Discover why thousands of professionals are switching from Fireflies to Hedy. Compare features, pricing, and real-time AI coaching vs passive transcription. Get proactive meeting intelligence that makes you the brightest person in the room.
If you're searching for a "Fireflies alternative," you've probably experienced the fundamental limitation of passive transcription tools: they record everything but help you with nothing in the moment when it matters most.
Fireflies.ai has become popular as a meeting recorder and transcription service, joining your Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams calls to capture conversations. But here's the problem—Fireflies is designed for documentation, not performance. It's built to help you remember what was said, not to help you be brilliant while it's being said.
That's where Hedy comes in.
Hedy is the proactive AI meeting coach that transforms you from a passive meeting participant into the brightest person in the room. While Fireflies waits until after your meeting to tell you what happened, Hedy helps you excel during the conversation with automatic, intelligent suggestions that appear at exactly the right moment.
Fireflies is a cloud-based AI meeting assistant that focuses on transcription and post-meeting analysis. When you schedule a meeting, Fireflies sends a bot (called "Fred") to join your call, record the audio, and generate a transcript with speaker identification.
Core Fireflies Features:
But Fireflies has significant limitations:
Hedy is fundamentally different from Fireflies. While Fireflies records your meetings for later review, Hedy actively coaches you during your conversations to help you contribute more effectively, ask smarter questions, and demonstrate expertise in real-time.
Think of Fireflies as a meeting recorder. Hedy is your personal AI coach that makes you brilliant in every conversation.
Hedy's revolutionary Automatic Suggestions feature is what truly sets it apart from Fireflies and every other meeting tool on the market.
Here's how it works:
While you focus on the conversation, Hedy continuously analyzes the discussion in real-time. When Hedy identifies an opportunity—a gap in the conversation, a strategic question you should ask, a risk factor that hasn't been addressed—it proactively delivers an intelligent suggestion directly to your screen.
You don't have to ask for help. Hedy knows when you need it.
Example scenarios where Hedy provides automatic suggestions:
Topics: Connect Intelligence Across Multiple Sessions
Unlike Fireflies' flat meeting archive, Hedy's Topics feature lets you organize related conversations together (client projects, academic courses, health appointments). You can then chat with Hedy using context from all sessions in that topic, getting insights that draw from your complete conversation history.
Specialized Session Types
Hedy offers purpose-built modes for different conversation types including Business Meetings, Job Interviews, Medical Consultations, Journalism, Coaching & Mentoring, Academic Lectures, and Solo Brainstorming. Each mode is fine-tuned to provide uniquely valuable assistance for that specific context.
Privacy-First Design
Hedy processes speech recognition on your device, ensuring conversations remain private. There's no visible bot joining meetings, no cloud recording sent to corporate servers, and no feeling of being surveilled.
Fireflies' Limitation: Fireflies is completely passive during meetings. When you need help formulating a response or asking a strategic question, Fireflies offers nothing.
Hedy's Solution: Automatic Suggestions provide proactive coaching at exactly the right moments. Hedy analyzes conversation dynamics, identifies opportunities, and delivers intelligent prompts that help you contribute more effectively—while the conversation is still happening.
Fireflies' Limitation: The Fireflies bot visibly joins your meetings, appearing as "Fireflies Notetaker" in the participant list. This can make clients uncomfortable and sometimes gets blocked by corporate security policies.
Hedy's Solution: Hedy runs discretely on your device with no visible bot. The on-device processing also ensures better privacy and security.
Fireflies' Limitation: Many of Fireflies' advanced features are designed for managers to review team performance, not to help you perform better as an individual.
Hedy's Solution: Hedy is built exclusively to empower individuals. Every feature is designed to make you more effective, more insightful, and more successful in your conversations.
Free Plan: 800 minutes of storage, limited AI summaries, basic transcription
Pro Plan ($10/month): Unlimited transcriptions, 8,000 minutes storage, unlimited AI summaries
Business Plan ($19/month): Video recording, team analytics, CRM sync
Free Plan: Up to 5 hours per month with full AI features including automatic suggestions
Pro Plan ($9.99/month or $69.99/year): Unlimited meeting length and sessions, import recordings, Topics feature, API and Zapier integration
Lifetime ($199 one-time): All Pro features with lifetime access and future updates
For individual professionals, Hedy offers superior value:
Valentino (Reddit User): "90% of my job involves sitting in corporate meetings that are a little over my head, so sometimes I lack the confidence to contribute my ideas to these meetings, which I feel is holding me back from being a director or higher level. By chance, I stumbled on Hedy and was in TOTAL shock how amazing it was. I used it to validate my ideas and also come up with new ideas to share. I can tell this is going to be game changing for my career and I am so excited to use it in my meetings!"
Graham K (Director of Marketing): "I'm constantly context switching between situations and clients. I essentially need a backstop for my notes and my memory. I used Hedy for the first time yesterday and was blown away by really how much it could do for me in my day to day. Thanks for building something awesome and hope the team is proud of it!"
The fundamental difference between Fireflies and Hedy comes down to this:
Fireflies helps you remember what happened.
Hedy helps you succeed while it's happening.
In today's competitive professional environment, passive documentation isn't enough. You need active intelligence that makes you more effective, more insightful, and more valuable in every conversation.
Join 15,000+ professionals who've discovered that the best AI meeting assistant isn't the one that records the most—it's the one that helps you contribute the most.
Try Hedy Free:
Upgrade to Hedy Pro:
Go Lifetime:
Download Hedy Now and experience the difference between a meeting recorder and a personal AI coach.
Q: Can I use Hedy alongside Fireflies?
A: Yes! Many users run Hedy on their phone for real-time coaching while Fireflies records for their team's archive. Hedy's discrete approach means there's no conflict.
Q: Does Hedy join my meetings like Fireflies does?
A: No—and that's a feature, not a bug. Hedy runs discretely on your device without a visible bot joining the meeting. This maintains privacy and professionalism.
Q: How accurate is Hedy's transcription compared to Fireflies?
A: Hedy uses industry-leading on-device speech recognition with high accuracy across 30+ languages. Because processing happens locally, you also benefit from better privacy and faster processing.
Q: Can I import my Fireflies recordings into Hedy?
A: Yes! Hedy Pro allows you to import audio and video files (including Fireflies recordings) to get AI-powered analysis, summaries, and the ability to chat with that content.
The AI meeting assistant market is evolving rapidly. First-generation tools like Fireflies proved that AI could automate meeting transcription and documentation. That was revolutionary.
But we're now entering the second generation of meeting intelligence—tools that don't just record what happened, but actively help you perform better in real-time.
Hedy represents this next evolution. The question isn't whether you should use an AI meeting assistant. In 2025, that's already table stakes.
The question is: Do you want a tool that helps you remember, or a tool that helps you excel?
