monthly AI credits. Annual billing is roughly 35 to 45 percent cheaper than monthly.
- Free$0
- Pro$18
- Business$29
- Enterprise$39
On sticker price Fireflies is the cheapest capable product here: $10 per seat annually for video recording, an email assistant, voice agents, AI Skills, a task manager, and unlimited integrations undercuts everything except Granola's Business tier, and it does considerably more. The complication is the metering. Storage minutes and AI credits are two forecasting problems most buyers will not do properly, the 400-minute free pool is team-wide rather than per seat, and unlimited storage costs $19 a seat. Model your actual meeting hours before comparing this to a flat-fee rival; if your usage is modest and multilingual, Fireflies is outstanding value, and if it is heavy, price Business rather than Pro.
Trellus
Per-user monthly subscription on two published individual plans bought through Stripe, plus a quoted Business plan for team analytics and conversational intelligence.
- Power$34.99
- Parallel$34.99
- BusinessCustom
For an individual rep, $34.99 a month for parallel dialing, included phone numbers with spam remediation, live in-call coaching, unlimited AI practice, and a LinkedIn inbox tool is remarkable value. Standalone parallel dialers routinely cost several times that, and the coaching layer is thrown in. For a team, the calculation is murkier, because the analytics and conversational intelligence that a manager actually needs live on a quoted plan, so the published price does not tell you what a five-person team will pay. Judged narrowly as an individual productivity purchase, this is among the best value in the whole category. Judged as a team conversation intelligence platform, you cannot judge it from the price list at all.
Editorial verdict on each
Fireflies.ai
Category LeaderFireflies is the most capable product in this category and the hardest to price. Nothing else here captures from as many sources, transcribes as many languages, or ships as much adjacent machinery, and Pro at $10 a seat annually is genuinely startling value if your usage fits inside 8,000 minutes. But the twin meters on storage and AI credits, the team-wide 400-minute free pool, and the concentration of the analytics story on Business mean the headline price is not the price. Buy it for multilingual coverage, capture breadth, and one-vendor consolidation across sales, recruiting, and support, and do the usage arithmetic before you sign. Teams who want a small, elegant, unmetered tool will be happier with Granola, and teams who object to bots in customer calls should not shortlist Fireflies at all.
Read the full Fireflies.ai profileTrellus
Trellus is the only product in this category that coaches the call while the call is still happening, and for an outbound team that is a different proposition from every scorecard and dashboard reviewed here. Delivered as an extension inside the tools reps already use, with parallel dialing, included numbers and spam remediation, unlimited AI practice, and live guidance at $34.99 a month on Stripe checkout, it is close to unbeatable as an individual purchase, and the switching cost of being wrong is one cancelled monthly subscription. Two honest caveats. The published price is a heavy discount off a much higher list, so confirm the renewal rate. And the manager-facing features, team analytics and conversational intelligence, live on a quoted plan, so a team standardizing on Trellus will have the sales conversation after all. Buy it for the reps immediately; negotiate the team layer with your eyes open.
Read the full Trellus profileFireflies.ai profile last reviewed 2026-09-27; Trellus last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.
The best in AI Meeting Note Takers
23 trackedAI meeting note takers join calls to record, transcribe, and summarize them, turning conversations into searchable notes, action items, and CRM updates without anyone typing.
The broadest platform in meeting AI: transcription, search, AI apps, and integrations that reach every corner of the small-business stack.
A free plan with unlimited recording and transcription that forced every paid notetaker in the category to justify its price.
A ten-person team out-writing the funded competition on note quality, then automating what the notes say.
Abandoned the meeting bot entirely for a local notepad that finishes what you type, a mechanism the rest of the category is now copying.
A five minute Chrome extension install with no bot to whitelist, and notes open automatically in a post-call tab the moment you hang up.
The best in Conversation Intelligence
16 trackedConversation intelligence platforms record sales calls, transcribe them, and analyze the content for coaching, deal risk, and competitive mentions, turning the call archive into a searchable and scoreable dataset.
Gong's feature list unbundled into modules a ten-person team can buy, from scheduling through coaching.
Most of Gong's job from $19 a seat, built by a nine-person bootstrapped company.
An AI assistant that fills the CRM after every call moved Sybill from notetaker to the fastest-spreading rep-side tool in the category.
Practice the call against an AI buyer before you burn a real prospect: a coaching mechanism nobody else in the category ships.
Connect a calendar, set a capture rule, and the next meeting records itself; reps do nothing and the free tier covers 20 meetings.
Frequently asked questions
6 questionsWhat is the difference between Fireflies.ai and Trellus?
Fireflies is a broad, cheap capture platform that records and transcribes everything across a whole company with a light conversation intelligence layer. Trellus is narrow and deep on one motion, cold calling, and does nothing outside it. Buy Fireflies to build a company-wide record of conversations; buy Trellus to make an outbound team's dials actually connect and convert.
Is Fireflies.ai or Trellus cheaper?
Fireflies.ai starts at $0 (Free), then $10 per user per month billed annually (Pro; $18 monthly). Trellus starts at $34.99 per user per month (promotional rate on Power and Parallel) (free trial). The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole cost. Fireflies.ai pricing model: Per-seat subscription across four tiers, metered on two axes: storage minutes and monthly AI credits. Annual billing is roughly 35 to 45 percent cheaper than monthly. Trellus pricing model: Per-user monthly subscription on two published individual plans bought through Stripe, plus a quoted Business plan for team analytics and conversational intelligence.
Does Fireflies.ai or Trellus have a free plan?
Fireflies.ai has a free plan. Free forever with unlimited transcription and limited AI summaries, 400 minutes of storage per team, 20 AI credits, Zoom, Meet, and Teams support, 100-plus language transcription, real-time notes, search, AskFred, and audio or video upload. Trial terms: No fixed trial period published; the free-forever tier is the evaluation path. Trellus has no free plan. Trial terms: A free trial is offered on the individual plans; the vendor steers most buyers to self-serve checkout rather than a demo.
Who should choose Fireflies.ai?
Multilingual teams and startups that want one vendor covering transcription, conversation intelligence, task routing, and automation across sales, recruiting, and support, and who are willing to model minute and credit consumption rather than buying on the headline price.
Who should choose Trellus?
Outbound SDR and BDR teams running high-volume cold calling inside an existing sales engagement platform, and individual reps or founders who want parallel dialing plus live coaching for $34.99 a month without changing any of their tooling.
What are the best alternatives to Fireflies.ai and Trellus?
SaaSTracker profiles 23 products in AI Meeting Note Takers. The Summer 2026 awards in the category went to Fathom (Best Value), Circleback (Momentum), Granola (Innovation). SaaSTracker profiles 16 products in Conversation Intelligence. The Summer 2026 awards in the category went to Avoma (Category Leader), Rafiki (Best Value), Sybill (Momentum). Every profile is compiled from primary sources, so a shortlist can be built from pricing, limitations, and fit rather than from star ratings.
