Comparison

Fireflies vs Read AI

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

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.

Highlights
  • 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
Features
Read full description

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.

About

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.

Highlights
  • Live transcription and summaries
  • Speaker detection
  • In-person meeting recording
  • Integration with communication channels
  • Cross-platform sync
  • Meeting notifications
Read full description

Instantly capture audio from your iPhone and view a real-time AI-generated transcript and summary with Read AI. When you meet in-person, open up Read AI, and start to record the audio from the conversation allowing you to skip manually writing notes on paper or in your notes app. Sitting in a lecture, meeting a client in person, or talking out loud to capture an idea, Read AI will record, transcribe, and summarize the audio in real time. After the conversation is complete, Read will generate a comprehensive report that you can keep private, or share with others. Notes generated from your iOS device are displayed side-by-side with your Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams meetings within the app. Key Features: Live Transcription & Summaries Get accurate, real-time transcriptions and concise summaries to stay focused on what matters. Never ask the question again, what did we talk about? Unique Speaker Detection Read AI recognizes each speaker as a unique contributor in the AI, allowing you to distinguish one speaker from another. Enhanced Recording for In-Person Meetings New capabilities for recording and summarizing face-to-face discussions and brainstorming sessions. Seamless Integration Connects with your favorite communication channels like Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Teams, and CRM systems to simplify sharing and reviewing your notes. Cross-Platform Sync Access your notes and summaries across devices, ensuring you never miss a detail. This includes meetings on Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. Notifications Never miss recording a meeting with iOS notifications that remind you of upcoming meetings, and new meeting reports, and provide a recap before a recurring meeting—no more regrets about not recording a conversation or taking notes.

Screenshots

Fireflies4 screens
Read AI4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is monetization model: Read AI at free against Fireflies's freemium. Read AI also leads on review sentiment (68% vs 55%). Fireflies's advantage is ratings volume (5K vs 929) and device support (3 vs 1). 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

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 5K ratings behind it against 929, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 55% of Fireflies's written reviews are positive against 68% of Read AI's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Fireflies ships an update every 2 weeks, Read AI every 3 weeks. Both last shipped on September 23, 2026.

Scorecard5 real differences · 5 level
Fireflies versus Read AI: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterFirefliesRead AI
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (5K ratings)4.9 (929 ratings) — better
Positive reviews54.9% of reviews68.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings5K — better929
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeks — betterEvery 3 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreemiumFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone
Requires iOS15.1 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size51 MB37 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperFireflies.aiRead AI

Customer experience

Fireflies

All ratings4,968 ratings
Positive95.9%
Neutral1.6%
Negative2.5%
Written reviews122 reviews
Positive54.9%
Neutral4.1%
Negative41.0%

Read AI

All ratings929 ratings
Positive98.1%
Neutral0.8%
Negative1.2%
Written reviews50 reviews
Positive68.0%
Neutral2.0%
Negative30.0%

User reviews

Fireflies

From 5K App Store ratings

What 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 929 App Store ratings

What 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

None

Fireflies

No in-app purchases

None

Read AI

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Fireflies free?
Fireflies is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Read AI free?
Read AI is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Fireflies or Read AI?
Read AI is rated higher. Fireflies averages 4.8 out of 5 from 5K ratings, while Read AI averages 4.9 from 929 ratings.
Do Fireflies or Read AI have ads?
Neither Fireflies nor Read AI shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Fireflies or Read AI?
Fireflies ships an update every 2 weeks, and Read AI every 3 weeks. Most recently, Fireflies was updated on September 23, 2026 and Read AI on September 23, 2026.

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