Making the work
Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover transcription & show notes. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Meeting notes that write themselves
Notes and clips from calls, free tier included
Fireflies.ai | Grain | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $18 | From $15 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | None | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | None | None |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
Meeting notes that write themselves
Fireflies joins a call, records it, and hands back a transcript and a summary with the action items pulled out, which turns a sponsor call into a record you can search later. The free plan gives unlimited transcription and an API, which is unusually generous. Storage is what it rations, and the free tier's 400 minutes covers a few weeks at most.
Only on this side
Notes and clips from calls, free tier included
Grain records and transcribes meetings, writes notes and lets a moment be clipped out and shared without anybody rewatching the recording. Its free plan carries unlimited meetings and unlimited notetaker seats, capped at forty-five minutes each and thirty days of history, which is a real working tier rather than a demo. Paying removes both limits and adds custom prompts. The conversational intelligence in the higher tiers is aimed at sales teams and does nothing for a solo creator.
Our note
The 45-minute limit rather than the seat count is what decides whether the free plan works, so check your typical call length before anything else. Against tl;dv, Grain gives away seats and caps duration while tl;dv gives away duration and caps the AI, which makes the choice a question about your calls rather than about the products.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.
| Runs on (they differ) |
|---|
| Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android |
| Web, macOS, Windows |
| Covers | Transcription & Show Notes, AI Content Tools | Transcription & Show Notes |
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| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
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| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
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| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
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| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
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