Shadow vs Fireflies.ai (2026)

Shadow

by Taper Labs

Fireflies.ai

by Fireflies.ai

Pros

• ✓Bot-free architecture means no visible participant 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 captures audio only, critical for design reviews, product demos, and slide-driven presentations
• ✓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, which excludes Windows-heavy organisations and mobile-first users; this is the single most-cited gap in public user feedback across Product Hunt and G2
• ⚠Free tier is 25 lifetime meetings rather than 25 monthly meetings, so users hit the AI features cap quickly and must upgrade to Plus at $8 per month for continued use
• ⚠Shadow holds no first-party SOC 2 certification; privacy posture relies on local on-device processing for transcription plus third-party SOC 2-certified APIs (OpenAI Enterprise Policy) for AI features, which may not satisfy procurement teams requiring vendor-direct certifications

Pros

• ✓Most comprehensive free tier in the meeting intelligence category with unlimited transcription, 100+ language support, API access, and mobile app at $0 -- enabling enterprise-level evaluation before commitment
• ✓SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance (Enterprise with BAA) covers the widest range of regulated industries including healthcare, finance, and legal -- broader compliance coverage than most direct competitors
• ✓200+ AI apps for post-meeting automation including sales call analysis, objection tracking, content calendar generation, and user research recording provide workflow depth well beyond simple transcription

Limitations

• ⚠AI credits are a one-time shared workspace pool that does not reset monthly on any plan -- heavy users of AskFred and advanced AI summaries exhaust the allotment and face unexpected upgrade pressure or additional credit purchases
• ⚠Visible Notetaker bot joins meetings as a named participant on all plans, which can create friction in sensitive client-facing calls; the Chrome extension bot-free alternative is available but less capable than the primary bot experience
• ⚠Video recording is locked behind Business at $19/seat/month annual -- teams needing to review what was shown on screen as well as what was said must upgrade past Pro even for moderate usage