Motion vs Fireflies

Firstly, it’s important to understand that Motion's AI Notetaker is a feature WITHIN Motion. Motion is a full-blown project and task management tool, so to use this feature you'd need to commit to using their full tool.

So if you have Motion and haven’t tried the AI Notetaker, you’re not getting the most out of your purchase! Motion’s AI notetaker is great, but if you’re looking for more of a standalone option, we would suggest a tool like Granola.

Okay, now to why Motion's AI Notetaker is worth considering:

The biggest problem isn’t remembering what was said during a meeting; just about every AI Notetaker can record and transcribe, but does that even matter if nothing actually gets done? If you’re having tons of calls but no follow-through, then Motion is worth considering.

Motion AI Notetaker is similar to other meeting bots that join your Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams calls. It records video, audio, and transcribe conversations. Then at the end of your call, it generates structured summaries with key points, decisions, and action items. 

But it doesn’t just stop at just notes, it takes action for you.

Motion’s AI notetaker extracts action items and turns them into prioritized tasks. Then it goes even a step further and schedules those tasks directly onto our team’s calendar using their AI auto-scheduling.

Before using Motion our client meetings would end, then we’d play the waiting game, hoping the transcription notates our follow-up plan because who remembers every detail? But now, all we need to do is approve/reject tasks and the work is already planning on our entire teams schedules.

When we first started using Motion, our entire team was blown away by the accuracy of the notes. One of our engineers even said, "At my old job, we had two employees on every call just to take notes. Motion did a better job than I ever could."

So while it does mean adopting a new project management tool, it did take our meeting-to-execution system to a new level. If you're not opposed to that fact, then it’s worth learning more through our full Motion Review.

You should consider Motion AI Notetaker if:

• You already use Motion for calendar/task management (otherwise you're paying for features you won't fully use)
• Your team constantly forgets small commitments made in meetings
• You're tired of manually creating tasks from meeting notes
• You want accountability built in, everyone sees what they're assigned and when

Skip Motion AI Notetaker if:

• You want a standalone notetaker without committing to Motion's full ecosystem
• You juggle multiple calendars regularly (freelance + full-time, multiple businesses, etc.), the notetaker only works with one primary calendar at a time

We personally use other features Motion has to offer, so we loved the fact that we didn't have to add another tool to our stack. All we had to do was take advantage of a unique feature already included. 

When we started using Motion’s notetaker, we noticed it thought like the “perfect” assistant, focusing on attendees, key points, decisions, action items, and context.

When you have important information being discussed QUICKLY in every client, stakeholder, and team meeting, it’s important to have a tool that takes notes better than a human, and that’s been our exact experience with this notetaker.

Lists are great, but without action, they are useless. So it’s always a sigh of relief to us when all those tasks get assigned to specific team members the moment our meeting ends. All you need to do is to accept, reject, and edit tasks as needed, so you get all the control without having to do the grunt work.

Task creation is super helpful, but Motion takes it a step further by automatically scheduling every approved task directly onto everyone’s calendar at the end of the meeting so it gets done.

• Motion runs roughly $19–$34 per month (Individual to Team plans), and the AI Notetaker is included within that broader system. But first, you can start with their 7-day free trial.

Fireflies was actually one of the first meeting recorder solutions on the market. They managed to build remote tooling that would actually join in existing meetings, like in Google Meet or Zoom, act like a guest, and record the audio.

This was super impressive, back when online video conferencing software was more restrictive, and Google Meet for example didn't even have native video meeting recorder functionality.

We actually used Fireflies almost exclusively for years, super early days back in 2017, and it has come a long way since, moving more into that of a AI meeting assistant.

They've built out a unique feature-set around being able to create snippets of calls, and tag them to a specific playlist, to then reference later or share with your team or others:

It's a really cool idea, it's just in practice, how often will you really be using it? I could see this being more useful for very specific industry verticals or teams, but not most, and not in the way we use a meeting recorder tool in our day-to-day.

All-in-all, they give you a lot of tools to organize your online meetings. But that's where I sorta wish I could just do less. I'm already organizing so many other facets to my life, from file storage in Google Drive, to channels and notes in Slite. I really just want to record meetings, have them log to my CRM, and forget about them unless I need to reference them.

Thing is, if you aren't staying on-top of organizing your calls though, it almost feels like you're just not taking full advantage of what Fireflies has built, which honestly stresses me out. 😅

Fireflies is pretty clean overall—it looks decently nice, it's just that there's a lot vying for your attention even just on the call review page:

Do you view the AI summary? Create Soundbites? Maybe AskFred? Or a Smart Search? Maybe you just want to make a comment? 🤷

It's just a bit overwhelming until you get used to the interface, but overall design-wise, it is clean.

This is an area that we really have to hand it to Fireflies—they have focused on integrations quite deeply out of the gate. For example, they integrate with most of the best CRM tools on the market.

Fireflies’ pricing looks typical at first, but in practice it is fairly restrictive.

• Free tier is extremely limited with only 3 transcription credits, 800 minutes of storage per seat, and audio-only recording.
• To unlock integrations you must upgrade to the $18/user/mo Pro plan, which includes 8,000 minutes of storage but still does not offer video recording. With moderate usage, around 30 calls per month, that storage only lasts roughly 4–5 months before you are pushed to the highest tier if you want to keep historical recordings.

Because video recording is locked behind the top plan, many teams will need the most expensive tier immediately.