Fireflies.ai vs AssemblyAI
A feature-by-feature comparison of Fireflies.ai and AssemblyAI across 7 capability categories.
Modalities — Tie
| Feature | Fireflies.ai | AssemblyAI |
|---|---|---|
Text Input | Yes, requires free plan. AskFred answers questions over your meeting library in the web app. | Partial. Prompts steer Speech Understanding. Primary input is audio. |
Image Upload / Vision | No. Meeting recorder, not a vision model. | No. Speech platform, not vision. |
Image Generation | No. Does not generate images. | No. Does not generate images. |
Voice Mode | Partial. Captures spoken meetings. Not a two-way voice assistant. | Yes, requires plus plan. Voice Agent WebSocket is a conversational speech product. |
Video Understanding | No. Records call audio. It does not watch the video as a vision model. | No. Audio/speech focus. |
Video Generation | No. Not a video generation product. | No. Not a video generation product. |
File Upload (PDF, DOCX) | Partial. Upload recordings. Not a general PDF chat product. | Partial. Upload audio/video files for async transcription. |
Code Execution | No. Not a code sandbox. | No. STT APIs, not a code sandbox. |
Audio Input | Yes, requires free plan. Records Zoom, Meet, Teams and more. Free plan exists; Pro/Business add minutes and integrations. | Yes, requires plus plan. Realtime and batch STT are the core product. |
Canvas / Artifact Editor | No. Transcript UI, not a canvas. | No. Not a canvas product. |
Screen Sharing / Computer Use | No. No computer-use takeover. | No. No computer-use product. |
Memory & Context — Tie
| Feature | Fireflies.ai | AssemblyAI |
|---|---|---|
Persistent Memory | Partial. AskFred searches past meetings. Not a personal-facts memory profile. | Partial. Voice Agent retains session context during a call. |
Large Context Window | No. Limits are storage/minutes, not an LLM token window. | Unknown. Agent context limits were not checked. |
Custom Instructions | Unknown. Custom vocabulary was not re-checked on the pricing table. | Yes, requires plus plan. Configure Voice Agent prompts and guardrails. |
Conversation History | Yes, requires free plan. Meetings and AskFred threads persist in the account. | Partial. Transcripts stored per job. Realtime is per-session. |
Integrations — Fireflies.ai Wins
| Feature | Fireflies.ai | AssemblyAI |
|---|---|---|
Web Search / Browsing | No. Searches your conversations, not the live web. | Unknown. Web search in Voice Agent was not confirmed. |
Plugins / Extensions | Yes, requires pro plan. Integrations (CRM, etc.) on paid; Zapier listed. Not a GPT plugin store. | Partial. LLM Gateway and integrations connect upstream models. |
API Access | Yes, requires pro plan. API is listed on Business in the public pricing comparison. | Yes, requires plus plan. REST and WebSocket APIs for STT and Voice Agent. |
Zapier Integration | Yes, requires pro plan. Zapier is listed among Fireflies integrations. | Unknown. Zapier listing was not checked. |
Custom GPTs / Bots | No. No custom-GPT store. | Yes, requires plus plan. Voice Agent is a deployable speech bot. |
Real-time Collaboration | Partial. Shared meeting workspace. Not a multiplayer AI doc. | No. No multiplayer product. |
Live Social Data Integration | No. No live social firehose. | No. No social firehose. |
Live Citation Mapping | No. Citations are to your meetings. | No. Not a cited-search product. |
Developer — Tie
| Feature | Fireflies.ai | AssemblyAI |
|---|---|---|
Function Calling | Unknown. AskFred is Q&A. A developer function-calling API was not separately confirmed. | Partial. Voice Agent can call tools via LLM Gateway. |
Streaming Responses | Yes, requires free plan. Live notes during the call. | Yes, requires plus plan. Realtime STT streams partial transcripts over WebSocket. |
Fine-Tuning | No. You do not train Fireflies’ models. | Unknown. Custom STT was not confirmed on homepage. |
Embeddings API | No. Not an embeddings API product. | No. Not an embeddings product. |
Structured Output (JSON) | Partial. Summaries, action items, conversation intelligence. Not arbitrary JSON schema. | Partial. Speech Understanding returns structured entities and summaries. |
Reasoning / Thinking Mode | No. AskFred is retrieval over meetings, not a Deep Think mode. | No. Not a reasoning LLM. |
Local Execution | No. Cloud SaaS. | No. Cloud-only STT. Distinct from self-hosted Whisper. |
Open Weights | No. Closed models. | No. Proprietary models and APIs. |
Multi-Agent Orchestration | No. Not an orchestrator. | No. Single voice agent per session. |
Platforms — Fireflies.ai Wins
| Feature | Fireflies.ai | AssemblyAI |
|---|---|---|
Web App | Yes, requires free plan. fireflies.ai web app. | Partial. Dashboard for API keys and playground. |
iOS App | Yes, requires free plan. iOS app is listed. | No. No iOS app. |
Android App | Yes, requires free plan. Android app is listed. | No. No Android app. |
Desktop App | Yes, requires free plan. Desktop app is listed alongside the Chrome extension. | No. No desktop app. |
Chrome Extension | Yes, requires free plan. Chrome extension for bot-free capture. | No. No Chrome extension. |
Privacy — Fireflies.ai Wins
| Feature | Fireflies.ai | AssemblyAI |
|---|---|---|
GDPR Compliant | Yes, requires free plan. Pricing page lists GDPR (and SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA). | Unknown. Compliance docs were not re-read. |
Opt Out of Data Training | Yes, requires free plan. Pricing page: they do not train on your data. | Unknown. Training policy was not checked. |
Enterprise Privacy Mode | Yes, requires enterprise plan. SSO, SOC 2, HIPAA listed. Seat dollars were not extracted from the public table. | Yes, requires enterprise plan. Guardrails, EU data residency options, and enterprise contracts. |
Workspaces — Tie
| Feature | Fireflies.ai | AssemblyAI |
|---|---|---|
Projects / Folders | Unknown. Overlapping columns disagreed (partial vs yes); left unverified rather than copying a no. | Partial. Dashboard organizes API keys and usage. |