Minutes vs Fireflies.ai: a team platform, or your own machine?
Fireflies is built for teams: a bot joins your calls, everything lands in one searchable workspace, and it plugs into the rest of your stack. Minutes is built for one person who would rather the recording never left their Mac. Both turn meetings into notes; almost nothing else about them is the same.
Last updated: July 2026
Full disclosure: this page is published by the makers of Minutes. Fireflies.ai's prices and limits below are taken from Fireflies.ai's own pages, checked in July 2026, and the things it genuinely does better are listed as plainly as our own side.
The short version
Pick Fireflies.ai if you need one searchable record the whole team can reach, integrations into your CRM and chat tools, and a bot that attends calls you are not in.
Pick Minutes if the meetings are yours, the audio should stay on your machine, and you want the notes as files rather than rows in somebody's database.
Side by side
| Minutes | Fireflies.ai | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $29.99 one-time | Free, or $10 to $39 per seat per month |
| Where the audio goes | Nowhere. It stays on your Mac | Fireflies' cloud |
| Free tier | 7-day trial, then it is yours or it is not | Unlimited transcription, 400 minutes of storage per team |
| Storage limits | Your own disk | 400 minutes per team on the free plan |
| Works offline | Entirely | |
| Joins calls for you | You are in the meeting yourself | A bot joins |
| Where notes live | Plain Markdown in a folder you own | Fireflies' workspace |
| Integrations | It writes to Calendar and Reminders on your Mac | CRM, Slack, and many more |
| Platforms | macOS 26, Apple Silicon | Web, Mac, Windows, mobile |
Where Fireflies.ai is better
- It is built for teams. One workspace, search across everyone's calls, and an assistant that answers questions about them. Minutes is deliberately a single-person tool.
- It joins meetings you skip. The bot attends and reports back. Minutes only hears what your own Mac hears.
- Integrations. It pushes summaries into a CRM, Slack and the rest of the stack. Minutes writes to your Calendar and Reminders and stops there.
- Unlimited transcription at $0. The free plan transcribes without a cap, with storage limited to 400 minutes per team. That is a real way to start.
Where Minutes is better
- Nothing is uploaded. Recording, transcription and the summary run on your Mac with the models inside macOS. There is no server involved at any point, so nothing to trust and nothing to breach.
- No seats, no meter. $29.99 once, no per-seat bill and no storage cap: the audio is on your own disk, so the limit is your disk.
- The notes outlive the app. One Markdown file per meeting in a folder you chose. Cancel nothing, export nothing, they are already yours.
- Both sides kept apart by channel. Your microphone and the audio your Mac plays are separate channels, so attribution is a fact rather than a guess.
The pricing math
Fireflies is free with unlimited transcription and 400 minutes of storage per team. Pro is $18 per seat per month, or $10 billed annually. Business is $29 and $19, Enterprise $39 annually. Minutes is $29.99 once.
One seat on Fireflies Pro costs more in three months than owning Minutes outright, and a five person team passes it in three weeks. What you buy for that is the shared workspace and the integrations, which Minutes does not have. If none of that is what you needed, you are renting infrastructure to solve a personal problem.
FAQ
How much does Fireflies.ai cost?
Free with unlimited transcription and 400 minutes of storage per team. Pro is $18 per seat per month or $10 billed annually, Business $29 and $19, Enterprise $39 annually. Prices from fireflies.ai/pricing, July 2026.
Does Fireflies record without joining the call?
Its capture is bot-based: an assistant joins the meeting. Minutes instead records the audio your own Mac plays and hears, while you are in the call.
Is there a private alternative to Fireflies for Mac?
Minutes, which does the same transcription and summarizing on your own machine with the models that ship inside macOS, so nothing is uploaded.
Do I need an account for Minutes?
You need one to download it and to carry your licence, which is what lets a purchase unlock every Mac you sign in on. The recording and the notes never touch it.
Which Macs does Minutes run on?
macOS 26 on Apple Silicon. That floor is why there is nothing to download and nothing to upload.
Keep the meeting on your Mac
Both sides transcribed, the summary written on device, decisions and promises pulled out with an Add button. Markdown in a folder you own. $29.99 once.
Get Minutes, $29.99 Try free for 7 daysmacOS 26 on Apple Silicon · nothing uploaded, ever · 7-day trial, no card up front
More comparisons: Best Mac meeting notes apps in 2026 · vs Granola · vs Otter.ai · vs Fathom · vs tl;dv · vs Notion AI · Private, on-device notes · Notes without a bot · Minutes overview