Quill – Your AI Chief of Staff

Fireflies.ai has become one of the most recognized names in AI meeting transcription, with over 20 million users and presence in 75% of Fortune 500 companies. In June 2025, the company reached a $1 billion valuation, according to their website. It's a capable tool that does what it promises: record meetings, transcribe them, and help teams search through past conversations.

But transcription is table stakes in 2026. The question isn't whether your meeting tool can capture what was said. It's whether it can help you act on it.
That's where Fireflies and Quill diverge. Fireflies is a note-taker. Quill is an AI meeting assistant with agentic capabilities that turn conversations into completed work.

What Happens After the Meeting?

Fireflies captures your meeting, generates a transcript, and produces an AI summary. You get action items extracted. You can search across past meetings. You can share notes with your team.

Then what?

You still need to create the Linear tickets yourself. You still need to update the Notion doc. You still need to draft the follow-up email. You still need to remember what was discussed in last week's call before your next one.

Quill, with Quilliam (launched early 2026), handles that execution layer. Quilliam is an agentic AI that acts as an "AI Chief of Staff" for knowledge workers. After a product meeting, it can create or update tickets in Linear, revise documentation in Notion, and draft follow-up emails to stakeholders. Before a client call, it surfaces relevant history from past meetings and prepares briefing materials.

Fireflies helps you remember the meeting. Quill helps you execute the work that comes after it.

The Intelligence Gap

Fireflies processes one meeting at a time. Each transcript exists in isolation. If you want to understand how a conversation evolved across your weekly 1:1s or project stand-ups, you're manually piecing together separate documents.
Quill thinks in threads. Your recurring meetings form a connected series. Thread Notes provide context across multiple meetings, so you can see patterns, track decisions over time, and understand the full arc of a relationship or project.

Output formats matter too. Fireflies produces AI-enhanced summaries, which work well for quick recaps. Quill gives you two formats:

• Live Minutes capture what happened in real-time, chronologically, so you can refer back to exactly when something was said during a long call
• Post-Meeting Notes organize information by topic rather than time

For project documentation and compliance, the "when" often matters as much as the "what."

Recording: Bot vs No Bot

Fireflies works by sending a visible participant called "Fireflies.ai Notetaker" into your meetings. This bot appears in the participant list, and everyone on the call can see it. According to Fireflies' own documentation, the bot "may request permission if you're not the host" and "you or another host must admit it if there's a waiting room or lobby."

Fireflies has added bot-free options:

• Chrome Extension (Google Meet only)
• Desktop App (macOS and Windows, launched late 2025)
• Mobile App (for in-person conversations)

But bot-free mode comes with trade-offs. According to Fireflies' documentation, recording without the bot means no speaker labels (transcripts show "Speaker 1" and "Speaker 2" instead of names), Sales Assist features are unavailable, and no audio or video files are saved.

Quill is bot-free by design. There's no additional participant, no announcement that "Recording Bot has joined." Quill captures audio directly from your device's system audio. And Quill's local audio diarization identifies speakers without sending raw audio to the cloud, so you get full speaker identification without the bot trade-offs.

Architecture: Where Your Data Lives

This is where the two tools differ most at a foundational level.

Fireflies' Architecture:

According to their website, Fireflies stores and processes data in US cloud infrastructure, using Google Cloud for servers and AWS Virtual Private Cloud for databases. They use third-party providers for transcription (including services like Deepgram) and AI features (OpenAI and Anthropic). All user data is encrypted using 256-bit AES at rest and TLS in transit.

Fireflies has implemented a Zero Data Retention policy with their AI vendors, enforced through Business Associate Agreements. For most business use cases, this is a reasonable setup. Fireflies earned SOC 2 Type 2 certification and maintains GDPR compliance. Enterprise customers can opt for Private Storage in their own AWS S3 or Google Cloud Storage buckets.

Quill's Architecture:

Quill's configurable local-first architecture puts users in control - you have the ability to specify your own AI processors and no private meeting data is stored on Quill's servers.

In the default configuration, audio never leaves your computer - transcription and speaker recognition happens locally. You can even transcribe meetings offline. Your meeting transcripts, your notes, your contacts are all stored in a local folder on your computer and Quill doesn't have access to them. Quill provides default US-based LLMs that you may use for note generation and follow-up actions with zero-retention policies and Quill's servers themselves never log any inputs or outputs to or from the LLM providers.

If you configure Quill with your own AI providers, Quill's desktop application will connect directly to your chosen provider, bypassing Quill's servers entirely. You can use a local LLM host like Ollama or LM Studio to run completely offline or use your own personal or corporate account or inference server at OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Azure, AWS Bedrock, LiteLLM or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. You can also configure a cloud transcription provider of your own choice if you prefer.

For teams in regulated industries or for whom client confidentiality is a concern, this architecture simplifies compliance conversations significantly.

Feature Comparison

What Quilliam Can Actually Do

Quilliam connects to tools via Model Context Protocol (MCP), including Notion, Linear, Affinity, Obsidian, Airtable, Manus, and Gamma. More importantly, Quilliam can connect to any MCP server, making it arbitrarily extensible.

After meetings:

• Create or update tickets in Linear based on decisions made
• Revise documentation in Notion with new information
• Draft follow-up emails to stakeholders
• Update CRM records with conversation context

Before meetings:

• Surface relevant history from past meetings with the same participants
• Prepare briefing materials based on previous conversations
• Identify open action items from the last meeting in the thread

Across your workflow:

• Query all past calls ("Summarize top security requests from my last three meetings")
• Turn meeting insights into structured work without copy-pasting
• Learn your patterns over time and customize automations

Fireflies offers an MCP server, which makes meeting data accessible to external AI tools which is useful for pulling transcripts into other AI workflows. But an MCP server is a passive data layer: it exposes information, it doesn't act on it.

Quill has both an MCP client and an MCP server. The MCP client is what allows Quilliam to take actions inside tools like Notion, Linear, Affinity, and Airtable, not just expose data to them. The difference is passive data access versus active workflow execution, and Quill is built for the latter.

Integration Ecosystems

Fireflies has built an extensive integration ecosystem with 90+ native connections. This includes CRMs (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Wealthbox), project management tools (Asana, Trello, Monday, Jira), collaboration platforms (Slack, Notion), storage services (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive) and applicant tracking systems (Greenhouse, Lever). They also offer a GraphQL API on Business tier and above, plus support for Zapier and Make.

Quill takes a more focused approach to integrations, prioritizing depth over breadth. The platform connects with key CRMs (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Attio, Affinity, Ashby), collaboration tools (Slack, Linear, Notion), and offers capabilities that Fireflies doesn't: arbitrary custom MCP integrations, a Claude Desktop Extension, private MCP server for connections to external AI agents, and meeting/note webhooks for custom workflows.

For teams that need to push meeting data into a wide variety of existing tools, Fireflies' integration library is broader. For teams building custom workflows or wanting agentic execution, Quill's approach offers more flexibility.

Pricing Comparison

Fireflies:

• Free: 800 minutes storage, 20 AI credits/month, basic features
• Pro: $120/year or $18/month — unlimited transcription, 8,000 minutes storage
• Business: $228/yr or $29/month — unlimited storage, video recording, API access
• Enterprise: $468/user/year — SSO, HIPAA compliance, Private Storage

Note: AI credits are limited on each tier. The Pro plan includes only 20 AI credits per month (same as the free plan), and additional credits cost $5 for 50 credits. Features like AskFred queries and certain automation features consume credits.

Quill:

• Free: Unlimited transcription and speaker recognition, local processing
• Lite: $7.99/month or $83.88/yr
• 16 hours of meetings with AI notes per month. Unlimited non-pro transcription.
• All pro AI features.
• Quill mobile app for in-person recording
• Unlimited: $19.99/month
• Unlimited meetings with AI notes
• All pro AI features
• Teams: $15/seat/month or $144/seat/yr
• Team management
• Organization-level custom templates, automations, model configuration, data retention & compliance policies

Known Limitations

Fireflies

• No Agentic Capabilities: Fireflies captures and organizes meeting data but doesn't execute follow-up work. Users must manually create tickets, update docs, and draft emails.
• Single-Meeting Context: No intelligence across meetings. Each transcript is isolated.
• Visible Bot (default): The "Fireflies.ai Notetaker" appears as a participant. Bot-free mode loses speaker labels and other features.
• AI Credit System: Advanced AI features consume credits limited on each tier (Pro gets only 20/month, same as free). This can lead to unexpected costs.
• Language Limitations: No automatic language detection. You must set the language before the meeting. Cannot transcribe multiple languages simultaneously.
• No Offline Mode: Requires internet connection for transcription.

Quill

• Text-Optimized: Quill focuses on transcripts and notes rather than video playback. No video recording feature.
• Fewer Native Integrations: Quill's integration library is more focused than Fireflies' 90+ connections.
• Platform Coverage: Currently macOS and Windows only, no web app.

Who Each Tool Serves Best

Choose Fireflies if:

• You primarily need transcription and searchable meeting archives
• You need the broadest possible integration ecosystem
• Video recording of meetings is important to your workflow

Choose Quill if:

• You want an AI assistant that executes work, not just takes notes
• You need context across meetings, not just isolated transcripts
• Bot-free recording with full speaker identification matters
• You work in a regulated industry where data residency matters
• You want control over which AI providers process your data
• You need local model support or want to bring your own LLM
• You're building custom AI workflows using MCP servers

The Category Shift

The AI meeting tool space has matured past transcription. Accuracy is high enough across most tools. Search works. Summaries are decent.

The question is what comes next.

Fireflies represents the first generation: capture everything, make it searchable, let humans figure out what to do with it.

Quill represents the next step: understand the meeting, connect it to your other meetings, and execute the follow-up work that meetings generate.

If you need a reliable note-taker with broad integrations, Fireflies does that job well.

If you need an AI meeting assistant that turns conversations into completed work, that's what Quill was built for.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Quill store my meeting data on its servers?

No. Quill meeting data is stored on your computer.

What is Quilliam and how is it different from Fireflies' AI features?

Quilliam is Quill's agentic AI, acting as an "AI Chief of Staff." Launched in early 2026, it goes beyond note-taking by connecting to tools like Linear, Notion, Affinity, and Airtable via MCP, and using your meeting context to proactively execute follow-up workflows — creating tickets, updating docs, drafting emails. Fireflies' AI features analyze and summarize meetings, but don't execute workflows automatically.

Does Quill work offline?

Yes. Quill transcribes meetings locally on your device and doesn't require an internet connection to record or transcribe. Fireflies requires an internet connection for transcription.

Which is better for privacy-sensitive industries?

Quill's configurable local-first architecture means your meeting content never needs to pass through vendor servers, which can simplify compliance for teams in healthcare, legal, finance, and defense. Fireflies processes data in cloud infrastructure; enterprise customers can add Private Storage in their own AWS or GCP bucket for additional data residency control.

Does Quill have a bot that joins meetings?

No. Quill is bot-free by design. It captures system audio directly from your device with no visible participant joining the call and therefore works with every meeting platform automatically. Fireflies uses a bot by default, with bot-free options available (Chrome Extension for Google Meet, or Desktop App) — though bot-free mode currently loses speaker identification.

Can I use my own AI models with Quill?

Yes. Quill lets you configure your own LLM endpoints — including Azure, OpenAI, Google, or local/private network models — bypassing Quill's routing layer entirely. Fireflies does not offer this option.