Three tools, three completely different theories about what a meeting note taker even is. Krisp starts from the audio itself. It installs a virtual microphone between the operating system and whatever app you are using, cleans background noise on both sides of the call, then transcribes and summarizes what is left. Fireflies starts from the platform. Its cloud bot named Fred joins Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex, transcribes 100-plus languages, and pipes everything into a searchable workspace stitched to forty-plus business apps. AmyNote starts from your phone. No bot, no browser extension, no virtual microphone, just a mobile app for the meetings a laptop cannot easily join.
If you have been trying to decide which of the three actually fits how you meet, this is the honest breakdown.
Quick Verdict
Pick Krisp if you take a lot of calls from a noisy environment, share a room with a barking dog or an open-plan office, and want a virtual microphone that cleans your outgoing audio before any transcription tool sees it. The AI notes are a real bonus, not just an add-on.
Pick Fireflies if most of your meetings run on Zoom, Meet, Teams, or Webex, you want dense integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Notion, and forty other tools, and you are happy with a bot named "Fred" showing up in the participants list.
Pick AmyNote if you want a single mobile app that captures in-person meetings, phone calls, and dictation without a bot on any call and without buying hardware. Trade-offs are real: no desktop, no CRM, no video, no team features yet.
What We Compared
We looked at four axes that actually decide who wins: where each tool captures audio (system-level virtual mic, cloud bot, or phone), what entry pricing costs and what the free-plan limits are, how the integrations and workflow tools stack up, and what the privacy story looks like once the AI has already seen your meeting.
We ignored the features all three do reasonably well: real-time transcription, speaker labels, action-item extraction, and searchable transcripts. Every tool in this category has reached a floor on those basics. The real decisions live at the edges.
Krisp: Clean the Audio First, Everything Else Follows
Strengths
Krisp is the only tool here that starts from audio quality itself. It installs a virtual microphone between the operating system and whatever app you are using, so it cleans noise bidirectionally, both your outgoing voice and the voices coming back. Once the audio is clean, the transcription and AI notes get better for free. The Core plan is 8 USD per user per month billed annually for unlimited AI notes, unlimited noise cancellation, and meeting history. Krisp works with 800-plus conferencing and telephony apps because it operates at the audio-device layer, not through a bot. The Advanced plan at 15 USD per user per month adds CRM integrations, accent conversion, and manager tools, and Enterprise adds SSO, SCIM, and on-device private transcription.
The clean-audio-first design matters in a way that is easy to underestimate on paper. Every transcription model in this category is trained on relatively clean speech. Feed it a call where a leaf blower runs outside the window and the word error rate climbs sharply. Krisp reduces that noise before any of the transcribers see the audio, which improves the summary quality of whatever downstream tool you eventually pipe the recording into. If your headset already runs into a laptop the audio-layer approach also means Krisp shows up on phone calls routed through the desktop, on contact center software that does not offer a Zoom or Teams surface, and on the long tail of niche conferencing tools that a bot cannot join at all.
Weaknesses
The free tier is thin: 60 minutes of noise cancellation per day, only two AI meeting notes per day, and a 7-day history window. English-only transcription on the free plan. The paid transcript language count sits at 19-plus, ahead of many competitors but still below AmyNote. Video recording is not really the product. If most of your meetings already happen in clean rooms on stable networks, you are paying for a noise-cancellation layer you may never really need.
Fireflies: The Cloud Bot Powerhouse With Forty-Plus Integrations
Strengths
Fireflies is the cloud-bot heavyweight of the three. Fred, the meeting bot, auto-joins scheduled calls on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex. Transcription covers 100-plus languages, comfortably ahead of most cloud-bot competitors. AskFred is a conversational search layer that answers questions across your entire meeting archive, and Topic Trackers surface every mention of a keyword like "pricing objection" across every call. The Pro plan is 10 USD per user per month billed annually (or 18 USD month-to-month) for unlimited transcription, 3,000 minutes of storage, and 720p video with a 2-hour limit. The Business plan at 19 USD per user per month annual adds CRM sync, conversation intelligence analytics with talk-time and sentiment, unlimited storage, and a 3-hour video limit. Enterprise at 39 USD per user per month annual adds HIPAA, SSO, and stronger data governance.
The integration surface is where Fireflies really lands. Forty-plus native connectors including Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Notion, Slack, Asana, Trello, Zapier, and every other tool a mid-market sales, RevOps, or CS team already runs. When Fred joins a call, the transcript, action items, summary, and highlights can auto-write into the CRM opportunity or the customer success workspace without a human touching the record. For teams with an existing bot-tolerant workflow, that flywheel is real.
Weaknesses
All paid plans use an AI credits system that governs how much AskFred, AI summaries, and action-item generation you can actually run: a shared workspace pool of 20 credits on Pro, 30 on Business, 50 on Enterprise. Once the pool drains, you are back to raw transcripts. The bot is visible in the participants list, which is fine for internal calls and awkward for customer conversations. Free-plan features are limited, cloud storage is the default, and Fireflies uses training data on the free tier unless you opt out.
AmyNote: Mobile-First, Bot-Free, Privacy by Design
Strengths
AmyNote records everything on your phone. There is no bot to invite, no virtual microphone to install, no desktop app, no hardware to buy. Language support is 120-plus with real-time translation baked in, ahead of both Krisp and Fireflies. Transcription runs through OpenAI's latest Speech API, and AI analysis is powered by Anthropic's Claude Opus. Both OpenAI and Anthropic contractually guarantee zero training on user data. Audio is encrypted in transit; processing copies may be retained to deliver and recover requested features. Transcripts stored locally on device with encrypted transport. Speaker identification carries across sessions, so a name you tag once is remembered next time.
The mobile-first design also solves a category the other two miss entirely: the meeting your laptop cannot easily join. In-person client conversations at a coffee shop, phone calls with a supplier, a hallway chat with a co-founder, a car ride between a client site and the office. None of these fit a cloud bot workflow. Krisp helps only if the call is routed through your laptop microphone. All of them fit a phone in your pocket.
Weaknesses
Be honest. No desktop app. No CRM integrations for Salesforce, HubSpot, or Pipedrive. No video recording of any kind. No team dashboards. No shared workspaces. No AI-credit budget to worry about, but also no forty-plus integrations catalog. Smaller brand than either Krisp or Fireflies. Mobile-first means it excels at conversations a laptop cannot easily join, and steps aside where a bot-based tool or a system-level virtual mic earns its place.
Side-by-Side Comparison
- Capture surface. Krisp installs at the audio-device layer, so it works with 800-plus platforms including phone calls routed through the desktop. Fireflies uses a bot on Zoom, Meet, Teams, and Webex, with a Chrome extension for bot-free browser capture on Google Meet. AmyNote is a phone microphone for everything, no bot on any call.
- Language coverage. Krisp transcribes 19-plus languages on Core. Fireflies transcribes 100-plus. AmyNote cites 120-plus with real-time translation.
- Entry pricing. Krisp Core 8 USD per user per month billed annually. Fireflies Pro 10 USD per user per month billed annually or 18 USD monthly. AmyNote 3-day free trial, no credit card.
- Free-plan limits. Krisp free caps noise cancellation at 60 minutes per day and gives two AI notes per day. Fireflies free gives limited features with a shared credit pool and cloud storage as default. AmyNote uses a time-boxed trial rather than minute caps.
- AI budget. Krisp Core includes unlimited AI notes. Fireflies paid plans meter AskFred and summaries against a shared workspace credit pool that resets by tier, not per user. AmyNote does not meter AI usage against a credit budget.
- Integrations. Krisp Advanced ties into Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive. Fireflies connects to forty-plus apps including Salesforce, HubSpot, Notion, Slack, Asana, Trello, and Zapier. AmyNote does not sync to third-party CRMs.
- Privacy posture. Krisp holds SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR and processes AI in the cloud. Fireflies is SOC 2 and GDPR, cloud-first, with HIPAA on Enterprise. AmyNote stores transcripts locally on device with zero-training guarantees from both AI providers.
The Bottom Line
The choice is really about what part of the meeting pipeline hurts most. If the audio itself is the bottleneck, if your callers keep asking you to repeat yourself and your transcripts read like the mic was underwater, Krisp is the pick, and 8 USD per user per month for Core is fair value. If you live on Zoom, Meet, Teams, or Webex, want an army of integrations to auto-file every meeting into CRM, Slack, and Notion, and can live with a visible bot and an AI-credit budget, Fireflies still runs that stack better than most.
If half your meetings happen in a room, on a phone call, or in a corridor, a virtual microphone helps and a cloud bot cannot even join. That is where AmyNote is designed to slot in: 120-plus languages, no bot, no browser extension, no AI-credit metering, and privacy handled as a design constraint rather than a paid tier. Free 3-day trial, no credit card. See amynote.app.
Originally published as an X Article by @AmyNoteApp.
