Wave vs Fireflies.ai: Meeting Transcription Compared

Fireflies.ai has built a strong reputation with sales teams and organizations that need meeting transcripts wired into their CRM. Wave is built for a different audience — people whose conversations happen as often in person or on the phone as they do on Zoom. Both produce transcripts and AI summaries, but the underlying approach to recording creates meaningful trade-offs.

Here's where each tool genuinely excels, and where it falls short.

How They Record: One Method vs. Four

The biggest difference between Wave and Fireflies.ai is how many ways they let you record.

Fireflies.ai works by sending a bot — called "Fred" — into your virtual meetings on Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams. The bot joins as a participant, records the audio, and processes it in the cloud. This is effective for scheduled virtual calls, but it means everyone in the meeting sees an extra participant labeled as a recording bot. Some people find this distracting, and in certain professional contexts it can feel awkward.

Wave gives you four ways to record. You can send a meeting bot to Zoom, Meet, or Teams calls (just like Fireflies). You can use the desktop app on Mac or Windows to capture system audio from any call without anyone knowing. You can dial into a meeting or make phone calls through Wave's built-in VoIP dialer, which shows your real number. Or you can use the mobile app on iPhone or Android to record in-person conversations by setting your phone on the table.

This means Wave works for any type of conversation — not just virtual meetings. In-person meetings, lectures, interviews, doctor's appointments, phone calls, brainstorming sessions at a coffee shop. The difference isn't that Wave lacks bots — it's that bots are one option among four, not the only option.

Privacy and Data Handling

Privacy is where these two tools diverge sharply. Fireflies.ai processes recordings in the cloud and stores transcripts on its servers. For teams with strict data handling requirements, this can raise questions about where meeting data lives and who has access to it.

Wave is built with a privacy-first architecture. Wave never trains AI models on your data and is SOC-2 compliant, which means it meets rigorous standards for security, availability, and confidentiality. If you're recording sensitive conversations — legal discussions, medical appointments, HR meetings — this matters.

Wave also gives you the choice of how to record. Use the meeting bot when transparency is expected. Use the desktop app or mobile recorder when you want to capture audio without a bot in the participant list. Having that flexibility means you can match your recording method to the context.

Feature Comparison

• Recording methods: Wave offers four (meeting bot, desktop app, VoIP dialer, mobile mic). Fireflies.ai offers one (meeting bot).
• In-person meetings: Wave handles these via the mobile app. Fireflies.ai does not — it's designed for virtual calls.
• Phone calls: Wave records calls through its built-in VoIP dialer. Fireflies.ai cannot record phone calls.
• Virtual meetings: Both can join Zoom, Teams, and Meet. Wave also captures system audio via its desktop app without any bot joining.
• Speaker identification: Both offer speaker labels in transcripts.
• AI summaries: Both generate automatic meeting summaries with key points and action items.
• Platform support: Wave is available on iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows, and web. Fireflies.ai is primarily web-based with a mobile app for playback.
• CRM integrations: Fireflies.ai offers deep integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, and other CRMs. Wave integrates with an open API and MCP protocol for AI assistants.
• Team collaboration: Fireflies.ai has built-in team workspaces, commenting, and shared meeting libraries. Wave is designed for individual use with easy sharing options.
• Privacy: Wave is SOC-2 compliant and never trains on your data. Fireflies.ai processes and stores data in the cloud.
• Bot visibility: Fireflies.ai always uses a visible bot. Wave offers a bot option but also has bot-free methods (desktop and mobile recording).

Where Fireflies.ai Shines

Fireflies.ai is a strong choice for sales teams and organizations that live inside their CRM. If your workflow revolves around logging Zoom calls to Salesforce, automatically tagging deal-related conversations, and sharing meeting notes across a large team, Fireflies.ai has purpose-built features for that. Its team collaboration tools — shared transcript libraries, comment threads, and analytics dashboards — are designed for organizations where multiple people need access to the same meeting records.

The automatic bot-joins-your-calendar approach also works well if every meeting you care about is a scheduled virtual call. You set it up once and don't have to think about it again.

Where Wave Wins

Wave is the better fit if your meetings don't all happen on Zoom. A student recording a lecture uses the mobile app. A consultant on a client call uses the VoIP dialer. A remote worker on back-to-back Zoom calls uses the desktop app or meeting bot. Wave covers all of these because it offers multiple recording methods instead of locking you into one.

Wave also wins on flexibility around privacy. When recording is expected, use the bot. When discretion matters, use the desktop app or mobile recorder. No data is used for AI training, and the app is SOC-2 compliant. For professionals in regulated industries, having the option to record without a bot is a meaningful advantage.

Which Should You Choose?

If you're part of a large sales team that needs CRM integration and shared meeting libraries for virtual calls, Fireflies.ai is built for that workflow.

If you want a meeting transcription app that works everywhere — virtual calls, in-person meetings, phone conversations, lectures — with the flexibility to choose how you record each one, Wave is the more versatile option. Use the bot when it makes sense, skip it when it doesn't, and keep your data under your control either way.