Fireflies.ai vs Wudpecker
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
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The short answer
Editorial assessmentWudpecker compared with Fireflies.ai
Fireflies is the same bot-based idea at platform scale: 100-plus languages, conversation intelligence, voice agents, and 200-plus integrations, metered by storage minutes and AI credits. Wudpecker cannot compete on breadth and does not try. What it offers instead is a European vendor on European servers with a simpler bill and unlimited in-person recording. That is a governance argument, not a feature argument.
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 Wudpecker if
European small businesses that want a straightforward recording notetaker on EU servers under GDPR, and anyone whose meetings are largely in person, since unlimited face-to-face recording is included even on the free plan.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Fireflies.ai | Wudpecker |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Meeting Notes | Meeting Notes |
| Starting price | $0 (Free), then $10 per user per month billed annually (Pro; $18 monthly) | $0 (Free), then $19 per month billed annually ($23 monthly) (Plus) |
| 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. | Freemium subscription metered by bot-attended meetings per month, with unlimited in-person recording on every tier and a 20 percent annual discount. |
| 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. | 10 notetaker bot meetings per month, unlimited in-person recordings, three Ask AI questions per recording, 39-language transcription, note organisation, sharing, editable notes, and email notifications. |
| Free trial | No fixed trial period published; the free-forever tier is the evaluation path | Two weeks of premium features with no credit card required, alongside a permanent free tier |
| 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. | European small businesses that want a straightforward recording notetaker on EU servers under GDPR, and anyone whose meetings are largely in person, since unlimited face-to-face recording is included even on the free plan. |
| 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. | Around ten minutes. Connect a calendar so the bot schedules itself, install the desktop or phone app if you want in-person capture, and you are running. There is nothing for IT to package unless your meeting platform administrator blocks external bots, in which case the online path may need whitelisting. |
| 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. | Low. The two configuration steps that repay effort are building a custom vocabulary list, which visibly improves transcript quality within a week, and choosing templates per meeting type so notes come out in a consistent shape. |
| 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 | Desktop app, Phone app, Web, Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, HIPAA (Enterprise tier), Zero data retention for AI training | GDPR compliant as an EU company, No SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification published |
| Founded | 2016 | 2022 |
| Headquarters | Miami, Florida, United States (previously Pleasanton, California), with a distributed team across 20 countries and 47 cities | Helsinki, Finland |
| Ownership | Venture-backed | Venture-backed |
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.
Wudpecker
Strengths
- EU-based company with EU-hosted servers, so GDPR applies natively rather than through contractual extension by a US vendor.
- Unlimited in-person recording on every tier including free, which is the most generous free capability in this batch and unusual anywhere.
- The bot can attend meetings you cannot, which no local-capture competitor is able to do at any price.
- Custom vocabulary recognition genuinely improves transcript quality for teams with product names and jargon, and it is a feature most competitors skip.
Limitations
- No botless option for online meetings at all, so client-facing users who object to a visible vendor bot have no path within Wudpecker.
- Hard bot meeting caps at 10, 30, and 100 per month with no unlimited tier, which is the tightest ceiling structure in this batch.
- No SOC 2 and no ISO 27001; the security story is GDPR plus documented encryption, which will not satisfy a formal vendor questionnaire.
- Language coverage of 35 to 39 is narrow next to jamie's 99-plus or Circleback's 100-plus, and the company's own pages disagree on the number.
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.
Wudpecker
Freemium subscription metered by bot-attended meetings per month, with unlimited in-person recording on every tier and a 20 percent annual discount.
- Free$0
- Plus$19
- Pro$32
Wudpecker's value depends almost entirely on where your meetings happen. Model 20 meetings a week: about 80 a month. If those are video calls, you need Pro at $32 a month billed annually ($40 monthly), and you are at 80 percent of a 100-meeting ceiling with nowhere to go if the month is busy. That is $384 a year for a plan you can outgrow, against Granola Business at $14 a seat or Fathom's unlimited recording with no meter at all, both of which handle the same volume without you counting. But if a meaningful share of those 80 are in person, the arithmetic inverts completely: in-person recording is unlimited and free, so a consultant doing three site visits a day may never pay anything. Between those poles, Plus at $19 for 30 bot meetings plus unlimited in-person is fair for a moderate European user who wants EU servers. Just count your meetings before you buy, because this is one of the few products here where the meter can actually bite.
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 profileWudpecker
Wudpecker is a small, honest, well-made European tool that knows exactly which two customers it is for. The first is a European buyer who wants a conventional recording notetaker without sending customer conversations to a US server, and who does not need SOC 2 to prove it. The second, and more interesting, is anyone whose meetings happen in a room rather than on a screen: unlimited free in-person recording is a genuinely unusual offer and it makes Wudpecker the cheapest serious option for field consultants and on-site salespeople by a wide margin. Against that, the constraints are real. There is no botless online path, so client-facing users who object to a visible bot are simply not the customer. The bot meeting ceiling tops out at 100 a month with nothing above it. Language coverage is thin, the integration set is three connectors and no API, and the company is running on a €330,000 pre-seed. Buy it for the geography or for the in-person capture. Do not buy it expecting a platform.
Read the full Wudpecker profileFireflies.ai profile last reviewed 2026-09-27; Wudpecker last reviewed 2026-09-27. 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.
Frequently asked questions
6 questionsWhat is the difference between Fireflies.ai and Wudpecker?
Fireflies is the same bot-based idea at platform scale: 100-plus languages, conversation intelligence, voice agents, and 200-plus integrations, metered by storage minutes and AI credits. Wudpecker cannot compete on breadth and does not try. What it offers instead is a European vendor on European servers with a simpler bill and unlimited in-person recording. That is a governance argument, not a feature argument.
Is Fireflies.ai or Wudpecker cheaper?
Fireflies.ai starts at $0 (Free), then $10 per user per month billed annually (Pro; $18 monthly). Wudpecker starts at $0 (Free), then $19 per month billed annually ($23 monthly) (Plus). 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. Wudpecker pricing model: Freemium subscription metered by bot-attended meetings per month, with unlimited in-person recording on every tier and a 20 percent annual discount.
Does Fireflies.ai or Wudpecker 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. Wudpecker has a free plan. 10 notetaker bot meetings per month, unlimited in-person recordings, three Ask AI questions per recording, 39-language transcription, note organisation, sharing, editable notes, and email notifications. Trial terms: Two weeks of premium features with no credit card required, alongside a permanent free tier.
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 Wudpecker?
European small businesses that want a straightforward recording notetaker on EU servers under GDPR, and anyone whose meetings are largely in person, since unlimited face-to-face recording is included even on the free plan.
What are the best alternatives to Fireflies.ai and Wudpecker?
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). Every profile is compiled from primary sources, so a shortlist can be built from pricing, limitations, and fit rather than from star ratings.
