Otter vs Fireflies vs Grain: AI Meeting Assistants Tested Head-to-Head

I just finished a one-hour strategy meeting.

Before AI assistants, I'd spend 20 minutes afterwards:

• Reviewing my messy notes
• Trying to remember who committed to what
• Writing up action items
• Sharing summary with team

Total time investment: 1 hour 20 minutes.

With AI meeting assistants, I spend: 2 minutes reviewing auto-generated summary, correcting one misattributed action item, sharing with team.

Total time: 1 hour 2 minutes.

That's 18 minutes saved per meeting.

At 15 meetings weekly, that's 4.5 hours returned. Per week.

But which AI assistant actually works? I tested the top three—Otter, Fireflies, and Grain—running them simultaneously in the same meetings for 30 days.

Here's what I learned.

The Test Methodology

Duration: 30 days (October 2024)

Meetings tracked: 42 meetings total

• 18 internal team meetings
• 12 client/customer calls
• 8 external partner discussions
• 4 interviews

Process:

1. Invited all three AI bots to same meeting
2. Let them record simultaneously
3. Compared outputs after each meeting
4. Rated accuracy, usefulness, time saved

Evaluated on:

• Transcription accuracy
• Summary quality
• Action item extraction
• Integration with tools
• Price/value
• Privacy/security

The Contenders

Otter.ai

Price: Free (limited), $17/month Pro, $30/month Business

Founded: 2016

Market position: Longest-established, most widely known

Fireflies.ai

Price: Free (limited), $10/month Pro, $19/month Business

Founded: 2019

Market position: Middle option, popular with sales teams

Grain

Price: Free (limited), $19/month Starter, $39/month Business

Founded: 2020

Market position: Newer, focuses on video coaching and highlights

Round 1: Transcription Accuracy

Test: Same 30-minute team meeting, 4 speakers, British accents, technical jargon

Otter Results:

Accuracy: 94%

Strengths:

• Excellent speaker identification (correctly labeled all 4 speakers)
• Handled technical terms well (correctly transcribed "API endpoint," "PostgreSQL," "OAuth flow")
• Punctuation mostly accurate

Weaknesses:

• Struggled with overlapping speech (when two people talked simultaneously)
• Misheard "iterate" as "I trade" once
• Filler words ("um," "uh") transcribed (clutters reading)

Sample:

"So the authentication flow needs to integrate with OAuth and we should probably iterate on the design before pushing to production."

Transcribed correctly.

Fireflies Results:

Accuracy: 91%

Strengths:

• Good overall accuracy
• Handled British accents well
• Automatic capitalization of proper nouns

Weaknesses:

• Speaker identification less reliable (mixed up two similar-sounding voices)
• Some technical terms wrong ("PostgreSQL" → "post grass Q L")
• More hesitations transcribed ("um," "like," "you know")

Same sample:

"So the authentication flow needs to integrate with OAuth and we should probably iterate on the design before pushing to production."

Transcribed: "So the authentication flow needs to integrate with O off and we should probably I to rate on the design before pushing to production."

"OAuth" → "O off"

"iterate" → "I to rate"

Grain Results:

Accuracy: 89%

Strengths:

• Clean interface for reviewing
• Highlights key moments automatically
• Good video quality retention

Weaknesses:

• Lowest transcription accuracy of three
• Speaker labels often wrong
• Technical jargon frequently mangled

Same sample:

"So the authentication flow needs to integrate with OAuth and we should probably iterate on the design before pushing to production."

Transcribed: "So the authentication flow needs to integrate with o auth and we should probably I trade on the design before pushing to production."

Multiple errors in single sentence.

Winner: Otter (94% accuracy)

Margin matters:

In a 60-minute meeting (~9,000 words):

• Otter: ~540 errors
• Fireflies: ~810 errors
• Grain: ~990 errors

When reviewing transcripts for accuracy-critical content (legal, contracts, commitments), Otter requires least cleanup.

Round 2: Summary Quality

Test: Did the AI summary actually capture what mattered?

Same 30-minute meeting. Human summary (me) vs AI summaries:

My Human Summary (What Actually Mattered):

Decisions: Moving forward with OAuth integration for authentication. Design iteration needed before production.

Action items:

• Sarah: Design mockups for auth flow (by Friday)
• James: Research OAuth providers (by Wednesday)
• Me: Set up staging environment (by Thursday)

Blockers: Need legal approval for data storage location.

Time to create: 8 minutes

Otter Summary:

Topics discussed: Authentication, OAuth integration, design iteration, production deployment, data storage

Key points:

• Team discussed authentication flow improvements
• OAuth integration preferred over custom solution
• Design review needed
• Legal approval required for data storage

Action items:

• Sarah to create design mockups
• James to research OAuth providers
• Max to configure staging environment

Accuracy: 95% match to my summary

What it got right:

• All action items captured with correct owners
• Key decisions identified
• Blocker noted

What it missed:

• Deadlines for action items (Friday, Wednesday, Thursday weren't captured)
• Nuance about why we're choosing OAuth

Usefulness: Can use as-is with minor additions.

Fireflies Summary:

Meeting summary: The team met to discuss authentication improvements for the application. Discussion included OAuth integration, design considerations, and deployment planning.

Topics: Authentication, OAuth, Design, Deployment, Data storage

Action items:

• Create design mockups
• Research OAuth
• Set up staging

Accuracy: 80% match

What it got right:

• General topics correct
• Action items exist (but abbreviated)

What it missed:

• Who owns each action item (critical omission)
• Deadlines
• The legal blocker
• Specificity (what kind of mockups? Which OAuth providers?)

Usefulness: Requires significant editing to be useful.

Grain Summary:

Highlights:

• [03:45] Discussion about authentication
• [12:30] OAuth mentioned
• [24:10] Action items discussed

AI Summary: Team discussed various technical topics related to authentication and deployment.

Accuracy: 60% match

What it got right:

• Timestamp highlights help find moments
• General topic area correct

What it missed:

• Actual decisions
• Specific action items
• Blocker
• All detail

Usefulness: Not useful as summary. Must watch highlights.

Winner: Otter (95% accuracy, captures decisions + action items + owners)

Fireflies captures action items but loses owners (critical flaw).

Grain doesn't really try to create narrative summary—focuses on highlights instead.

Round 3: Action Item Extraction

Test: Can AI reliably extract action items?

Critical for post-meeting follow-up.

Otter:

Action items extracted: 3/3

✅ "Sarah to create design mockups" ✅ "James to research OAuth providers" ✅ "Max to configure staging environment"

Format: Clean list with owner names

Integration: Syncs to Asana (if configured)

Accuracy: 100% for this meeting

Across 42 meetings:

• 127 action items (human count)
• 121 caught by Otter (95%)
• 6 false positives (flagged something as action item that wasn't)

Fireflies:

Action items extracted: 3/3 (but incomplete)

⚠️ "Create design mockups" (owner missing) ⚠️ "Research OAuth" (owner missing) ⚠️ "Set up staging" (owner missing)

Format: List without consistent owner attribution

Integration: Syncs to various tools but owner data is unreliable

Across 42 meetings:

• 127 total action items
• 118 caught (93%)
• Owners correctly attributed: 67% (critical flaw)

Grain:

Action items extracted: 1/3

⚠️ "Set up staging environment" (caught this one)

❌ Missed: Design mockups ❌ Missed: Research OAuth

Format: Inconsistent

Integration: Limited

Across 42 meetings:

• 127 total action items
• 71 caught (56%)
• Frequently misses action items discussed casually

Winner: Otter (95% accuracy + owner attribution)

Owner attribution is critical. "Create mockups" without owner = useless.

Otter's advantage: Speaker identification accuracy carries through to action item ownership.

Round 4: Integration & Workflow

Test: How well does each tool fit into existing workflow?

Otter:

Integrations:

• Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams (native)
• Slack (send summaries to channels)
• Salesforce (attach notes to records)
• Notion, Asana, HubSpot

Workflow:

1. Meeting happens → Otter auto-joins (if configured)
2. Transcript appears in Otter within 2 minutes of meeting end
3. Summary generates within 5 minutes
4. Auto-shares to configured Slack channel
5. Action items sync to Asana

Manual intervention: Zero (if pre-configured)

Mobile app: Excellent (can review/edit on phone)

Fireflies:

Integrations:

• Zoom, Google Meet, Teams
• Slack, Asana, Trello, Notion
• CRM integration (Salesforce, HubSpot)

Workflow:

1. Meeting happens → Fireflies joins
2. Transcript available within 5 minutes
3. Summary available within 10 minutes
4. Must manually review and share (auto-sharing less reliable than Otter)

Manual intervention: Some (need to manually trigger shares, summaries sometimes require regeneration)

Mobile app: Good but less polished than Otter

Grain:

Integrations:

• Zoom, Google Meet, Teams
• Slack
• Limited CRM integration

Workflow:

1. Meeting happens → Grain records
2. Video highlights generated automatically
3. Must manually create/review summary
4. Share highlights via link

Manual intervention: Significant (Grain is more manual tool)

Mobile app: Video playback focused

Winner: Otter (most seamless, truly automated)

Otter "just works." Fireflies requires more babysitting. Grain is manual workflow tool.

Round 5: Unique Features

Otter Unique Features:

OtterPilot for Sales:

• Automatically captures sales calls
• Extracts sales-specific insights (objections, competitors mentioned, pricing discussions)
• CRM auto-sync

Live meeting participation:

• Can ask Otter questions during meeting ("Otter, what did Sarah say about timelines?")
• Live captions
• Real-time highlights

Ambient voice capture:

• Can record in-person meetings via phone app

Fireflies Unique Features:

Conversation intelligence:

• Talk time ratio (who spoke how much)
• Speaking pace analysis
• Sentiment analysis
• Topic tracking across meetings

Custom topic tracking:

• Define topics (e.g., "pricing," "competitors," "objections")
• Fireflies flags every mention across all meetings

AskFred (AI assistant):

• Ask questions about meeting history
• "Show me all times we discussed pricing in October"

Grain Unique Features:

Video coaching:

• Record sales calls or presentations
• Create highlight reels of good moments
• Share specific moments (not whole recording)

Meeting library:

• Build searchable library of best examples
• "Great product demo moments"
• "How to handle pricing objection"

Timestamped commenting:

• Team can comment on specific moments
• Useful for coaching, feedback

Different Use Cases:

Otter: General meeting transcription + action tracking

Fireflies: Sales team analytics + conversation intelligence

Grain: Video coaching + building knowledge library

Round 6: Privacy & Security

Critical for client calls, sensitive discussions, compliance.

Otter:

Security:

• SOC 2 Type II certified
• GDPR compliant
• Data encrypted in transit and at rest
• Can delete recordings permanently

Privacy controls:

• Can disable auto-joining
• Can exclude specific meeting types
• Participant notification (people know they're being recorded)

Data residency: US servers (can't specify region)

Fireflies:

Security:

• SOC 2 Type II
• GDPR compliant
• Encryption standard

Privacy controls:

• Similar to Otter
• Can configure which meetings to join

Data storage: US and EU options (better for GDPR)

Grain:

Security:

• SOC 2 Type II
• GDPR compliant
• Enterprise features for compliance

Privacy controls:

• More granular controls
• Can require explicit permission per meeting

Winner: Tie (all three meet enterprise security standards)

For EU/GDPR: Fireflies (explicit EU data residency option)

Round 7: Price & Value

Otter Pricing:

• Free: 600 mins/month, basic features
• Pro ($17/month): 6,000 mins/month, advanced search, integrations
• Business ($30/month): Unlimited, sales features, admin controls

Value for money: High

Best for: Individuals and small teams

Fireflies Pricing:

• Free: 800 mins/month
• Pro ($10/month): 8,000 mins/month
• Business ($19/month): Unlimited, conversation intelligence

Value for money: Highest (most features per dollar)

Best for: Sales teams, high-volume users on budget

Grain Pricing:

• Free: Very limited
• Starter ($19/month): 500 hours recording storage
• Business ($39/month): Unlimited, team features

Value for money: Lower (higher price, fewer features)

Best for: Teams prioritizing video coaching over transcription

Winner: Fireflies (most features per pound)

But: Otter's extra cost buys meaningfully better accuracy.

The Verdict

Best Overall: Otter ($17/month Pro tier)

Why:

• Highest transcription accuracy (94%)
• Best summary quality (95% match to human)
• Reliable action item extraction with owner attribution
• Most seamless integrations
• "Set it and forget it" automation

Who it's for:

• Professionals needing reliable meeting notes
• Teams wanting automated action item tracking
• Anyone in frequent meetings who values time

Best Value: Fireflies ($10/month Pro tier)

Why:

• Lowest price
• Good accuracy (91%)
• Conversation intelligence features
• Sufficient for most use cases

Who it's for:

• Sales teams needing analytics
• Budget-conscious teams
• Users who want topic tracking across meetings

Best for Video Coaching: Grain ($19/month Starter tier)

Why:

• Best highlight reel creation
• Video-first design
• Great for building knowledge library

Who it's for:

• Sales teams doing coaching
• Trainers building example libraries
• Teams prioritizing video moments over transcripts

My Personal Recommendation

I use Otter.

After 30 days of running all three simultaneously, Otter saved me the most time because:

1. Accuracy matters: 94% vs 89% means less cleanup time
2. Owner attribution works: Action items with owners = actually actionable
3. It's truly automated: I configure once, never think about it again

Fireflies is great if budget matters. I'd recommend it for anyone on tight budget or sales teams wanting analytics.

Grain is specialist tool. Only recommend if video coaching is primary use case.

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TL;DR: Best AI meeting assistants 2024

Tested: Otter, Fireflies, Grain (same 42 meetings, evaluated simultaneously)

Results:

| | Otter | Fireflies | Grain | |-|-------|-----------|-------| | Transcription accuracy | 94% | 91% | 89% | | Summary quality | 95% | 80% | 60% | | Action item capture | 95% | 93% (owners unreliable) | 56% | | Automation level | High | Medium | Low | | Price | $17/mo | $10/mo | $19/mo | | Best for | General use | Sales + budget | Video coaching |

Best overall: Otter ($17/month)

• Highest accuracy across all categories
• Reliable owner attribution for action items
• Truly automated ("set and forget")

Best value: Fireflies ($10/month)

• Lowest price
• Conversation intelligence features
• Good enough accuracy for most use cases

Best for video: Grain ($19/month)

• Highlight reels
• Video coaching features
• Knowledge library building

Time saved (my data):

• Before AI: 20 min post-meeting admin per hour-long meeting
• With Otter: 2 min review/correction
• Savings: 18 min per meeting = 4.5 hours/week at 15 meetings/week

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