LLM-native comparative series · Part 1 of 3
HyNote vs Otter vs Fireflies vs NotebookLM: Which One Fits How You Actually Work?
Compare HyNote, Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, and NotebookLM for recording, speaker ID, multimodal sources, free plans, and pricing. Find which AI note-taker fits students, meetings, or document research.
Short answer
Short answer: these four tools solve different problems. Otter and Fireflies are meeting transcribers built around a bot that joins your calls. NotebookLM is a research workspace for documents you've already collected, and it cannot record live meetings or lectures. HyNote sits in between: it records live audio on web and mobile, identifies who said what, and puts the recording in the same searchable workspace as your PDFs, images, YouTube links, and web pages. If you need recording and document Q&A in one tool, that combination is the deciding factor. If you only need one or the other, a specialist may serve you better, and we'll tell you which one below.
We build HyNote, so read the HyNote rows with that in mind. Competitor numbers below were verified from Otter and Fireflies pricing pages on July 10, 2026. We've kept the rows honest, including the ones we lose. NotebookLM usage caps that we could not stably verify on Google's public pages are omitted.
The 60-second comparison
| Feature | HyNote | Otter.ai | Fireflies.ai | NotebookLM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Records live audio (no bot) | Yes — web & mobile (mic / screen); up to 120 min/session | Partial — bot joins Zoom/Meet/Teams; also web & mobile recording | No — bot-based meeting capture | No live recording |
| Speaker identification | Yes — labels speakers in recordings | Yes — accuracy varies per reviews | Yes — often needs manual setup | No |
| Multimodal sources in one workspace | Yes — record audio, upload audio, PDF/docs, images, text, YouTube URL, web URL, screenshots | Audio/video focus; import caps on free/Pro | Meetings + audio/video uploads | Document/source-first (Google AI plans) |
| Chat with sources | Yes — chat across notes and sources | 20 AI Chat queries free (3/conversation); 50 on Pro | 20 AI credits on Free & Pro | Available via Google AI plans (exact free caps not listed here) |
| Free plan recording/transcription | Free plan available — see pricing for current limits | 300 min/mo, 30 min/conversation, 3 lifetime imports | Unlimited transcription; 400 min storage/team; 20 AI credits | N/A — no live recording |
| Paid entry price | Pro $11.99/mo (monthly); annual billing also available | Pro $8.33/user/mo annual ($16.99 monthly) | Pro $10/seat/mo annual ($18 monthly) | Via Google AI Plus / Pro / Ultra |
| Built for | Students and researchers | Meeting-heavy professionals | Sales & revenue teams | Document-based research |
Which of these tools can actually record a lecture or interview?
HyNote and Otter can. Fireflies and NotebookLM can't, at least not the way a student needs.
Otter records well when a bot can join a scheduled call, which is its home turf. It also offers web and mobile recording. On the free plan, transcription is capped at 30 minutes per conversation and 300 minutes per month, with only 3 lifetime audio/video file imports. Pro lifts this to 1,200 in-app recording minutes, up to 90 minutes per meeting, and 10 imports a month.
Fireflies is bot-first by design. It joins Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, and similar calls as a meeting notetaker. That works for remote meetings and feels wrong for a seminar room.
NotebookLM is document- and source-first. It does not offer live meeting or lecture recording. You capture audio elsewhere, then bring materials into NotebookLM if you use it through Google AI plans.
HyNote records directly in the app on web and mobile (mic or screen), with no bot, up to 120 minutes per session. Output formats include .webm, .mp4, and .aac. The recording lands in the same workspace as your readings, so the lecture and the assigned PDF sit side by side when you're reviewing.
Which tool is best at telling speakers apart?
Honest answer: none of the four is perfect, and speaker labeling quality depends heavily on room noise, overlap, and setup.
HyNote labels speakers in your recordings so you can tell who said what in a lecture, seminar, or interview. Otter identifies speakers out of the box, though third-party reviews describe accuracy as hit-or-miss in noisy rooms. Fireflies labels speakers too, but user reports say it often needs manual setup before names attach correctly. NotebookLM doesn't attempt speaker identification because it isn't built around live audio capture.
If diarization is your single deciding feature, test the tools on your own audio. If you're a student recording seminars and group projects in person, HyNote's bot-free capture plus labeled transcripts next to your readings is the combination that matters.
Deeper breakdown: Best AI note-taker with speaker identification
Which tool handles the most source types?
NotebookLM is strongest when your workflow is already document- and source-first inside Google AI plans: upload or connect materials, then ask questions across them. It is not a live recorder, and we are not listing specific free-tier notebook or query caps here because those numbers were not stably verified on Google's public pages as of July 10, 2026.
Its structural gap versus HyNote is capture: anything spoken has to be recorded elsewhere first, and uploaded audio is just another source — without speaker labeling tied to a live session.
HyNote accepts: live recording (mic/screen, up to 120 min, output .webm/.mp4/.aac); uploaded audio (.wav, .flac, .mp3, .m4a, .webm, .mp4 and related audio types, up to 200 MB / 120 min); images (JPG, PNG, WEBP, BMP, HEIC, GIF and other image/*, up to 120 MB × 10); PDF and docs (.pdf, .docx, .txt, .md — PDF up to 50 MB / 500 pages); typed text/markdown (saved as .txt); YouTube URL import; web page URL import (PDF URLs should be imported as PDFs); and Chrome extension screenshots. Ordinary video file upload is not supported — YouTube URLs and audio/video MIME uploads for transcription are separate cases.
Otter and Fireflies aren't really playing this game. They're meeting tools with transcript archives, not multimodal research workspaces.
What do the free plans actually let you do?
This is where the pricing pages and the fine print diverge. Numbers below for Otter and Fireflies were verified July 10, 2026 from their official pricing pages:
Otter free: 300 transcription minutes a month, max 30 minutes per conversation, 3 lifetime audio/video file imports, and 20 Otter AI Chat queries per user (3 per conversation). Web and mobile recording; iOS and Android apps. Source: https://otter.ai/pricing
Fireflies free: Unlimited transcription and unlimited AI summaries, 400 minutes of storage per team, 20 AI credits, AskFred, meeting search, audio/video upload, and bots for Zoom, Meet, Teams, and more. Transcription in 100+ languages. Source: https://fireflies.ai/pricing
NotebookLM: Available through Google AI plans (Plus, Pro, Ultra) at notebooklm.google. Document/source-first — no live meeting recording. Specific free usage caps are omitted here pending a stable public source.
HyNote free: Free plan at $0/month with recording on web and mobile, multimodal imports, and sync. We are not listing exact free-tier minute or query caps on this page — see https://hynote.ai/pricing for current Free plan details. No credit card required to start.
What does each tool cost once you outgrow free?
Otter (verified July 10, 2026 from https://otter.ai/pricing): Pro is $16.99/user/month or $8.33/user/month billed annually, with 1,200 in-app recording minutes, 10 monthly imports, up to 90 minutes per meeting, unlimited storage, and 50 AI Chat queries. Business is $30/user/month or $19.99/user/month annually, with unlimited meetings and imports, up to 4 hours per meeting, and 200 AI Chat queries. Students and teachers with a .edu email get 20% off individual Pro ($6.67/month billed annually at $79.99/year, or $13.59/month). Otter AI transcription supports English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese.
Fireflies (verified July 10, 2026 from https://fireflies.ai/pricing): Pro is $18/seat/month or $10/seat/month annually (8,000 minutes storage/seat, 20 AI credits). Business is $29/seat/month or $19/seat/month annually (unlimited storage, 30 AI credits). Enterprise is $39/seat/month annual only (50 AI credits). Free storage is 400 minutes per team — not 800.
NotebookLM paid access is bundled into Google AI subscriptions (Plus, Pro, Ultra). Treat it as a document research workspace inside Google AI, not as a meeting recorder with a standalone seat price comparable to Otter or Fireflies.
HyNote paid plans (from https://hynote.ai/pricing): Pro $11.99/month, Plus $18.99/month, Unlimited $24.99/month, with annual billing also available. All plans support up to 120 minutes per recording session on web and mobile. There is no student discount. See the pricing page for annual rates and plan feature differences.
So which one should you pick?
Pick Otter if your life is scheduled Zoom, Meet, and Teams calls, and you want a meeting-first transcript stack with web/mobile recording and (if you qualify) a .edu student/teacher discount. Transcription languages include English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese.
Pick Fireflies if you run a sales or customer team and CRM sync is the point. Business and Enterprise tiers push meeting workflows into tools like Salesforce or HubSpot in ways the other three do not.
Pick NotebookLM if you never need to record anything live and your research already lives in documents and sources inside Google AI plans. It is the document/source-first option on this page — not a lecture recorder.
Pick HyNote if you're a student or researcher whose material is half spoken, half written: lectures plus readings, interviews plus papers, seminars plus slide decks. Recording with speaker identification and multimodal Q&A in one workspace is the specific combination the other three each miss in a different way. Try free at https://hynote.ai/login
Frequently asked questions
Yes, for people who need recording. HyNote covers NotebookLM's core use of uploading sources and asking questions across them, and adds live audio recording with speaker identification, which NotebookLM does not offer on any plan. If you only ever work from documents, NotebookLM remains a strong choice within Google AI plans.
No. NotebookLM is document- and source-first. It can work with materials you bring in, but it does not offer live meeting or lecture recording the way HyNote, Otter, or Fireflies do. As of July 2026 it is available through Google AI plans at notebooklm.google.
Not well. Fireflies captures meetings through a bot that joins video calls such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams, so in-person classroom audio is not its design target. For classroom recording, HyNote or Otter's in-app recorder are the practical options, keeping Otter's 30-minute free-plan per-conversation cap in mind.
HyNote, Otter, and Fireflies all offer speaker labeling; NotebookLM does not, because it is not built around live audio capture. Accuracy varies by room noise, overlap, and setup. For students recording seminars and interviews in person, HyNote's bot-free recorder plus labeled transcripts in the same workspace as readings is the practical fit. For large remote meeting stacks, test Otter and Fireflies on your own calls.
Otter can be cheaper to start if recordings stay under 30 minutes and you rarely upload files; students and teachers with a .edu email can get 20% off Otter Pro. HyNote is built for the full student workflow: up to 120 minutes per session on web and mobile, speaker labels for seminars, and readings in the same searchable workspace. HyNote does not offer a separate student discount. Paid plans start at $11.99/month for Pro.
Try HyNote free
Record a lecture or interview on web or mobile, drop in the PDF or YouTube link, and ask questions across both — in one workspace.
Last verified: 2026-07-10. Last reviewed by the HyNote Team. This comparison is reviewed monthly for pricing and plan changes.