Fireflies.ai vs Grain

For client facing teams billing across many accounts, the annual per seat price is what decides it. Fireflies.ai runs $10/seat/mo billed annually against Grain's $15/seat/mo, a real gap once a team grows past a few seats. Both tools support in person and mobile capture, and both offer a bot free option, so client meetings can be captured without an obvious bot joining every call. Fireflies.ai also exports transcripts in more formats, PDF, DOCX, SRT, CSV, JSON, and MD, against Grain's PDF, SRT, VTT, and DOCX, useful when handing notes back to clients in whatever format they need.

Engineering teams need notes to land where the team already works. Fireflies.ai connects to Slack, Notion, Zapier, Linear, and Airtable, covering the ticketing and docs tools engineering teams standardize on, while Grain connects to Slack, Zapier, and Aircall, a narrower set for this workflow. Both tools turn standups into automatic action items, and both expose a public API for custom automation, so integration breadth is what separates them here. Fireflies.ai is also cheaper on an annual per seat basis, $10/seat/mo against Grain's $15/seat/mo, making it easier to roll out across a whole engineering org.

For legal, healthcare, and security conscious buyers, a HIPAAHIPAA BAA - A signed Business Associate Agreement that lets you handle protected health information under US healthcare privacy law. business associate agreement is the line in the sand. Fireflies.ai includes one, and Grain does not publish one, which alone rules Grain out for regulated health data. Both tools state customer data is excluded from AI training, and both claim GDPR and EU data residency support, and both offer a bot free capture option so meetings can be recorded without visibly adding a bot. On retention, Fireflies.ai offers custom data retention on Enterprise plans while Grain offers auto retention policies, a similar level of admin control, but the missing BAA is decisive.

Both tools match on the features researchers lean on most: clips and highlight reels, video recording, and an AI chat that lets you query across sessions are all available on Fireflies.ai and Grain alike. The difference shows up in what you can get out of a session afterward. Fireflies.ai exports transcripts as PDF, DOCX, SRT, CSV, JSON, and MD, six formats against Grain's four (PDF, SRT, VTT, DOCX), giving researchers more ways to feed clips and quotes into other tools. Fireflies.ai also publishes support for 100 languages, useful for research programs running international sessions, a figure Grain does not publish.

Both tools produce an AI meeting summary and identify speakers automatically, so clean, speaker labeled interview notes are covered either way. Where they part is what comes out the other end. Fireflies.ai exports transcripts as PDF, DOCX, SRT, CSV, JSON, and MD, more formats than Grain's PDF, SRT, VTT, and DOCX, which matters when feeding interview notes into an ATS that expects a specific file type. Fireflies.ai is also cheaper on an annual per seat basis, $10/seat/mo against Grain's $15/seat/mo, a meaningful saving for a talent team running many interviews across seats.

CRM sync is what decides this for reps. Fireflies.ai integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, Affinity, and Redtail, four CRMs, while Grain covers Salesforce and HubSpot, two. Both tools generate automatic action items, and both produce clips and highlight reels for coaching, so the gap here is specifically how many CRM systems each plugs into out of the box. Fireflies.ai is also cheaper on an annual per seat basis, $10/seat/mo against Grain's $15/seat/mo, which adds up across a full sales floor.

For individuals watching the free tier, transcription quota is what decides it. Fireflies.ai's free plan gives unlimited transcription minutes, capped instead by 400 minutes of storage and 20 AI credits per team, while Grain's free plan hard caps at 20 recorded meetings per month with no way around it. Once a solo user needs a paid seat, Fireflies.ai is also cheaper at $18/seat/mo billed monthly against Grain's $19/seat/mo. Both include an AI meeting summary on their plans.