Spellar AI vs Fireflies.ai (2026)

Spellar AI

by Spellar LTD

Fireflies.ai

by Fireflies.ai

Pros

• ✓No bot joins calls: Spellar records natively on Mac, iPhone, and iPad audio without sending a participant into the meeting, eliminating the privacy concern and awkward presence that bot-based tools like Fireflies.ai, tl;dv, and Fathom introduce
• ✓Cross-meeting memory lets users query what was said across all past recordings with cited, sourced answers linked to the exact moment in the original transcript, rather than searching through individual session notes manually
• ✓Every premium AI model is included in the base subscription: GPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity are all available without additional cost and are switchable per meeting, per template, or per individual question

Limitations

• ⚠No free tier: Spellar Pro starts at $18.99 per month (or $11.99 per month annual) with no permanent free plan, unlike Fathom and Fireflies.ai which both offer free tiers with meaningful usage limits
• ⚠No SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 certification: Spellar covers UK GDPR and CCPA compliance but has not completed third-party security audits, which limits enterprise procurement in regulated industries where Fathom and Fireflies.ai have confirmed certifications
• ⚠Mac, iPhone, iPad, and web only: no Windows client means organizations on Windows-first environments cannot standardize on Spellar, and Windows users in mixed-device teams must use the web app which lacks native OS-level audio capture

Pros

• ✓Most comprehensive free tier in the meeting intelligence category with unlimited transcription, 100 plus language support, API access, and mobile app at $0: enabling enterprise-level evaluation before any financial commitment
• ✓SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance with BAA at Enterprise tier covers the widest range of regulated industries including healthcare, finance, and legal, with broader compliance coverage than most direct competitors
• ✓200 plus AI Apps for post-meeting automation including sales call analysis, objection tracking, content calendar generation, 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