Free alternatives · Work and productivity
CallNotesAI
Turn meeting and phone-call recordings into notes, action items and a tracker of every promise made, searchable with AI.
A free alternative to Fireflies, built by Surge Software. Free. You pay only what third-party services cost us, at cost.
Live at callnotesai.com
Walkthrough
See CallNotesAI in action
The problem
What it solves for a business
For: Sales reps, founders and managers, and team leads who run many calls and need notes, tasks and follow-ups without paying per seat.
- Note-taker tools charge per seat and then meter AI credits on top.
- Promises made on calls get lost, and nobody tracks whether they were kept.
- CRM auto-sync fails silently, and tasks from stand-ups have to be copied into Jira or Asana by hand.
How it works
CallNotesAI, step by step
- 01
Capture
Record in the browser (mic, or mic plus tab audio), upload an audio or video file, or import a phone-call recording.
- 02
Transcribe
Speech is transcribed with speaker labels on Surge's own server, using your custom vocabulary.
- 03
Write the notes
Our own AI model writes notes from one of 7 templates or your own, with action items, owners and due dates.
- 04
Track promises
Commitments are tracked across meetings and marked done or slipped.
- 05
Search and share
Ask AI across all meetings with citations, filter search, and preview exactly what will be sent to Slack, CRM or Jira before pushing.
Comparison
CallNotesAI vs Fireflies
| CallNotesAI | Fireflies | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free. You pay only what third-party services cost us, at cost. | Pro $10/$18, Business $19/$29 per seat per month (checked 24 Oct 2026) |
| AI credit meter | None | 20 to 50 AI credits per seat, metered on top |
| Phone-call recording import | Yes, number and time read from the file name | No |
| Push tasks to Jira, Asana, Linear | Native | Through Zapier |
| Commitments tracker across meetings | Yes | No |
| CRM sync | HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho with request preview and retry | HubSpot, Salesforce and more; users report sync errors |
| Number of integrations | 9 | 40+ |
| Native desktop and mobile apps | No (installable web app) | Yes |
Fireflies details are taken from its public website and may have changed since (Pro $10/seat/month annual ($18 monthly), Business $19 annual ($29 monthly), Enterprise $39; AI credits metered on top (from third-party 2026 pricing guides, checked 24 Oct 2026)).
Why switch
Advantages over Fireflies
No seats, no credits
Transcription and notes run on Surge's own server and cost nothing. Only paid outside engines, such as a backup AI model, are passed through at cost.
Promises that do not get lost
The commitments tracker follows each promise across meetings and closes it when someone says it is done.
See before you send
Every push to CRM, Slack or Jira shows the exact request first, and failed pushes can be sent again from the outbox.
Phone calls count too
Call recordings from Android call recorders or WhatsApp can be imported with the number and time filled in.
Features
What it does today
- Speaker-labelled transcripts with rename speakers, text edits and a custom vocabulary.
- 7 note templates (including sales BANT, stand-up, interview, 1:1, support, board) plus custom templates; rewrite notes with any template.
- Action items with owner, due date and done status.
- Commitments tracker across meetings: open, overdue, done (auto-closed) or slipped.
- Ask AI across all meetings, with numbered citations to the source.
- Full-text search with source, speaker, language and date filters.
- Phone-call import that reads the number and time from Android, Samsung, MIUI, Truecaller and WhatsApp file names.
- Preview of the exact request before any push, an outbox with retry, speaker and workspace analytics, clips with AI highlights, team roles and a REST API.
Use cases
How teams use CallNotesAI
Sales discovery calls
A rep uploads a discovery call and gets BANT notes, next steps with owners and a record of what each side promised.
Engineering stand-ups
A team lead turns stand-up action items into Jira, Asana or Linear tickets.
Founder follow-ups
A founder asks "What budget did Acme mention?" and gets an answer with a link to the moment it was said.
Under the hood
Where AI is used, and where it is not
The model
Speech-to-text: faster-whisper on Surge's own server. Notes and Ask AI: Qwen (qwen3.8-27b) on the Surge AI server first; Claude Sonnet 5.5 only when the local model fails a check, never for the on-prem setting. A deterministic extractive engine is the last fallback.
Rules and code
A schema and grounding guard checks every AI output. Code extracts dates, promises and tasks, closes or slips commitments, and builds and redacts integration requests. Every AI call is logged with its cost.
People in the loop
The user previews the exact request before anything is pushed to CRM, Slack or Jira, and can edit transcripts, speaker names and notes.
Book a working session
A working session with our architects on one of your use cases. You bring a process and sample documents; we leave you with a scoped plan: model, hosting, integrations, timeline and cost range.