# Fireflies.ai vs Shadow

Fireflies.ai records 4,411,502 monthly visits with +3% month-over-month growth and Freemium pricing. Shadow records 17,796 monthly visits with -4.4% growth and Freemium pricing.

| Metric | [Fireflies.ai](https://openaitools.app/tool/fireflies-ai) | [Shadow](https://openaitools.app/tool/shadow) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://fireflies.ai | https://www.shadow.do |
| Categories | AI Meeting Assistant, AI Note Taker, AI Transcription, AI Summarizer | AI Meeting Assistant, AI Transcription, AI Note Taker, AI Summarizer |
| Pricing Model | Freemium | Freemium |
| Monthly Visits | 4,411,502 | 17,796 |
| MoM Growth Rate | +3% | -4.4% |
| Primary Market | United States | United States |
| Direct Visits | 2,268,362 | 7,167 |
| Review Score | 4.1 | 4.3 |
| Saved Count | 16 | 1 |
| Supported Platforms | Website | Website |

## Fireflies.ai

Fireflies.ai began as one of the first bots that would quietly join a video call, record it, and return a searchable transcript. That core still exists, but the product has expanded into a broader work assistant, marketed under the persona 'Fred'. Fred captures meetings and takes notes, can be tagged in Slack to answer questions or catch people up, drafts and sorts email, tracks action items, and searches across a company's scattered knowledge so answers surface with citations.\n\nThe platform integrates broadly, which is a large part of its appeal: 240+ connectors covering Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Gmail and Outlook, Slack and Notion, HubSpot and Salesforce, and project tools like Jira, Asana and Trello. Conversation analytics turn call recordings into deal-health signals, team trends and coaching material, while live assist surfaces answers and suggestions during the call itself. A Chrome extension, mobile apps and voice agents extend capture beyond scheduled meetings.\n\nOn pricing, Fireflies runs a freemium model: a free tier with a monthly transcription allowance and limited storage, then Business and Enterprise plans that add more storage, analytics, admin controls and security options. The company advertises ISO 42001, SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, HIPAA and FERPA alignment, and states that customer meetings and transcripts are not used to train AI models.

**Pricing & Plans:** Freemium. A free plan covers a limited monthly transcription allowance and basic summaries; paid Business and Enterprise tiers add storage, analytics, admin controls and compliance features. Check fireflies.ai for current prices.

- **AI notetaker:** Automatically joins Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and other calls to record, transcribe with speaker labels, and write summaries with decisions and action items.
- **AI assistant across apps:** Ask questions in Slack or the app and get answers drawn from past meetings, email and connected work tools, with links back to the source.
- **Conversation analytics:** Track deal health, talk-time trends, sentiment and topics across calls to inform sales, recruiting and coaching decisions.
- **240+ integrations:** Connects to conferencing, email, CRM, project management, storage and collaboration tools so notes and tasks flow where your team already works.
- **Live assist and voice agents:** Get real-time suggestions during a call, and set up voice agents to handle routine calls and interviews at scale.

**Strengths:** Works across major conferencing platforms with minimal setup; Strong search and analytics layer on top of transcripts, not just raw notes; Extensive integrations with CRM, project management and collaboration tools; Mature compliance posture including SOC 2 Type II and a stated no-training-on-customer-data policy

**Limitations:** Free plan limits storage and advanced analytics, so teams outgrow it quickly; Recording bots joining calls can feel intrusive unless participants are notified; Accuracy varies with audio quality, accents and heavy cross-talk

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/fireflies-ai.md)

## Shadow

Shadow starts from a complaint many knowledge workers share about meeting assistants: the bot that joins your call, the note-taker that locks your history behind a subscription, and the data that leaves your machine for someone else's servers. Shadow's answer is a native Mac app that operates entirely in the background. It has no bot that joins the meeting, auto-detects when a call begins, records and transcribes it locally, and stops on its own when the call ends. Speaker identification is done in real time, so transcripts arrive labelled with who said what.

The output is deliberately portable. Every meeting is written to your Mac as Markdown — transcripts, notes, and Skill results — with every call and every person linked into a knowledge base. You can open the folder as an Obsidian vault, sync it with iCloud Drive or Google Drive, search it with Spotlight, or point any AI agent at it. Shadow emphasises that there is a built-in advantage: because agents read the raw files rather than a connector's filtered view, tools like Claude, Codex, or OpenClaw get the complete context.

Between calls, Shadow is more than a note-taker. Press a keyboard shortcut on any screen and it can see what you're looking at, hear what you say, or read selected text, then run an Action Skill to produce an email, a set of notes, or code. Skills are just prompts you can edit or write from scratch, and a webhook can forward results to Zapier, n8n, or Make. The privacy stance is equally concrete: transcription is local, audio does not leave the device, meeting content is never used for model training, and you choose which Skills are allowed to call AI at all.

**Pricing & Plans:** Shadow is free to start, and the developer's stated policy is that every meeting is saved to your Mac as Markdown with no history limit on any plan — you keep the files even if you stop paying. For current paid tiers, check the pricing page inside the app.

- **Bot-free auto recording:** Shadow detects when a call starts, records automatically, and stops at the end — no bot in the meeting, nothing to remember to press.
- **On-device transcription:** Transcription runs on your Mac, with real-time speaker identification so you always know who said what.
- **Markdown you own:** Every call is saved as a clean .md file locally, openable as an Obsidian vault, backed up with iCloud or Drive, or searchable by Spotlight.
- **Meeting and Action Skills:** Run prompts on a completed call (notes, BANT, follow-ups, summaries) plus shortcut-driven actions on your screen between meetings.
- **Webhooks and automation:** A webhook pushes transcripts and Skill results into Zapier, n8n, or Make so meetings feed your existing workflows.

**Strengths:** No bot joins your call, so meetings stay natural; Local, on-device transcription with no history limits; Meetings stored as portable Markdown that works with Obsidian and AI agents; Flexible Skills you can edit or write from scratch

**Limitations:** Mac-only — there is no Windows or web app; Local-first storage means you manage your own folder, sync, and backups; By design it records without a bot, so you are responsible for getting consent from other participants; Skill output quality still depends on prompt craft, though Skills ship with sensible defaults

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/shadow.md)

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How do Fireflies.ai and Shadow compare in monthly traffic?

Fireflies.ai has 4,411,502 monthly visits, while Shadow has 17,796. Traffic estimates describe audience size, not product quality.

### How do their growth rates compare?

Fireflies.ai has a month-over-month growth rate of +3%; Shadow has -4.4%.

### How does pricing compare?

Fireflies.ai: Freemium. Freemium. A free plan covers a limited monthly transcription allowance and basic summaries; paid Business and Enterprise tiers add storage, analytics, admin controls and compliance features. Check fireflies.ai for current prices. Shadow: Freemium. Shadow is free to start, and the developer's stated policy is that every meeting is saved to your Mac as Markdown with no history limit on any plan — you keep the files even if you stop paying. For current paid tiers, check the pricing page inside the app.

## Alternatives

| # | Tool Name | Monthly Visits | MoM Growth Rate | Pricing Model | Summary | Profile (Markdown) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 1 | [TurboScribe](https://openaitools.app/tool/turboscribe-ai) | 27,661,771 | +2.1% | Freemium | Unlimited AI transcription of audio and video in 98+ languages | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/turboscribe-ai.md) |
| 2 | [Otter AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/otter-ai) | 7,360,981 | +9.6% | Freemium | AI meeting agent that transcribes, summarises, and turns every conversation into searchable knowledge | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/otter-ai.md) |
| 3 | [Tactiq](https://openaitools.app/tool/tactiq) | 6,521,542 | +4.1% | Freemium | Transcribes meetings live via browser extension without requiring an external bot participant, but relies on active browser tabs. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/tactiq.md) |
| 4 | [Fathom](https://openaitools.app/tool/fathom-2-0) | 5,620,385 | +0.2% | Freemium, Free Trial | AI notetaker that records, transcribes and summarizes meetings — bot-free | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/fathom-2-0.md) |
| 5 | [Read Speaker Coach](https://openaitools.app/tool/read-speaker-coach) | 4,071,302 | -4.8% | Freemium, Paid | Meeting summaries, transcripts, and AI search that turn meetings into outcomes | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/read-speaker-coach.md) |
| 6 | [Notta](https://openaitools.app/tool/notta) | 2,585,354 | +2% | Freemium, Paid, Contact for Pricing | Delivers strong transcription accuracy across many languages, but lacks some of Fireflies's advanced team knowledge-base search features. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/notta.md) |
| 7 | [tl;dv](https://openaitools.app/tool/tldv-io) | 1,396,729 | +1.9% | Freemium | Excels at capturing and clipping video highlights across global platforms, but offers slightly less deep conversation analytics. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/tldv-io.md) |
| 8 | [Noota](https://openaitools.app/tool/noota) | 283,526 | +3.3% | Freemium, Paid, Contact for Pricing | Bot-free AI meeting assistant hosted in Europe | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/noota.md) |
| 9 | [Circleback](https://openaitools.app/tool/circleback) | 272,906 | +12.5% | Free Trial | AI notetaker and company brain that turns every meeting into searchable knowledge | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/circleback.md) |
| 10 | [Avoma](https://openaitools.app/tool/avoma-ai-meeting-assistant) | 193,867 | +7.5% | Freemium, Free Trial, Paid | All-in-one AI meeting assistant for revenue teams | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/avoma-ai-meeting-assistant.md) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/fireflies-ai-vs-shadow

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