Comparison
Harknotes vs Fireflies.ai
Fireflies.ai is a cloud-based meeting recorder that joins as a bot. Harknotes is the privacy-first alternative — local transcription, no bot, no audio in the cloud.
Fireflies vs Harknotes: cloud vs local
Fireflies.ai is a powerful meeting intelligence platform — but it works by sending “Fred” (their bot) into every meeting. Fred joins as a participant, records the audio, and uploads it to Fireflies’ cloud for processing.
Harknotes takes the opposite approach. It captures your system audio and microphone locally, runs Whisper AI on your machine, and never sends audio anywhere.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Harknotes | Fireflies.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Bot joins meeting | No | Yes (Fred bot) |
| Audio stored in cloud | No | Yes |
| Works offline | Yes | No |
| Linux support | Yes | No |
| Markdown notes | Yes | No (proprietary format) |
| Price | Free & open source | Freemium, paid plans |
| Speaker labels | Yes | Yes |
The bot problem
Fireflies’ Fred bot is visible to every meeting participant. In many situations this is a problem:
- Client calls where you haven’t obtained recording consent
- Legal, HR, or sensitive internal discussions
- Calls with participants in jurisdictions with strict recording laws
With Harknotes, no one in the meeting knows you’re transcribing. There’s nothing to see.
Who should use Harknotes instead of Fireflies?
- Anyone who needs transcription without a visible bot
- Privacy-focused teams or those with compliance requirements
- Linux users
- Teams that want notes in Markdown for use with Obsidian or other tools
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