Shadow vs Fireflies.ai (2026)

Shadow

by Taper Labs

Fireflies.ai

by Fireflies.ai

Pros

• ✓Bot-free architecture means no visible participant ever joins meetings, a significant differentiator for client-facing sales calls, regulated industries, and confidential conversations where vendor bots create trust friction or compliance issues.
• ✓Captures both audio and on-screen content through smart screenshots where every other major meeting AI (Fathom, Fireflies, Granola, Otter.ai) captures audio only, critical for design reviews, product demos, and slide-driven presentations where screen context changes meaning.
• ✓Shadow 2.0 auto-execute Skills run post-meeting actions (PDF creation, slide generation, CRM updates, follow-up emails, scheduling) automatically with no manual button press, putting Shadow among the few meeting tools in the autonomous-action-taking category rather than just transcription.

Limitations

• ⚠Mac-only with no Windows or mobile support: this excludes Windows-heavy organizations and mobile-first users and is the single most-cited gap in public user feedback; teams with mixed Mac and Windows environments cannot standardize on Shadow.
• ⚠No first-party SOC 2 certification and no public security or trust page: procurement teams requiring vendor-confirmed SOC 2 should use Fathom (SOC 2 Type II) or Fireflies (SOC 2 Type II) instead; Shadow's privacy posture relies on local on-device transcription plus OpenAI Enterprise Policy for AI features.
• ⚠Integration depth is Zapier-dependent rather than native: connecting Shadow outputs to Salesforce, HubSpot, Notion, or Linear requires a separate Zapier subscription and webhook configuration, adding cost and setup complexity versus competitors with direct native integrations.

Pros

• ✓Most comprehensive free tier in the meeting intelligence category with unlimited transcription, unlimited AI summaries, and 100-plus language support at $0, enabling enterprise-level evaluation before any financial commitment.
• ✓SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance with a BAA at the Enterprise tier covers a wide range of regulated industries including healthcare, finance, and legal.
• ✓The 200-plus AI Apps for post-meeting automation, including sales call analysis, objection tracking, and BANT and MEDDIC extraction, provide workflow depth well beyond simple transcription.

Limitations

• ⚠AI credits are a one-time shared workspace pool that does not reset monthly; heavy users of AskFred and advanced AI summaries exhaust the allotment quickly, triggering auto-recharge at $5 per 50 credits unless explicitly disabled
• ⚠Notetaker bot joins meetings as a named participant on most plans; a Chrome extension provides bot-free recording as an alternative, but the bot remains the default and most visible capture method, which can create friction in sensitive client-facing calls
• ⚠Video recording is locked behind Business at $19 per seat per month annual, meaning teams that need to review screen content alongside transcripts must upgrade past Pro even for moderate usage needs