Fireflies Review 2026: Best Value, Worst Data Rules
Any useful Fireflies review has to answer the question that actually stalls the purchase in a B2B buying process, and it isn’t about transcription accuracy. It’s what happens to the recordings afterward.
Start with what a Fireflies review usually skips. It documents its data handling better than almost anything else in this category. It publishes a subprocessor list naming all seventeen vendors, gives customers thirty days to object before a new one is engaged, holds SOC 2 Type II certification, and writes its no-training commitment into the contract rather than leaving it in marketing copy.
And its own documents disagree about how long it keeps your meetings, which is where this Fireflies review is going to spend most of its time.
That combination is unusual enough to be the center of this Fireflies review. Everything else — the pricing, the credits, the bot — is secondary to the thing your security reviewer is going to ask about.
Table of contents
Fireflies review: the short version
- “Zero data retention” means something narrower than it sounds. It scopes to third-party AI vendors not training on your content, not to how long Fireflies stores it.
- Nothing expires on its own below Enterprise. Auto-delete is a $39-a-seat feature and it ships switched off.
- The free plan won’t let you download your own transcripts. Exports and bulk delete both sit behind payment.
- The security paperwork is genuinely strong, including a published subprocessor list and a contractual no-training clause.
- Best value in the category at $10 a seat, provided your compliance requirements fit inside what the lower tiers offer.
What this Fireflies review found behind “zero data retention”
The pricing page carries a badge reading zero data retention, with a line underneath saying your data is never used for AI training. Both statements are accurate and neither answers the question buyers think it answers.
The commitment is narrower than the badge suggests, and this is the distinction any Fireflies review should draw. It is scoped to third-party AI vendors, with OpenAI named. Your transcripts aren’t feeding an external model’s training set, and that promise sits in the contract at Terms 5(c)(ii) rather than only on the website. That’s better than most competitors manage.
What it does not say is that Fireflies stops storing your recordings. It stores them. The question of for how long produces three different answers depending which Fireflies document you open.
The privacy policy describes account data being deleted within thirty days of closure. An undated security FAQ describes data being held for a minimum of twelve months. Auto-delete is an Enterprise feature that arrives switched off. On every plan below Enterprise, the practical answer is that nothing expires until somebody deletes it manually.
None of that is dishonest, and this Fireflies review isn’t alleging it is. Retention minimums and deletion-on-closure describe different situations, and an undated FAQ may simply be stale. But a buyer trying to answer “how long do our client calls live on your servers” has to reconcile three documents to get there, and the badge on the pricing page actively discourages them from trying.
An independent privacy audit published in August 2026 traced the same contradiction and confirmed the Data Privacy Framework certification is real and current, listed with the US Department of Commerce for the EU-US, UK Extension and Swiss-US frameworks. That certification is self-declared, as the DPA itself states.
We earn a commission if you subscribe to Fireflies through our links, and on two competitors named below. This Fireflies review opens with the retention problem rather than a signup button, which is the least commercially convenient thing it could do. Plan details come from the vendor’s pricing page on the date shown.
What a Fireflies review should tell you about your recordings, by tier
| Data question | Free | Pro $10 | Business $19 | Enterprise $39 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Storage held | 400 min / team | 8,000 min / seat | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Download your transcripts | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Custom retention / auto-delete | No | No | No | Yes, off by default |
| Private storage | No | No | No | Yes |
| HIPAA and BAA | No | No | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | No | No | No | Yes |
| SOC 2 Type II, GDPR | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Read that column of noes down the middle, because it’s the part of any Fireflies review that decides a procurement conversation. Every control a compliance team would ask for lives on one tier, and the gap between Business at $19 and Enterprise at $39 is where the entire governance story sits.
Our level of use for this Fireflies review: researched. Plan limits and feature gating were read directly off the Fireflies pricing page. Retention and certification details come from published policy documents and an independent audit rather than from a paid account we operate, and we’d rather flag that than imply a deployment we haven’t run.
The free plan is a growth mechanism
Three things about it deserve stating plainly in a Fireflies review, because the plan is designed to be upgraded from rather than used.
You cannot download your own transcripts. Exports sit on Pro and above. A reviewer on Product Hunt described this as holding user data behind a paywall, and that characterization is hard to argue with when the data in question is your own meetings.
Bulk delete is also paid. Which means the free plan’s 400 shared minutes, once full, are tedious to clear one recording at a time.
The unlimited transcription carries an asterisk. One reviewer, who discloses writing for a competitor, reports that unlimited on free depends on inviting meeting participants to Fireflies after calls, and that the bot cannot be selectively kept out. We haven’t verified that mechanic ourselves and flag the source’s interest, but the asterisk is there on the pricing page and worth reading before you build a workflow on the free tier.
Free storage is 400 minutes across the whole team. More than one published Fireflies review says 800 minutes per user, which would be four times more generous. The pricing page says 400 per team, and it’s the difference between a usable trial and about six hours before the archive is full.
The archive that quietly rolls off
Here’s the finding this Fireflies review would keep if it kept only one thing about the paid tiers. Pro gives 8,000 minutes of storage per seat, roughly 133 hours. Fireflies sells itself partly as an institutional memory: search across every call your team has ever had, ask questions of the archive, find what a client said eight months ago.
Hit the storage ceiling on Pro and older recordings drop off to make room. For someone taking fifteen calls a week, 133 hours is a bit over a year. The searchable history is therefore a rolling window rather than a permanent record, and unlimited storage is the single biggest reason to move from Pro at $10 to Business at $19.
A design decision rather than a flaw, and disclosed. It’s just at odds with how the product is sold, which is why a Fireflies review is the right place to raise it.
Two features that would fix most of this
Both exist. Both are worth knowing before you decide, and neither appeared in any Fireflies review we read while researching this one.
Transcript and Summary Only Mode. Exactly what a nervous legal team would ask for: Fireflies keeps the text and doesn’t retain the audio or video at all. It removes the sharpest edge of the retention question, because there’s no recording sitting on a server to worry about. It’s an Enterprise feature.
Recording through the Chrome extension without the bot joining. This appears as its own row in the plan comparison table, and it addresses the complaint that shows up whenever someone runs client calls: a visible participant called Fireflies Notetaker arriving in a meeting with an external prospect. Capturing through the browser instead removes the announcement.
Neither is advertised prominently, which is odd given that between them they answer the two objections most likely to stop a purchase. If you’re evaluating Fireflies for a team with client-facing calls or a compliance function, ask about both specifically. The sales conversation will go differently once you have.
The biometric claims
Separate from the consent litigation facing others in this category, and worth a Fireflies review stating carefully, Fireflies faces four federal putative class actions alleging violations of Illinois biometric privacy law over voiceprints. One was voluntarily dismissed, two have been consolidated with a motion to dismiss pending, and one is stayed.
Nothing there is proven and the allegations are contested. It matters here only because speaker identification is a core feature, and because Illinois has the strictest biometric statute in the US. If your team records people in Illinois, the question belongs in your review process rather than in a footnote.
What it does better than the field
- Published subprocessor list with a 30-day objection window
- No-training commitment written into the contract, not just marketing
- 100+ languages on every tier including free
- Cheapest CRM-capable seat in the category at $19
What will cost you
- Retention rules that contradict across three documents
- Auto-delete, private storage and HIPAA all gated to $39 a seat
- Exports and bulk delete withheld from the free plan
- Pro’s archive rolls off once 8,000 minutes fill
Who this Fireflies review says should buy
Six situations, and the answer for each.
Sales team on a CRM
Business at $19. Cheapest CRM-capable seat here, unlimited storage, and the analytics arrive with it.
Multilingual company
Any tier. The 100+ language coverage on free is the strongest single argument in its favor.
Solo consultant
Pro at $10, and diarise a storage check at month ten. The archive is a rolling window, not a vault.
Healthcare or legal
Enterprise at $39 or nothing. HIPAA, BAA, private storage and retention control all sit on that tier.
Recording people in Illinois
Take the biometric question to your counsel before the procurement stage rather than after.
Just evaluating
Free, for about six hours of calls. Then it’s full, and you can’t export what’s in it.
If you take a handful of calls a week and want to keep every one, Fathom’s free plan gives unlimited recording and storage where this one gives 400 shared minutes. We earn less by pointing that out. And if a visible bot on client calls is the problem, no tier of Fireflies fixes it.
Questions this Fireflies review gets asked
How long does Fireflies keep my recordings?
Its own documents disagree, which is the central finding of this Fireflies review. The privacy policy describes deletion within thirty days of account closure, an undated security FAQ describes a twelve-month minimum, and automatic deletion is an Enterprise feature that ships disabled. In practice, on any plan below Enterprise, recordings persist until somebody deletes them. Verified deletion requests are described as taking 45 to 90 days to complete.
Does Fireflies train AI on my meetings?
No, and the commitment is contractual rather than promotional: its terms bar training generative models on customer content, and it names OpenAI as the scope of its no-training arrangement with vendors. This is genuinely stronger than most competitors offer. It’s a separate question from how long your recordings are stored, which is where the confusion usually starts.
Can I export my transcripts on the free plan?
No. Downloading transcripts, summaries and recordings begins on Pro at $10 a seat annually. Bulk delete is also a paid feature, so a full free account is cleared one recording at a time. If you might want your data later, that’s an argument for starting on Pro rather than upgrading after the archive matters to you.
Is it HIPAA compliant?
Only on Enterprise at $39 a seat, billed annually, where it will sign a business associate agreement. Free, Pro and Business are not, regardless of how carefully you configure them. Healthcare organizations handling protected health information in recorded calls have one tier available, and it costs roughly double the Business plan.
Does the free plan really include unlimited transcription?
There’s an asterisk on the pricing page next to that claim. One reviewer, who discloses writing for a competing product, reports the unlimited allowance depends on inviting call participants to Fireflies afterward. We haven’t verified that mechanic independently. What is verified is that free storage is 400 minutes for the whole team, which fills quickly regardless.
Does this Fireflies review recommend buying it?
Conditionally. Not if you take a handful of calls a week and want to keep them, since Fathom’s free plan does that better and we earn nothing from saying so. Not if your compliance requirements need retention control, unless you can fund Enterprise. Buy it for multilingual teams, CRM automation and cross-meeting search, where nothing else matches it at $19 a seat.
What to take away
- Separate the two data questions. The no-training promise is contractual and solid. How long recordings are stored is the one this Fireflies review couldn’t get a single answer to.
- Every governance control sits on Enterprise. Auto-delete, private storage, HIPAA and audit logs are all $39 a seat.
- Free storage is 400 minutes per team, not the 800 per user that many a Fireflies review repeats. That’s roughly six hours.
- Pro’s archive is a rolling window. Once 8,000 minutes fill, older recordings drop off.
- Ask about the two hidden features. Transcript-only mode and bot-free browser capture answer most of what this Fireflies review raises, and neither is advertised.
- Start on Pro if the data matters, because exporting it is not something the free plan lets you do.
See current Fireflies plans, and compare the seat math against Otter before committing a team.