AI Tool Comparison
I let Gemini replace my meeting notes for a week — Fireflies got its job back on Friday
A chatbot with a mic can summarize a meeting. It can't remember to join the meeting. That difference turned out to be the whole comparison.
6 min read
Fireflies
AI notetaker for meetings and conversation insights
Fireflies captures meetings, generates transcripts, and provides conversation intelligence and summaries.
Google Gemini
Free AI assistant by Google
Google Gemini is a powerful AI assistant offering free chat, writing, and reasoning capabilities with integration into Google services.
The honest comparison
The pitch I tested: why pay for a meeting tool when Gemini can transcribe and summarize from a recording? For one week, every meeting got recorded and fed to Gemini instead of letting Fireflies join. The summaries were honestly good — clear, well-structured, better prose than Fireflies' templates.
The first crack: joining. Fireflies shows up to the call by itself. My Gemini workflow required a person to hit record, export, upload, prompt. On Tuesday, the recording person was out sick and two meetings went uncaptured. On Thursday I forgot to upload until Friday, when my memory of the meeting had already overwritten itself.
The second crack: search. Fireflies builds an archive across every call it has ever attended. 'What did we promise the client about the timeline in March?' is a ten-second question there. Gemini knows about the meetings I remembered to feed it, which by Friday was four of nine.
Where Gemini genuinely won: one-off processing. A 40-minute recorded interview needed a themed breakdown for an article — Gemini did it beautifully, and Fireflies' summary format would have needed rework anyway. Also, sensitive calls where I don't want a bot joining: recording locally and using Gemini keeps the third party out of the room.
Final score: Fireflies keeps the standing job — every meeting, joined automatically, searchable forever. Gemini becomes my on-demand analyst for recordings that need actual thinking. The summaries were better, and it didn't matter, because showing up is 90% of the work.
Quick Comparison
| Category | Meeting Notes | Chat & Writing |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Best For | Teams, Sales, Operations | Students, Google users, Everyday productivity |
| Shared Tags | No major overlap | |
Why choose Fireflies?
- Strong for automated meeting capture
- Useful analytics and conversation insights
- Good fit for team workflows
Why choose Google Gemini?
- Free access available
- Strong integration with Google tools
- Good for everyday queries
Final takeaway
Fireflies is a better fit if you want strong support for Meetings and Notes. Google Gemini may be the better choice if your workflow focuses more on Chat and Google. The right choice depends on your budget, use case, and preferred workflow.