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Thunder Kitty vs Fireflies
The feature we built and removed
Fireflies is an enterprise meeting intelligence platform used by sales teams, recruiters, and operations leads who need their meeting notes wired into their CRM by end of day. It has a visible bot, cloud transcription, 69+ languages, and a marketplace of integrations. It does a lot.
Thunder Kitty is a personal notepad that transcribes on your Mac. No bot. No cloud. No integrations. It does less, and for most of Fireflies' users, that's not the right tradeoff.
But there's one thing worth understanding before you decide.
At a glance
| Thunder Kitty | Fireflies | |
|---|---|---|
| Transcription | Apple SpeechAnalyzer — on your Mac | Cloud (Fireflies' servers) |
| Bot joins your call | No | Yes — visible to all participants |
| Works in airplane mode | ✓ | ✗ |
| Mobile app | ✗ | ✓ iOS + Android |
| Languages | English | 69+ |
| Speaker diarization | Named, with voice enrollment | ✓ via Speaker Recognition |
| Voiceprints stored | User only, locally | All participants, on Fireflies' servers |
| Monthly recording limit | None | 800 min (free) / unlimited (Pro) |
| AI summary credits | Unlimited | 20/month (Pro) — same as free |
| CRM integrations | ✗ | Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier, Slack |
| Your files | Plain .md in ~/Documents | In Fireflies' database |
| Model training | N/A — nothing sent | Opt-out in settings |
| Active litigation | None | Federal BIPA class action (2025) |
| Price | $10/month | $18/month (Pro, monthly) |
What Fireflies does that Thunder Kitty doesn't
Fireflies is built for teams that run a lot of meetings and need the output wired into their workflow automatically. It handles 69 languages. It has mobile apps. It syncs to Salesforce and HubSpot. It has a real-time Perplexity integration that lets you fact-check claims during a meeting without leaving the call.
If you need meeting notes to land in your CRM without any manual steps, Fireflies is probably worth evaluating. Thunder Kitty doesn't do any of that and isn't trying to.
One thing to know about Fireflies pricing before you sign up: the AI credits system. Pro plan users get 20 AI credits per month — the same as the free plan. AI summaries, the AskFred assistant, and Smart Highlights all draw from this pool. Heavy users burn through it quickly and need to purchase add-on credits separately.
The feature at the center of the lawsuit
In December 2025, an Illinois resident named Katelin Cruz filed a federal class action against Fireflies — Cruz v. Fireflies.AI Corp. She hadn't signed up for Fireflies. She hadn't agreed to its terms of service. She joined a routine meeting at a nonprofit, and Fireflies' bot was already there, enabled by someone else.
The specific feature at issue is Fireflies' "Speaker Recognition" — a capability that identifies different speakers in meetings and audio files by generating voiceprints, which are biometric identifiers under Illinois law.
The lawsuit alleges three BIPA violations: Fireflies never told participants their voiceprints were being collected, never obtained written consent, and never published a policy for how long it retains biometric data before destroying it. The plaintiff represents a potential class of anyone whose voiceprint was collected by Fireflies without consent — including people who had never heard of the product.
These are allegations, not findings. Fireflies denies wrongdoing and the case is pending.
The decision we made
Thunder Kitty built the same feature. Speaker Recognition, voice fingerprinting across meetings, automatic identification of everyone on a call. We tested it, it worked, and then we removed it.
The reason: building voiceprints of people in your meetings — even locally, even on your own Mac — means making a decision about other people's biometric data without their knowledge. The person who downloaded Thunder Kitty consented to it. The person on the other end of their call didn't.
So Thunder Kitty does voice enrollment for the user only. You can enroll your own voice and Thunder Kitty will always know when it's you speaking, across every meeting you record. Other speakers are identified as Speaker 1, Speaker 2, and so on. You can rename them in a transcript and it cascades through that session — but we don't fingerprint anyone who didn't ask us to.
It's a smaller feature. We think it's the right call.
Which one is right for you?
Thunder Kitty, if…
- Your meetings involve people who haven't consented to a bot collecting their voiceprints
- You want your transcripts as plain files, not locked in a database
- You want a simple tool for personal or professional use without an enterprise footprint
- You're in a field — therapy, journalism, law, research — where data minimization matters
Fireflies, if…
- Your team runs high volumes of sales, recruiting, or ops meetings and needs CRM sync
- You need 69+ languages for international teams
- You want a searchable meeting archive with workflow integrations
- The bot is visible in your meetings and your team has consented to that
Common questions
Why is Thunder Kitty less expensive than most cloud transcription tools?
Because there’s no cloud infrastructure to run. Cloud transcription tools pay per audio minute for Deepgram, AssemblyAI, or Whisper API calls — that cost gets passed through your subscription. Thunder Kitty uses Apple’s on-device SpeechAnalyzer, which runs on your Mac. Our marginal cost per recording is zero, so yours can be too.
Is Thunder Kitty a good fit for teams?
Probably not, if you need team features. Thunder Kitty is a personal tool — there’s no shared dashboard, no team account, no automatic summary distribution to Slack or Notion. For an individual who wants a private record of their own meetings, it’s the right tool. For a team that wants shared meeting notes and integrations, tools like Granola, Fathom, or Fireflies are better suited.
Can I switch from a cloud tool to Thunder Kitty without losing my existing notes?
Your existing notes stay wherever they are — in Granola’s database, Otter’s system, wherever. Thunder Kitty starts fresh with local files. Download it, run a practice recording in Airplane Mode, and if it does what you need, start using it going forward. The transition is low-risk: you’re not migrating anything, just starting a parallel local archive.
Does Thunder Kitty have a free plan?
No — just a 7-day free trial. No credit card required, no account, just a download. If it works for you after a week of real use, subscribe. If it doesn’t, there’s nothing to cancel.
Does Fireflies join my calls as a bot?
Yes. Fireflies’ AI notetaker joins as a participant — visible to everyone in the meeting. Thunder Kitty captures audio directly from your Mac. Nothing joins the call, nothing is visible to other participants.
Fireflies’ Pro plan is $19/month. Thunder Kitty is $10. What’s the difference?
Almost double the price, and your audio goes to Fireflies’ cloud servers. Thunder Kitty processes everything on your Mac — no server, no third-party access, no per-minute cost passed through to you. Beyond architecture: Fireflies is a team tool with CRM integrations and collaborative features; Thunder Kitty is a personal notes tool with no team features. Different products for different use cases.
Can Fireflies record meetings outside of Zoom, Teams, or Meet?
Fireflies is designed around joining scheduled meetings via bot — it works best with calendar-connected video calls. Thunder Kitty captures any audio on your Mac: video calls, phone calls, in-person meetings with your Mac in the room, or just talking through a problem out loud. No meeting platform required.
I need CRM integration. Is Thunder Kitty the right choice?
Probably not for that specifically. Fireflies has native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, and other CRMs. Thunder Kitty’s notes are plain Markdown files — you copy relevant information into your CRM manually or with an AI tool. If automatic CRM logging is a core workflow requirement, Fireflies is built for it; Thunder Kitty isn’t.
Can Fireflies transcribe meetings offline?
No. Like all cloud transcription tools, Fireflies requires an active internet connection. Thunder Kitty works fully offline — all transcription runs on your Mac.
The short version
Fireflies is a capable enterprise tool with a cloud pipeline, a visible bot, and a feature set built for teams.
Thunder Kitty is a personal tool that made a deliberate decision about whose biometric data it's willing to collect. That decision costs some features. We think the tradeoff is right.
Try Thunder Kitty free for 7 days. No credit card. No account. Just a download.
Download for macOSIf you try it and Fireflies is the better fit for your team, use Fireflies. We'd genuinely rather you use the right tool.