Best AI meeting assistants: Fireflies.ai vs Sembly AI vs Krisp

The short answer

Pick Fireflies.ai if you want a classic notetaker with a free plan that never expires: it joins Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and 10+ other platforms, transcribes English plus 100+ other languages in beta and syncs notes to your CRM. Pro costs $10 per seat per month billed annually.

Pick Sembly AI if your meetings are with clients and the real work starts after the call. Besides notes and tasks, it drafts proposals, status reports and decks in your client's branding and exports them as editable .pptx or .docx files. Basic costs $10 a month billed annually for one user.

Pick Krisp if you dislike meeting bots or your audio is the problem. Krisp works at the audio level in any call app, takes notes without a bot joining, and removes background noise, voices and echo on both sides of the call. Core costs $8 per user per month billed annually, after a 7-day free trial without a credit card.

How to choose an AI meeting assistant

Every tool here records, transcribes and summarizes. What decides the fit:

• How it joins the call. Most notetakers send a bot that appears as a participant. Some clients find that intrusive; a bot-free tool records from your device instead.
• Platforms. Is your meeting app covered, and can you upload recordings or capture in-person meetings?
• Free plan or trial. A free plan lets you keep using the tool with limits; a free trial gives you everything for a few days and then stops.
• The real limit. Assistants cap different things: storage minutes, meeting hours per month, recording length per meeting or AI credits. Look at the one that matches how you meet.
• What happens after the call. Some tools stop at notes and CRM sync; others write follow-up emails, reports and decks.
• Languages. Transcription language counts range from 16 to 100+; Fireflies supports English fully and the other 100+ languages in beta.
• Security and terms. SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, AI training on your data, refunds.

Prices below are in US dollars per month, billed annually unless stated, as shown on each pricing page when we checked. All three sell monthly billing too, at a higher price.

Prices and limits side by side

Annual billing is the main saving: Krisp halves its monthly price.

Fireflies.ai: a searchable archive of every call

Fireflies.ai is the classic AI notetaker. Its bot joins scheduled calls on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and 10+ other platforms, including dialers such as Aircall and RingCentral, and Google Meet can also be recorded through a Chrome extension without the bot. You can upload MP3, MP4, WAV and M4A files. After each call you get a transcript, an AI summary with action items and a meeting you can search, share or ask questions about with AskFred, its AI assistant.

Pro ($10 per seat, or $18 monthly) adds unlimited AI summaries, 8,000 minutes of storage per seat, 720p video and downloads. Business ($19, or $29 monthly) adds unlimited storage, multi-language mode, conversation intelligence and a 3-hour recording limit; Enterprise ($39, annual only) adds 1080p video, SSO, SCIM and HIPAA.

Pick it if you want to start free and keep a searchable record of sales calls, interviews or client meetings that flows into your CRM. The downside: the free plan's 400 minutes of storage is shared by the whole team and has no downloads, and Free and Pro stop recording after 2 hours per meeting. Details are in our Fireflies.ai review.

Sembly AI: from meeting notes to client deliverables

Sembly AI joins Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Webex from your calendar, transcribes in 45+ languages with speakers named, and writes notes from 40+ templates. Decisions, risks and commitments are pulled out as key items, and tasks get an owner and a deadline. A mobile app records in-person meetings.

What sets it apart is the step after the notes. From one meeting or several, Sembly drafts proposals, status reports, QBR decks and follow-up emails. Each client gets its own space with a brand package, and the result exports as an editable .pptx or .docx file. That work uses monthly credits.

• Free Trial ($0): 1 user, 1 meeting hour per month, 5 clients, 2 months of history, 750 credits a month plus 1,750 one-time bonus credits.
• Basic ($10, or $17 monthly): exactly one user, unlimited meeting hours, 25 clients, 1 year of history, 2,500 credits a month.
• Pro ($20 per user, or $29 monthly): 1 to 40 users, 100 clients, 2 years of history, custom note templates, automations, webhooks and MCP access.
• MAX ($30 per user, or $39 monthly): 3 to 500 users, 500 clients, unlimited history, SSO, audit log and HIPAA.

Pick it if you are a consultant, agency or account manager who would otherwise turn every call into a report or deck by hand. The downside: the free plan covers just 1 meeting hour a month, unused credits expire at month end on Basic and Pro, and Free Trial and Basic don't capture video. More in our Sembly AI review.

Krisp: bot-free notes and clean audio

Krisp takes a different route. It installs on Mac or Windows and sits between your microphone and your call app, so it works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack Huddles and anything else you call from. Because it hears the audio directly, it can take notes with no bot in the meeting; a bot can still join if you prefer.

It also fixes the call itself: noise, nearby voices and echo are removed on both sides, and accent conversion softens your accent or makes others easier to understand. Notes, transcripts and summaries come in 16 languages, with action items sent to Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Notion or Zapier.

Core ($8 per user, or $16 monthly) includes the unlimited note taker, noise cancellation, 10 GB storage and 1 hour a day of accent conversion. Advanced ($15, or $30 monthly) raises storage to 60 GB and speaker-side accent conversion to 4 hours a day and adds Salesforce; Enterprise adds SSO/SCIM, on-device transcription and HIPAA.

Pick it if you take calls from noisy places, work across accents or don't want a notetaker visible to your clients. The downside: there is no free plan once the 7-day trial ends, fees are generally non-refundable after renewal, and noise cancellation is not in the mobile app yet. See our Krisp review.

Free plans and trials compared

If you want to try before you pay, the three options work differently:

• Fireflies Free has no time limit but caps storage at 400 minutes for the whole team, limits AI summaries and has no downloads. A busy team fills it fast.
• Sembly's $0 Free Trial plan doesn't expire, but gives you only 1 meeting hour a month: enough to see a summary and a generated deck.
• Krisp's 7-day trial opens every premium feature without a credit card. When it ends without a paid plan, access stops, and you have 90 days to export your content.

All three renew paid subscriptions automatically, and none promises a refund for the current period, so cancel before the renewal date if you are only testing.

Privacy, consent and meeting bots

Sembly's and Krisp's terms make you responsible for consent and recording laws; with any notetaker, tell people the meeting is recorded.

On data handling, Fireflies states SOC 2 Type II and GDPR compliance and that customer data is not used for AI training, with HIPAA on Enterprise with private storage. Sembly states SOC 2 Type II and GDPR, with HIPAA on MAX and Enterprise. Krisp states SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and HIPAA compliance and that meeting data is not used for AI training; on-device private transcription is an Enterprise option.

If a visible bot is the issue, Krisp records from your own device by default, and Fireflies can record Google Meet through its Chrome extension without a bot. Sembly works as a bot that joins from your calendar.

Fireflies alternatives you may also see

Other well-known notetakers you will see in the same search, per their pricing pages:

• Otter.ai has a free Basic plan with 300 transcription minutes a month and a 30-minute limit per conversation; Pro is listed at $8.33 per user per month billed annually.
• Fathom has a free plan for individuals with unlimited recordings and transcription; paid team plans require at least 2 users.
• tl;dv has a free plan with unlimited recordings but AI notes for only 10 meetings; Pro is $18 per seat per month billed annually.

Of the three tools in this guide, Krisp is the only one that also cleans up your audio. For more tools to run your team, see our best business software.