Glimpse vs Fireflies
Fireflies is a cloud notetaker: a bot joins your calls, and summaries, search and analytics live in your Fireflies workspace. Glimpse records meetings on your own computer with no bot, transcribes them offline and labels every speaker locally. You get a full transcript and the audio, not AI notes.
Last updated October 29, 2026
The short answer
Pick Fireflies if
- You want AI summaries, action items and analytics across your team's meetings.
- You want a bot to join and record calendar meetings for you, even ones you skip.
- You want CRM and workspace integrations that push meeting notes around automatically.
- You're fine with meetings being transcribed and stored in the cloud.
Pick Glimpse if
- Nothing joins the call. Glimpse records your mic and your computer's audio, or only the apps you pick.
- Transcription and speaker labels run on your computer, so your audio isn't uploaded and it works offline.
- No storage caps or per-seat subscription. Recording is part of a one-time license.
- You talk in more than English. Whisper covers 99 languages and detects which one is spoken.
- Free, unlimited dictation in the same app, and the code is open source.
Side by side
| Feature | Glimpse | Fireflies |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free dictationRecording from $25 one-time | Free + paid plansPro $10 a seat a month billed yearly, or $18 monthly |
| Free tier | Unlimited dictationtwo-week free trial of recording | Unlimited transcription400 minutes of storage per team |
| Where meetings are transcribed | On your computercloud only if you add your own key | In the cloud |
| Works offline | Yesrecording, transcription and speakers | No |
| Bot in the call | Neverrecords your computer's audio | UsuallyChrome extension and desktop app can record without one |
| Speaker labels | Yes, on-deviceNVIDIA Nemotron 3 Diarization, up to 8 | Yesin the cloud |
| AI summaries and chat | Noexport Markdown to the AI tool you like | Yes |
| Keeps the audio | Yes, on your computeryour mic and the call on separate tracks | Yesin your Fireflies workspace |
| Languages | 25 to 99, detected automaticallydepends on the model; Whisper covers 99 | English firstSpanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and 100+ more in beta |
| Import audio and video files | Yes, in the Libraryno minute caps | Yes |
| Exports | TXT, MD, SRT, VTTall history as text, CSV or JSON | Yesplus integrations and an API |
| Dictation in any app | Yes, freeevery model, no limits | No |
| Open source | Yes, AGPL-3.0audit it on GitHub | No |
| Runs on | Mac, Windows | Web, desktop, Chrome, iOS, Android |
In detail
No notetaker in the call
Fireflies usually joins your meetings as a bot that everyone can see, and its Chrome extension and desktop app can record without one. Either way, the recording goes to Fireflies' cloud. Glimpse never joins a call. It records your microphone and your computer's audio, or only the apps you pick, like Zoom, Teams or the browser tab with Google Meet, and transcribes it on your computer. It also works for calls Fireflies can't join, like a Discord voice chat or a conversation in the room.
Who said what, on your computer
Your microphone and the call are kept on separate tracks, so your lines are always yours. NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Diarization then tells up to 8 voices apart on your Mac or PC, live while you record and again over the whole recording when you stop.
A transcript, not meeting intelligence
This is the real trade-off. Fireflies writes summaries and action items, tracks topics and talk time, and pushes notes into your CRM. Glimpse doesn't. It gives you a speaker-labeled transcript and the audio, which you can play back, search and export as text, Markdown, SRT or VTT. If you want a summary, hand the Markdown to the AI tool you trust. If team-wide meeting analytics are the point, Fireflies is the better fit.
Storage and seats vs. a one-time license
Fireflies' free plan transcribes without limit but keeps 400 minutes of recordings per team. Pro is $10 a seat a month billed yearly, or $18 month to month, with 8,000 minutes of storage per seat, and Business is $19 or $29. Glimpse stores recordings on your own disk, so there's no storage cap. Dictation is free, and recording comes with every license: $25 once for 1 device or $39 for up to 3, with a two-week free trial.
Sources checked
Comparison copy was checked against these public sources on October 29, 2026.
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