Comparison
A Fireflies.ai alternative with no bot and no AI credits
Fireflies.ai is built for revenue teams: a bot joins every call, everything lands in a searchable team database, and it syncs to your CRM. If that is your job, it is a reasonable tool. If you just want your own meetings written down properly, you are paying for a lot of machinery you will never open.
Leave Fireflies if you do not need the CRM and the team database, and you would rather not have a bot in the attendee list or your audio in someone's cloud.
Stay with Fireflies if your team's pipeline genuinely runs through it. Nothing local replaces CRM sync and cross-team conversation search.
You are probably paying for the sales stack
Fireflies' real product is the layer above the transcript: conversation intelligence across a whole team, CRM records updated from calls, coaching signals, AskFred answering questions over the workspace. That is valuable if you run a sales org.
If you are an individual, a founder, a PM or an engineer, you open roughly none of it. You wanted the meeting written down and the commitments captured, and you ended up with a bot in every call and a subscription tuned to a use case that is not yours.
The credit model catches people out
Every Fireflies plan includes unlimited transcription and unlimited AI summaries, which sounds like the end of the story. It is not. AI features draw on a one-time shared workspace credit pool rather than a monthly per-user allowance: 20 on Pro, 30 on Business, 50 on Enterprise, with add-on bundles sold separately. Teams that lean on summaries, action items and AskFred hit that wall and then budget for top-ups.
TNN has no transcription credits or separate AI surcharge. Recording, transcription, live notes, dictation and your archive work with no account at all. When you choose Generate with Claude and send the prompt in Claude Desktop, Anthropic processes the meeting text through your Claude account. There is nothing for TNN to meter.
| Fireflies.ai | TNN | |
|---|---|---|
| Bot in the participant list | Yes, Fred joins the call | No, captures system audio |
| AI feature metering | Shared workspace credit pools, add-on bundles sold separately | None |
| Where transcription runs | Fireflies' cloud | On your Mac, on the Neural Engine |
| Pricing | Free tier. Pro $10/user/mo annually ($18 monthly), Business $19 ($29 monthly), Enterprise $39 | One payment, $49 planned. Free during beta |
| Where notes live | Fireflies' cloud workspace | One Markdown file per meeting, in your folder |
| CRM sync | Yes, a core feature | No |
| Platforms | Web and mobile, bot-based so platform-agnostic | macOS 13+, Apple Silicon only |
| Works with no internet | No | Yes, after the model downloads once |
Fireflies.ai pricing and limits checked July 2026 against public pricing pages. Vendors change plans often - verify before you decide.
No bot, and why that matters beyond etiquette
Fireflies works by joining your meeting as a participant. Someone admits it, external guests see it, and if it fails to join you have no recording.
TNN captures the audio your Mac is already playing. Nothing joins, nothing appears in the participant list, and it works the same on Zoom, Meet, Teams, a Slack huddle, a phone call on speaker or a conversation across a table. There is no integration to break because there is no integration.
Where the audio goes, and where the notes end up
Fireflies processes and stores your calls in its cloud. TNN transcribes locally on your Mac and writes one plain Markdown file per meeting into a folder you choose, containing your live notes and transcript. Choose a note mode and select Generate with Claude. After you send the prepared prompt in Claude Desktop, it reads the meeting through MCP and saves an AI Note; Anthropic processes the meeting text through your Claude account. To create a note, choose a mode and send the prepared prompt in Claude Desktop; the result returns to AI Notes through MCP. Delete the app and your files are still yours.
TNN connects to Claude Desktop over MCP for AI Notes. Choose a note mode, select Generate with Claude, then send the prepared prompt; Claude reads the selected meeting and saves the result to AI Notes. Fireflies gives you AskFred inside Fireflies; TNN keeps the note in your local meeting file.
Where Fireflies is still the better choice
- You need CRM sync. Calls updating deal records is a real workflow and TNN does not do it.
- You need a team-wide searchable archive. Everyone's calls in one place, with permissions. TNN is single-user today.
- You need coaching and playbook tracking. That is Fireflies' core, not ours.
- Your team is not all on Apple Silicon Macs. TNN needs macOS 13 or later on Apple Silicon. A bot does not care what you run.
- You need calls recorded when you are not there. A bot can attend without you. Nothing local can.
Trying it
Download, grant the macOS screen and microphone permissions, connect your calendar, press record on the next call. The model downloads once, roughly 600 MB, then runs offline. Language detection is automatic, including mid-sentence switches.
Try it on your next meeting
Records and transcribes on your Mac. No bot in the call, no cloud, no subscription for transcription. Free while the beta runs.
Questions people ask
Does TNN join my meetings the way Fireflies does?
No. TNN captures the audio playing on your Mac, so nothing joins the call and nothing appears in the participant list. There is no bot to admit and no integration that can fail to connect.
Are there AI credits or usage limits in TNN?
No. Recording, transcription, live notes, dictation and your archive work with no account and no limits. When you choose Generate with Claude and send the prepared prompt in Claude Desktop, Anthropic processes the selected meeting text through your Claude account; TNN adds no AI surcharge.
Can TNN sync meetings to a CRM like Fireflies does?
Not directly. TNN has no built-in CRM integration. Its Claude workflow creates an AI Note for the selected meeting and saves it back to that meeting file. If CRM sync is central to your job, Fireflies is the better fit.