Fireflies vs Read AI
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Fireflies
This AI-powered tool automatically records, transcribes, and summarizes your voice conversations and meetings. It allows you to search through transcripts, extract key information like action items, and collaborate with your team by sharing soundbites and insights. Analyze meeting performance to improve various business processes.
- Automatic meeting recording and transcription
- AI-powered search for key topics and action items
- Meeting summarization in minutes
- Integration with video conferencing and collaboration apps
- Conversation intelligence for performance analysis
- Create and share meeting soundbites
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Meet Fred, your AI teammate from Fireflies. Fred takes your meeting notes, preps you for every meeting, tracks your tasks, and types what you say in any app. Record any conversation in one tap, in person or on a call, and get the transcript, summary and action items in seconds. NEW: FIREFLIES TALK Say it instead of typing it. Tap the mic on the Fireflies Keyboard and clean, punctuated text lands in any app: Messages, Mail, Slack, Notes and more. 90+ languages. Unlimited on every plan. Talk requires iOS 18 or later. RECORD AND TRANSCRIBE ANYWHERE • One tap to record in-person meetings, interviews, lectures and coffee chats • Invite the Fireflies notetaker to your Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls from your calendar • Accurate transcripts in 100+ languages, with speaker labels, ready in seconds SUMMARIES YOU CAN ACT ON • AI summaries organized by topic, with action items and key decisions • Search across every meeting to find exactly what was said • Clip soundbites and share the moments that matter YOUR AI TEAMMATE, EVERY DAY • Daily Brief: start each morning with action items, topics and open questions from your meetings • Meeting Prep: see what happened last time and what's still open before your next call • Tasks: action items tracked automatically from every conversation ASK FRED ANYTHING, OR PUT FRED IN CHARGE • Ask Fred anything about one meeting or all of them • Answers link to the exact moment it was said • Put Fred in charge of the busy work: draft a follow-up, update your CRM, prep you for a call, or summarize your week WORKS WITH YOUR TOOLS • Send notes to Slack, Notion, your CRM and more PRIVACY AND SECURITY Fireflies Talk: Dictations are stored on the user’s device. Fireflies doesn’t keep a copy, and no one else at Fireflies or in the user’s workspace can see them. Dictations are never used to train models. Fireflies is SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and HIPAA compliant, and ISO/IEC 42001 certified. Questions? support@fireflies.ai
Read AI
This app acts as an AI notetaker, transcribing and summarizing in-person conversations and meetings in real-time. It identifies speakers, generates reports, and integrates with popular communication platforms for easy sharing and organization.
- Real-time transcription and summaries
- Speaker identification
- Built for in-person meetings
- Easy sharing to multiple platforms
- Syncs notes across devices
- Meeting reminders
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Record any in-person conversation and get a transcript, summary, and action items when you're done. Read AI turns your iPhone into an AI notetaker for client meetings, interviews, lectures, and brainstorms. Open Read AI, tap record, and stay in the conversation. Read transcribes and summarizes in real time, then builds a full report you can keep private or share with others. Your in-person notes appear next to your Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams meeting reports, so everything you discussed lives in one place. Key Features: Live Transcription and Summaries Follow along with a real-time transcript and get a concise summary at the end, so you never have to ask what was decided. Speaker Detection Read AI tells speakers apart, so you can see who said what. Built for In-Person Meetings Record face-to-face meetings, classes, and brainstorming sessions without opening a laptop. Easy Sharing Send your notes to Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Teams, and your CRM to share and review them. Sync Across Devices Access your notes and summaries on any device, alongside your Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams meetings. Meeting Reminders Get notified before upcoming meetings, when a new report is ready, and with a recap before recurring meetings, so you never forget to record.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is monetization model: Read AI at free against Fireflies's freemium. Read AI also leads on review sentiment (69% vs 54%). Fireflies's advantage is ratings volume (5.5K vs 1.1K) and iOS requirement (16.4 vs 18.0). On price, rating, update cadence and ads there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.8 for Fireflies against 4.9 for Read AI. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Fireflies has 5.5K ratings behind it against 1.1K, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 54% of Fireflies's written reviews are positive against 69% of Read AI's.
Fireflies ships an update every 2 weeks, Read AI every 3 weeks. Both last shipped on November 14, 2026.
| Parameter | Fireflies | Read AI |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (5.5K ratings) | 4.9 (1.1K ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 54.1% of reviews | 69.1% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 5.5K — better | 1.1K |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks — better | Every 3 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Freemium | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 16.4 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 117 MB | 39 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Fireflies.ai | Read AI |
Customer experience
Fireflies
Read AI
User reviews
Fireflies
From 5.5K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Excellent transcription and summary quality
- 👍 User-friendly and pleasant to use
- 💡 Great AI-powered features
- 🚀 Efficient for meeting notes and task management
- 👍 Helpful customer service
Room to improve
- 🐛 Inconsistent recording and transcription reliability
- 🔒 Privacy concerns with calendar access
- 🐛 Buggy and glitchy performance
- 🔒 Forced login with Google/Microsoft accounts
- 🐛 Lost recordings and corrupted files
Read AI
From 1.1K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Productivity booster
- 👍 Great app
- 👍 Useful features
- 👍 Convenient mobile access
- 👍 Helpful for in-person meetings
Room to improve
- 🔒 Privacy concerns
- 🐛 Buggy with playback and other functions
- 🐛 App loading issues
Bugs and requests
Fireflies
Reported bugs
4 issues- Crashes during live recordings
- Recordings disappearing after upload
- Inability to log in from iPhone
- Transcription failures for some meetings
Requested features
4 requests- On-device settings for audio controls
- Automatic meeting title generation
- Improved summarization of key contributions
- Standalone login option without calendar access
Read AI
Reported bugs
1 issue- Uploading issues causing lost recordings
Requested features
4 requests- Chromecast and AirPlay support
- Full-screen video playback
- Cloud sync for transcripts and summaries
- Better mobile support and file format compatibility
In-app purchases
Fireflies
No in-app purchases
Read AI
No in-app purchases







