Is Fireflies.ai Free? Recording, Storage and AI Limits – Toolveyor
Is Fireflies.ai Free? Recording, Storage and AI Limits
Check Fireflies Free limits for meeting capture, summaries, storage, downloads and AI credits. Calculate whether your retained meeting history fits.
Written by Andrew White
•6 min read
Yes, Fireflies.ai has an ongoing $0 Free plan. Whether you can keep using it without paying depends on how you capture meetings, whether you need summaries or downloads, and how much history you retain. “Unlimited transcription” does not mean an unlimited archive or an unlimited AI budget.
For an individual keeping a short rolling record, Free is worth evaluating. For downloadable transcripts or a dependable archive of recurring calls, assess the paid plan against the actual requirement before relying on the free headline.
Official pricing and help pages checked on October 18, 2026. This is a documented-plan analysis, not a recording test. We did not connect a calendar, upload files, start a trial or measure transcription accuracy. The cover is a conceptual illustration, not an interface screenshot.
First separate four different limits
A useful free-plan decision needs four answers, rather than one number of “free minutes.”
Share:
What you need
Allowance to inspect
Why it changes the decision
Read the full text of eligible live meetings
Auto-join and transcription entitlement
Manual invitations and automatic capture do not have identical Free conditions
Receive summaries or process existing files
Transcription credits
Unlimited eligible live transcription does not remove these limits
Keep a searchable meeting history
Stored meeting minutes
Storage is a total balance, not a new allowance every month
Ask advanced AI questions or create custom outputs
AI credits
These are separate from transcription credits
Our Otter versus Fireflies comparison addresses choosing between products. Here the question is narrower: can your Fireflies workload remain free after the first few meetings? The retention examples and account checks below help answer it.
What unlimited free transcription actually requires
The dedicated unlimited-transcription guide says eligible meetings become unlimited when calendar Auto-join is enabled. Turning it off leaves the default three meeting transcriptions for the newer-account conditions described there. The “Only when I invite [email protected]” option does not unlock unlimited transcription.
The guide applies these rules to signups on or after September 1, 2026, and preserves the previous entitlement of older accounts that already had unlimited meetings. Check your dashboard rather than assuming every account starts with identical conditions.
Choose an Auto-join scope deliberately: the documented options include meetings you own and meetings with teammates. Before enabling automatic capture, confirm which calls it will join and agree with participants on recording and access. A free allowance is useful only if the capture behavior fits your work.
Summaries and uploaded files have another allowance
Fireflies' transcription-credit guide lists initial credits by signup route: three through the web app, five through the Chrome extension, and ten for a new mobile-app user. It lists five for an existing user in the mobile route. These are signup allocations, not a promised monthly refill.
With eligible Auto-join enabled, the guide says transcription credits are used for summaries rather than the live transcript itself. Uploading a file still consumes one transcription credit for that file's transcription and summary. Therefore, a transcript appearing after a call does not establish that every later call receives the same free summary.
If your task is a backlog of recorded interviews, use our uploaded-interview guide: import conditions and exports matter more than calendar Auto-join. Do not switch on meeting capture to solve a file-processing requirement it does not address.
Storage: calculate the history you need to keep
Fireflies' storage guide describes storage as total retained meeting minutes, including live recordings, uploads and imports. It does not reset monthly. It says new meetings can still be captured at the limit, but older meetings must be deleted to access new ones.
There is an official inconsistency to resolve for a shared Free workspace. The public pricing page says 400 minutes per team, while the Free-plan help page says 400 minutes per seat. The storage guide also describes per-user allocation and pooling. We could not confirm which entitlement applies to a particular workspace without account access.
Plan conservatively around 400 total minutes until your workspace confirms otherwise. Do not assume inviting colleagues multiplies the Free archive. For a single user, the following arithmetic shows why retention can become the deciding limit even when live transcripts are available.
Illustrative workload
History you want
Stored minutes required
Fit within a 400-minute planning cap?
Two 30-minute calls each week
Four weeks
240
Yes, before other stored material
Two 45-minute calls each week
Four weeks
360
Yes, with only 40 minutes spare
Four 45-minute calls each week
Four weeks
720
No
One 60-minute call each week
Eight weeks
480
No
These are calculations, not product test results or a promise that each call qualifies for transcription. Existing uploads and longer-than-planned calls also occupy space. A useful formula is weekly minutes × weeks retained + existing stored minutes. If the answer exceeds the confirmed allowance, choose a shorter retention policy or a larger archive before important history becomes inaccessible.
Deleting old meetings is a retention decision, not a substitute for exporting evidence. Establish what must remain available before removing anything.
Can you download transcripts on Free?
The dedicated download guide requires Pro or higher for transcript, summary and recording downloads. It documents transcript formats including PDF, DOCX, SRT, CSV, JSON and Markdown.
That matters if the deliverable is a file for a client, a local archive or another editing tool. Reading a transcript inside Fireflies and downloading it are different requirements. Do not build a “download and delete every week” retention workflow around Free unless the required export is available under your actual entitlement.
Are the 20 AI credits renewed each month?
The official descriptions disagree. The Free-plan help page calls them monthly; the AI credit overview describes 20 one-time signup credits, shared by the team. Treat renewal as unconfirmed until your account or Fireflies support verifies it.
AI credits also should not be read as 20 meetings or 20 guaranteed questions. The overview documents dynamic consumption according to the requested work. Keep this balance separate from the transcription-credit allowance above.
The AskFred guide adds a useful distinction: Free users spend AI credits on AskFred within a meeting, while paid users' questions in the processed-meeting Notepad do not consume them. Other entry points, such as Global AskFred and Live Assist, can use credits. A paid seat is not a universal exemption from AI charges.
When is paying justified?
The live plan comparison lists Pro at $18 per seat per month, or $10 per seat per month billed annually. The latter means $120 per seat for a year, calculated as 12 times the displayed rate. Pro lists 8,000 storage minutes per seat and downloads. Business lists unlimited storage at $29 monthly or $19 per seat per month on annual billing. Official prices.
Pay for a specific constraint: required downloads, more retained history or a recurring summary workflow that the Free account cannot sustain. Do not select Business just because you work in a team if Pro's confirmed storage and features are sufficient.
Keep optional AI billing separate
The billing terms distinguish the ongoing Free plan from a seven-day AI credits trial. For paid-plan users, that trial converts to an AI credit subscription, starting at $5/month unless another package was selected. The terms also describe automatic AI subscriptions or tier increases when paid users exhaust credits. Free users encounter a paywall rather than an automatic charge without an affirmative upgrade.
Before upgrading, inspect the core seat subscription and the AI credits package separately, including Auto-Upgrade. The same terms say cancelling the AI credits subscription is separate from cancelling the main plan. We did not activate either subscription.
A practical decision before you connect your calendar
Write down your expected calls, retention period and final deliverable. Then check:
Capture: Does your chosen Auto-join setting unlock eligible transcription for this account, and does its scope match the meetings you intend to record?
Summaries: How many transcription credits are available, and do you need a summary for every call?
Retention: Does your calculated stored history fit the confirmed workspace allowance with room for longer calls?
Handoff: Is an in-app transcript sufficient, or is a downloadable file required?
AI and billing: What is the actual balance, renewal rule and optional subscription status?
Free can fit occasional meetings and a manageable rolling history. A recurring archive, regular exports or extensive AI use needs a closer paid-plan calculation. If capture behavior itself is the problem, compare the workflows in our meeting note taker guide before choosing a larger Fireflies subscription.
Open the Fireflies.ai card, check the live plan and verify these account-specific limits. Start with the smallest commitment that preserves the records and handoff your work actually needs.
