Whipscribe vs Fireflies capture versus corpus.
Fireflies sends a notetaker into your calls and captures them as they happen. Whipscribe never joins a call — it takes recordings that already exist and turns them into a transcript archive you can search, chapter, quote and query from an API. These are two halves of the same problem, and most teams need both.
Concede the obvious
If you want a bot to capture your calls, Fireflies does that and we do not.
Fireflies' whole design is automatic capture: it joins the meeting, records it, and hands you a record without anyone remembering to press anything. Whipscribe has no bot, no calendar connection, and nothing running on your machine. For meetings you attend and want captured hands-free, Fireflies is the better fit. One sentence, no hedging.
What that leaves is a large and specific gap. A notetaker covers meetings on one calendar, from the day it was connected forward. Everything else — every recording made before that, every file someone sent you, and everything that was never a calendar meeting at all — is still an unsearchable pile of audio. That pile is what Whipscribe is for.
exists
or API call
+ chapters
whole library
timestamp
The wedge
The half a notetaker never reaches.
Four situations that come up constantly and that no in-call bot addresses, because in every one of them the audio already exists.
The archive that predates the tool
A year of Zoom cloud recordings, exported and forgotten. A notetaker installed today does nothing for it. Transcribe the lot, then search across it for the objection, the commitment, or the name you half-remember.
Calls a bot cannot be in
Client policy, HR and legal conversations, journalism, regulated environments. An extra participant in the call is often simply not allowed. Record with the platform's own recorder, transcribe the file afterwards. Nothing appears in the participant list.
Audio that was never a meeting
Webinar exports, podcast episodes, conference sessions, lectures, field interviews, voice memos, a YouTube link. Whipscribe accepts a file, a URL or an RSS feed and treats all of it the same way — same speaker labels, same five export formats.
Work that should not involve a UI
A documented REST API, and an MCP server so an agent can transcribe, search and quote without a human in the loop. transcribe_urls_batch takes a list of links in one call and /batch shows per-file progress.
For engineers
There is a real API underneath, not an integrations page.
Submit, poll, fetch. Five output formats, Idempotency-Key so a retry never double-charges, and explicit error codes. Full reference at /docs; Keys are self-serve: sign in, add credit, and create one at /apis/keys. The API has no free tier — a key needs a positive balance ($50 minimum, spendable on transcription).
For agent workflows, the MCP server is the shorter path: add https://whipscribe.com/mcp as a connector, or run uvx whipscribe-mcp locally, and Claude gets the transcript library as tools — list, search, summarise, quote with timestamps. There is also a Chrome extension for pulling audio out of the tab you are already looking at.
Side by side
Capability differences.
Only Whipscribe's column is a claim we can stand behind. Fireflies is described by the job it is built for rather than by a feature list or price we would be guessing at — check fireflies.ai for anything on their side that decides it for you.
| Capability | Whipscribe | Fireflies |
|---|---|---|
| Shape of the product | Hosted async transcription of existing recordings | Meeting notetaker that joins calls |
| Bot joins your call | No — nothing enters the meeting | Yes, that is the core of it |
| Calendar connection required | No | Central to how it captures |
| Works on recordings made before you signed up | Yes — the primary use | Capture is forward-looking |
| Paste a YouTube or podcast URL | Yes, plus RSS feeds | Meeting-shaped ingest |
| Multi-hour recordings | Yes — up to 10 hours per file | See their plan limits |
| Speaker labels | Yes, with word-level timestamps | Speaker attribution for call participants |
| Chapters on a long transcript | Yes | — |
| Answers that link to a clickable timestamp | Yes — click it and the audio plays from that line | — |
| Export formats | TXT, SRT, VTT, DOCX, JSON | See their documentation |
| Public REST API | Yes — /docs, keys by request | See their developer docs |
| MCP server for Claude and other agents | Yes — whipscribe.com/mcp | — |
| Batch submission in one call | Yes — transcribe_urls_batch + /batch progress | — |
| Chrome extension | Yes | See their documentation |
| Where transcription runs | Our own GPUs, open-source Whisper, never used to train a model | See their privacy documentation |
| Pricing model | Packs from $4, then one-time minute packs from $4, no seats, credits never expire | Per-seat plans — check their pricing page |
Where each tool wins
Honest call.
If your recordings all arrive from calls on one connected calendar, a notetaker is the simpler answer and you do not need us. The moment audio arrives from anywhere else, that stops being true.
FirefliesJoins the call
- Automatic capture with nothing to remember
- Meetings on a connected calendar, hands-free
- Notes waiting for you when the call ends
- Team-wide meeting workflow out of the box
- The archive from before you connected it
- Calls where an extra participant is not allowed
- Podcasts, webinars, lectures, field audio
- Pipelines that want an API and an MCP server
Whipscribe$12 / 2,000 min
- Bulk and archive work — hundreds of files
- Multi-hour recordings, up to 10 hours per file
- Speaker labels, chapters, accent-insensitive search
- Answers that cite a timestamp you can click
- REST API, MCP server, Chrome extension
- Own GPUs, never trains on your audio
- Automatic in-call capture (Fireflies wins)
- Calendar-driven, zero-effort recording (Fireflies wins)
- Anything that has to happen live (Fireflies wins)
Pricing
Three packs and a one-off unlock, no seats.
Packs from $4, credits never expire. After that, every pack is a one-time purchase and credits never expire. A monthly 55-minute all-hands for a year plus 30 customer interviews at 45 minutes is 2,010 minutes — one $12 pack covers all but ten minutes of it, once, not monthly.
Unlock
$2/transcript
Opens one transcript in full. Adds no credit.
- One transcript, read in full
- Speaker labels + chapters
- No minutes added to your balance
Starter
$8/1,000 min
About 16 hours — a few weeks of recorded calls.
- 1,000 minutes of audio
- Transcript search + Ask AI
- All export formats
Pro
$12/2,000 min
About 33 hours — roughly $0.36 an hour.
- 2,000 minutes of audio
- Priority queue
- Chapters, search, timestamped answers
Team
$24/5,000 min
About 83 hours — roughly $0.29 an hour.
- 5,000 minutes of audio
- API access for batch pipelines
- MCP server for Claude and other agents
FAQ
Fireflies vs Whipscribe questions.
Can Whipscribe replace Fireflies for my meetings?
Not for capture. Fireflies sends a notetaker into the call and records it for you; Whipscribe never joins a call, so if automatic capture of meetings on your calendar is the job, Fireflies is the right tool. Whipscribe takes over once a recording exists — including recordings a bot was never in.
Why would I want both?
Because a notetaker only covers meetings from the day you installed it, on the calendar it is connected to. It does not cover webinar exports, podcast episodes, conference sessions, voice memos, field interviews, or the year of Zoom cloud recordings sitting in Drive. Whipscribe covers that half.
What about calls a bot is not allowed to join?
That is a common reason people end up here. Client policy, legal and HR conversations, journalism, and regulated environments often rule out an extra participant. Record it yourself with the platform's own recording, then transcribe the file. Nothing joins your meeting, and transcription runs on our own GPUs rather than a third-party service.
Does Whipscribe have an API and an MCP server?
Yes. The REST API is documented at /docs — submit a file or URL, poll the job, fetch the transcript as TXT, JSON, SRT, VTT or DOCX, with Idempotency-Key support for safe retries. The MCP server exposes the library to Claude and other MCP clients, including a batch tool that takes many URLs in one call. Keys are self-serve: sign in, add credit, and create one at /apis/keys. The API has no free tier — a key needs a positive balance ($50 minimum, spendable on transcription).
How long a recording can it handle?
Up to 10 hours or 5 GB per file, so multi-hour recordings are the normal case — full-day offsites, conference tracks, three-hour hearings. Before you buy credits, files can run up to 3 hours; longer files need credits. The box on this page takes files up to 500 MB, and larger files continue on the upload page. Timestamps run the whole way through and chapters give you an outline to navigate by.
What does it cost compared to a per-seat notetaker?
Whipscribe has no seats and no subscription. Packs from $4, credits never expire. After that, packs are $8 for 1,000 minutes, $12 for 2,000 (about 33 hours) and $24 for 5,000, and credits never expire. Compare against your real volume rather than against a headline rate — archive work is lumpy, and a pack you buy once suits that better than a monthly seat.
Related
Related comparisons.
Let the bot cover your calendar. We will cover the archive.
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