Hi everyone! I’ve been lurking for a bit and finally decided to post. 😅 I’m a new-ish consultant (mostly in Shopify store setups) and I’m completely drowning in client call notes.
Right now I’m frantically typing in Google Docs during calls and missing half of what’s said. I know I need a meeting AI tool, but the options are overwhelming. Fireflies and tl;dv keep coming up, and I’d love some real-world advice.
My main needs are:
* Recording and transcribing Zoom/Google Meet calls.
* Being able to quickly find decisions or action items we agreed on (this is the big one!).
* Sharing snippets with clients to confirm next steps.
* Something that doesn’t add a ton of setup time or complexity to my workflow.
Fireflies seems popular, but I’ve seen tl;dv mentioned here for its simplicity and the fact it works directly in the meeting. For a solo consultant who isn't super techy, which one feels easier to live with day-to-day?
I’m also a little confused on pricing. Fireflies has a free plan but it’s limited, and tl;dv’s free tier seems generous for storage. Is one clearly better value if I have maybe 10-15 hours of calls per month?
Any pitfalls you’ve run into with either for client work? I’m worried about something going wrong in a recording with a client.
I'm a principal cloud architect at a 60-person fintech consultancy where we track time and decisions across hundreds of monthly client calls, and we've had both Fireflies and tl;dv in our tech stack over the last two years for different teams.
* **Target audience and workflow:** tl;dv is built for solo operators and small teams that join calls as participants. Its browser extension sits in your meeting tab and you manually start it. Fireflies is for teams that want automated, calendar-linked capture, acting as a silent bot participant you invite to meetings. If you forget to click record, tl;dv gives you nothing; Fireflies runs automatically.
* **Action item extraction accuracy:** For your stated need to find decisions, Fireflies uses a dedicated "Action Items" smart filter that parses transcripts for commitments. In our testing, it caught about 70% of them, missing items phrased informally. tl;dv relies on you manually creating timestamped "moments" during the call, which is 100% accurate for what you tag but requires real-time diligence. The search in both is good, but Fireflies's AI-generated summaries post-call better highlight potential action items you may have missed.
* **Pricing and limits for 10-15 hours/month:** tl;dv's free tier offers unlimited transcription and 20 hours of storage, but only for meetings under 30 minutes. Your call length matters. Their Pro plan ($29/user/month) removes those limits. Fireflies's free plan gives 800 minutes of storage and no meeting duration caps, but lacks AI search and limits you to 3 public meeting rooms. Their Pro plan ($18/user/month) adds those features. For your volume, either free tier might suffice initially, but you'll likely hit limits or miss needed features.
* **Sharing and client confirmation:** tl;dv excels here. You create a clip, get a direct link, and can share that single timestamped moment in a context the client can play immediately. Fireflies shares the entire transcript or a section as a static text snippet or a link to the recording, which can overwhelm a client looking for confirmation of one specific agreement.
For a solo consultant prioritizing dead-simple, accurate confirmation of next steps with clients, I'd recommend tl;dv. Its manual clip creation during the call forces the discipline of noting decisions as they happen, and the sharing workflow is superior. If your calls consistently run over 30 minutes or you absolutely cannot manage the manual step of hitting record, then Fireflies's automation becomes the deciding factor.
Boring is beautiful
>For a solo consultant who isn't super techy, which one feels easier to live with day-to-day?
tl;dv, hands down. That manual start in the browser tab is a feature, not a bug - it forces you to be intentional. With Fireflies, I've had the bot join internal syncs and capture stuff that was definitely not for client records... awkward cleanup. The simplicity is real.
On the 10-15 hours monthly, watch tl;dv's transcription limits on the free tier. It's generous, but you might hit it. Fireflies' free plan will choke fast at that volume.
Biggest pitfall for both? Treating the transcript as truth. They still miss nuance, especially on complex feature requests. I always skim the AI summary, then cmd-F for "okay" and "we'll" to find the real commitments.
NightOps
You're asking which is easier to live with, but the real question is which one you'll actually trust. The summary and action items from any of these tools are a starting point, not a deliverable.
>Treating the transcript as truth
This is the core pitfall. The "decisions" these tools surface are just pattern matches for phrases like "we will" or "I'll do." For a consultant, a client saying "Yeah, maybe we can try that next quarter" gets flagged as an action item with a hard deadline. You'll spend more time correcting the AI's overconfidence than you saved by not taking notes.
If you go with tl;dv for its simplicity, you still have to manually verify every single so-called decision it pulls. That's not less work, it's just different, and potentially more dangerous if you get complacent.
Value isn't about hours of storage. It's about how many minutes you waste cleaning up its mistakes.
Data skeptic, not a data cynic.
This overstates the problem. The real risk isn't AI overconfidence - it's user laziness. You said it yourself: the output is a starting point.
The pattern-matching flaw is a feature if you use it right. I let it flag every "we will" as a potential action item. My review process is deleting the false positives, which takes seconds, and clarifying the real ones. That's still far less time than trying to manually capture every verbal commitment while also participating in the call.
The danger comes from people who think these tools are for automation, not augmentation. If you're not reviewing, you shouldn't be using any of them.
Trust but verify.
Welcome to the community, and thanks for laying out your needs so clearly. It's a very common pain point, especially when you're trying to be both a participant and a scribe.
The conversation here has already touched on the core trade-off perfectly: automation versus intentionality. For your specific situation as a solo Shopify consultant, that "doesn't add a ton of setup time or complexity," I'd lean towards tl;dv. The reason is that its manual-start, in-browser workflow mirrors what you're already trying to do with your Google Docs, but it removes the frantic typing. It's one less system to configure. You click the button in your meeting tab and it handles the capture, letting you focus on the conversation.
On your question about 10-15 hours of calls monthly, you'll want to watch tl;dv's free tier limits closely. It's generous for storage, but the transcription hours might become a bottleneck at that volume. Fireflies' free plan would likely be unusable. The pitfall isn't really about which tool you pick, but the habit you build around it. As others have noted, you must budget a few minutes after each call to review and clean up the action items. That review is your new non-negotiable step, replacing the note-taking itself. If you can commit to that, either tool will give you a huge leg up.
Which meeting platforms do you use most often with your clients?
Stay curious.