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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Fireflies Talk now on mobile. Tap the mic and dictate into any app, in 90+ languages. Unlimited on every plan. Fireflies.ai helps your team transcribe, summarize, search, and analyze voice conversations. Automatically record and transcribe meetings - Transcribe meetings across several video-conferencing apps, dialers, and audio files. - Easily invite Fireflies.ai notetaker to meetings on your calendar. - Fireflies captures video + audio and generates transcripts in minutes. - Integrates with apps like Google Meet, Zoom, Teams, Webex, RingCentral, Aircall, and other platforms. Find anything with AI-powered search - Review a 1-hour meeting in 5 minutes. - With 1 click, see action items, tasks, questions, and other key metrics. - Filter and listen to key topics discussed in your meetings. Collaborate with your co-workers - Create soundbites and easily share the most memorable moments from meetings. - Use AskFred to answer questions, summarize key moments, or create content. - Send meeting notes to your favorite collaboration apps like Slack, Notion, Asana, and more. Analyze meetings using Conversation Intelligence - Track speaker talk time, sentiment, monologues, and other key metrics to coach teammates. - Identify objections, competitors, and other topics that you can customize. - Measure performance and improve your sales, recruiting, and internal processes.
Read AI
This app records audio from your device and generates real-time AI-powered transcripts and summaries. It's ideal for capturing lectures, meetings, or brainstorming sessions, providing comprehensive reports that can be shared or kept private.
- Live transcription and summaries
- Speaker detection
- In-person meeting recording
- Integration with communication channels
- Cross-platform sync
- Meeting notifications
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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 update cadence (every 8 days vs every 3 weeks) and ratings volume (5.4K vs 1.1K). On price, rating, ads and in-app purchases 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 5.4K 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 8 days, Read AI every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and November 4, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Fireflies | Read AI |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (5.4K ratings) | 4.9 (1.1K ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 54.2% of reviews | 68.5% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 5.4K — better | 1.1K |
| Update frequency | Every 8 days — better | Every 3 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Freemium | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 102 MB | 38 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Fireflies.ai | Read AI |
Customer experience
Fireflies
Read AI
User reviews
Fireflies
From 5.4K 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







