At a glance
Fireflies details reflect how the product is commonly documented; verify current specifics on their own pages. The Nod row is first-party.
- Bot in the call — Nod: never · Fireflies: yes, joins as a named participant.
- Stored audio — Nod: none, in memory ~5s then discarded · Fireflies: cloud recordings retained.
- Where data lives — Nod: EU (AWS eu-west-1), AES-256, per-user RLS · Fireflies: US (verify).
- Model training — Nod: none, Zero Data Retention upstream · Fireflies: check their current policy.
- Non-video calls — Nod: phone on speaker, in-person, ad-hoc huddles all work · Fireflies: needs a meeting a bot can join.
- Meetings you're not in — Nod: impossible by design · Fireflies: yes, send the bot without you.
- CRM & workflow depth — Nod: light · Fireflies: deep, and the main reason teams buy it.
- Platforms — Nod: macOS only · Fireflies: web-based, effectively everywhere.
- Price — Nod: 14-day trial then $12–$20/mo annually · Fireflies: free tier plus paid plans.
What the bot costs you, and what it buys you
The bot is not purely a downside, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Because Fireflies joins the meeting rather than your machine, it can attend without you, it captures the call from the platform's own stream, and it doesn't care what device you're on. Those are real advantages.
What it costs is visibility and reach. Everyone sees a recorder in the list, which changes how candidly people speak — the effect is most obvious in interviews, client discovery, and performance conversations. External and locked-down meetings can refuse it. And nothing a bot does helps on a phone call or a conversation that was never scheduled.
Nod trades the first set of advantages away to remove the second set of costs. Whether that's the right trade depends entirely on which of your meetings matter most.
Recording versus remembering
Fireflies keeps the recording, so the meeting stays re-playable. Nod treats the audio as disposable the moment it becomes text. Capture is local on your Mac; transcription isn't. Each audio segment is sent through a European proxy to a hosted transcription service and discarded the instant the text returns, under Zero Data Retention and with no model training. No audio is stored at either end. Only the transcript and summary are saved, encrypted at rest in the EU (AWS eu-west-1). See the security page.
The practical consequence: with Nod you can never go back to the raw audio, because it doesn't exist. In exchange, there is no recording of your client calls sitting in anyone's cloud, and nothing to disclose, subpoena, or leak.
Who should pick which
Choose Nod if you're on a Mac, you want no participant in the call, no retained audio, EU hosting, coverage of phone and in-person conversations, and recall across everything you've ever discussed.
Choose Fireflies if you need the bot to attend without you, you want deep CRM automation, you're not on macOS, or keeping the recording is a requirement.
Related: Nod vs meeting bots for the general case, and the Fireflies alternatives roundup for the rest of the field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Nod a good replacement for Fireflies.ai?
If what you want is the notes without a participant in the call, yes — on macOS it's a direct replacement, and it additionally covers phone and in-person conversations Fireflies can't reach. It's not a replacement if you rely on sending the bot to meetings you don't attend, or on deep CRM automation.Does Nod work with Zoom, Google Meet and Teams like Fireflies?
Yes, and without integrating with any of them. Because Nod captures your Mac's audio rather than joining the meeting, it works the same on Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Slack huddles, Discord, FaceTime, and a phone on speaker — including locked-down external calls where a bot would be denied.Which is cheaper, Nod or Fireflies?
Fireflies has a free tier, so at zero usage it's cheaper. On paid plans Nod works out to $12–$20 a month billed annually after a 14-day trial with no card; compare against the Fireflies tier you'd actually need. See pricing.