Fellow vs Otter vs Fireflies for a 50-person company: plans, seat limits, cost and admin controls

For a 50-person company, as of November 2026: Fellow's Business plan fits exactly (a 50-seat maximum, $15 per user per month billed annually, about $750 a month for 50 people) and suits teams that want meeting notes tied to agendas, action items and a CRM. Fireflies' Business plan ($19 per seat per month billed annually, about $950 a month at 50 seats, with unlimited storage and team analytics) suits teams that live in recordings, and its Enterprise plan adds SSO, SCIM, audit logs and HIPAA at $39. Otter's Business plan caps a workspace at 25 members, so 50 people in one workspace means Otter Enterprise, whose price is not published. All three offer a meeting bot and a desktop app that records without one.

Every product fact below comes from the vendor's own pricing page or help center, checked on November 9, 2026. Cost figures for 50 seats are our arithmetic on list prices, before discounts and taxes.

How do Fellow, Otter and Fireflies compare for 50 people?

What would 50 seats cost?

Our arithmetic on each vendor's published list prices for 50 seats (an example calculation; quotes, discounts and taxes will differ):

Two pricing details matter at exactly 50. Fellow's Business plan stops at 50 seats, so hiring a 51st user moves the account to Enterprise. Fireflies says "if you're buying a plan for more than 50 members, please contact us" for volume discounts. Fireflies also counts "any teammate you added in your Fireflies workspace" as a seat, so share recap links with occasional readers instead of adding them.

What does each plan include at that size?

• Fellow Business: unlimited AI notes and recordings, org-wide templates, Salesforce and HubSpot integrations. Enterprise adds advanced recording permissions, domain control, user provisioning, org-wide analytics, transcript redaction and Okta or OneLogin single sign-on. On paid plans, only account administrators can open workspace settings.
• Otter Business: unlimited meetings and in-app recordings, up to 4 hours per meeting, 3 concurrent meetings and "enhanced admin features: activity logs, usage analytics, and more." Enterprise adds SSO, SCIM, domain capture, "enterprise-grade security & controls" and HIPAA compliance as an add-on.
• Fireflies Business: unlimited transcription, summaries and storage, conversation intelligence, team analytics for admins and user groups; Pro has 8,000 minutes of storage per seat. Enterprise adds a rules engine, SSO and SCIM, audit logs through the API, HIPAA compliance, private storage, custom data retention, a transcript and summary only mode and a super admin role.

On compliance claims: Fellow's pricing page lists SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and HIPAA/BAA compliance without tying them to a tier; Fireflies lists SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and ISO 42001 company-wide and says its HIPAA and FERPA agreements are "available on Enterprise with Private Storage." Ask each vendor for the report and the agreement before you sign.

Which one records without a bot?

All three, through a desktop app, which matters for calls with customers or candidates who would rather not see a bot join:

• Fellow asks you to "allow microphone access" for your audio and "screen recording access" to capture other participants, and records "Slack huddles, Microsoft Teams, dialers, Google Meet, Zoom, and more."
• Otter's desktop app needs macOS 13.0 or higher or Windows 10 or higher, records "while wearing headphones," and lists dialers such as RingCentral and Dialpad among supported apps.
• Fireflies' Take Notes mode "does not save audio or video files," and speakers appear as "Speaker 1 / Speaker 2" rather than by name (guide).

Why a desktop app asks for those permissions, and what they do and do not allow, is explained in why AI note takers need microphone access.

How does each one tell people they are being recorded?

• Fellow: an admin can turn on a pre-meeting disclosure email, sent to selected recipients one hour before each auto-recorded meeting. For desktop recording, Fellow says "it's your responsibility to provide a recording disclosure."
• Otter: its desktop help page says to "notify participants and obtain any consent required by applicable law or your organization's policies."
• Fireflies: the desktop app can play an audio consent message, post a meeting chat message on Mac and add an "AI Taking Notes" camera watermark; Fireflies says "the consent options are enabled by default."

Whichever you choose, set one company policy for external calls rather than leaving it to each of the 50 people; the recording consent script gives wording you can adapt.

What should a two-week pilot test?

Trial plans hide the limits that matter at 50 seats, so test the paid behavior with a small group from each team that will use it:

1. Admin controls. Who can change recording settings, invite users, delete recordings and see everyone's meetings on the plan you would buy, not the trial.
2. The bot-free path. Install the desktop app on one Mac and one Windows machine and record a call on each meeting platform you use, plus a dialer call if sales uses one.
3. Consent on external calls. Confirm what a customer or candidate actually sees or hears, with the bot and without it.
4. Where notes go. Send one summary to your CRM, chat tool and task manager, and check what arrives.
5. Seat counting. Add a part-time user and a guest viewer, then check the invoice preview, so the 50th and 51st seats hold no surprises.

Which should a 50-person company pick?

• Pick Fellow if meetings run on agendas and action items, sales updates a CRM, and you are unlikely to pass 50 users soon, or if you are happy to move to Enterprise when you do.
• Pick Fireflies if the team wants every call recorded, searchable and analyzed, if storage limits would bite, or if you need SSO and HIPAA at a published price.
• Pick Otter if the users who need it are 25 or fewer and can share a Business workspace, or if you are ready to negotiate an Enterprise contract for the whole company.

What if some of the 50 run job interviews?

General meeting note takers can record an interview, but scorecards, candidate consent and getting notes into an ATS are a different job. The recruiting-specific reviews cover each product: Fellow for recruiting, Otter for recruiting and Fireflies vs Otter for recruiting. We make Interview Signal, one alternative built only for interviews; everything about the other products comes from their own sites, linked and dated. It is a desktop app with no bot that fills a scorecard as the interview goes, with each score carrying the candidate's own quotes; it costs $59 per seat per month for teams (or $49 billed yearly, minimum three seats), has no ATS integration and does not record video.