Fireflies.ai Problems & Issues

In December 2025, a class-action lawsuit (Cruz v. Fireflies.AI) was filed alleging illegal collection of biometric voiceprint data without written consent. The lawsuit claims Fireflies records every meeting participant including people who never agreed to terms of service, violating Illinois' strict BIPA law.

Users report Fireflies as 'incredibly intrusive' - even after attempting to remove it, the bot continues taking notes and emailing summaries to meeting attendees who never subscribed. People receive summaries of their conversations without ever consenting to being recorded.

Users describe Fireflies as 'worm-like' and 'malware' because it automatically joins meetings without consent and is extremely difficult to remove. Even after deactivating accounts, uninstalling, asking IT for help, or requesting it to stop, it keeps coming back. IT administrators find it incredibly difficult to block.

Users find AI summaries tend to be too high-level and lack nuanced detail needed, often losing the original phrasing or tone of important discussions. Quality limitations of AI-generated content are a primary reason users switch away from Fireflies. Critical context gets oversimplified.

Transcription accuracy is inconsistent with heavy accents, technical jargon, slang, and overlapping speech. Platform leads to missed words and misidentified speakers, often requiring manual corrections. No automatic language detection is a huge drawback for multilingual teams.

Settings like auto-joining all calendar meetings can cause friction - some clients dislike when an unknown bot joins their calls. Disabling mid-call requires multiple steps. There's no easy way to add it to ad-hoc or last-minute meetings when you do want it.

When multiple people from the same company have Fireflies accounts, users get several duplicate recordings. There's no smart deduplication - the system invites multiple bots. Users wish it would only invite one recorder and share among the group, wasting storage and creating confusion.

Fireflies relies on attendee permission to join meetings and can be excluded by participants. When kicked, meeting capture quality drops significantly. This creates inconsistent coverage depending on who's in the meeting and their comfort with recording bots.

The download process is confusing with multiple steps to choose summary options, timestamps, and branding preferences. It's unclear which files contain transcripts versus summaries, especially when conversation names contain special characters. Users struggle to get the right output format.

Users report cancel buttons being greyed out, forcing multiple support contacts resulting in unwanted charges. One user signed up for a free trial but was charged for 5 users on a Business plan at $179/month - described as impossible to query or refund. Others were charged after deleting accounts.

The free plan's 800 minutes is tied to a confusing 'credits' system that varies by signup method - website gives 3 credits, mobile app gives 10. Credits are consumed for summaries and transcription, making actual usage far more limited than advertised. Storage limit of 800 minutes adds another constraint.

Users report that 'Unlimited AI summaries' in Pro plan don't work due to design flaws. Meaningful analytics appear to be treated as additional paid layer rather than included in Pro. Marketing is misleading about 'unlimited' features - storage and AI credits run out faster than expected.

Users find Fireflies expensive especially with unclear costs and additional charges for features. Some note competitors or integrated options like Zoom's native transcription offer similar features at lower prices. Pro at $10/month seems reasonable until hidden limits appear.

Users report shockingly bad customer service - being transferred around, having to explain issues multiple times, and waiting days for engineering responses. Support focuses on closing chats rather than resolving issues. Lack of phone support and slow email responses make urgent issues impossible to resolve.