Fireflies.ai is good at non-English meetings in one specific sense: it transcribes 100+ languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, and Tagalog. If what you need is an accurate transcript of a meeting in its own language, it does that well. The reason teams look for an alternative is the next step: transcription captures the meeting in the language it happened, but it doesn't translate it so a colleague who doesn't speak that language can follow along live. That's the distinction worth being precise about.
What Fireflies does well — and it's a lot
Let's be fair, because Fireflies is genuinely strong. It transcribes a very broad set of languages (100+, with real Asian-language coverage), joins Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex — broader platform support than many tools — and layers on conversation intelligence, CRM sync, and analytics. Its pricing is competitive: as of June 2026, a free tier, Pro at $10/user/month on annual billing ($18 monthly), Business at $19 ($29 monthly), Enterprise at $39. If you want a multilingual transcription and notes platform, it's a serious option.
Transcription in 100+ languages isn't translation
Here's the part that matters for non-English meetings, and it's a real distinction, not a dig.
When Fireflies "supports Vietnamese," it means it transcribes Vietnamese speech into a Vietnamese transcript. That's useful — for the record, for search, for someone who reads Vietnamese. What it doesn't do is take that Vietnamese speech and show it to your English-reading colleague as English captions during the call. Each speaker is captured in their own language; the languages aren't bridged between participants in real time.
So a broad language list answers "can it write down what was said?" — and the answer is yes, impressively. It doesn't answer "can everyone in the meeting understand each other live, each reading their own language?" That second question is translation, and it's a different capability from transcription breadth.
When you need the alternative
You need a translation tool, not a transcription tool, when:
- People in the meeting speak different languages and need to follow each other live, not read a transcript afterward.
- You want each participant reading their own language — Vietnamese for one, English for another — from the same speech.
- You need the summary and transcript translated, so everyone gets a usable record, not just the speakers of the source language.
If instead your meetings are mostly one language and you want rich notes, analytics, and CRM integration, Fireflies' strengths are real and a translation tool isn't what you're missing.
How Sageio compares
Sageio is built for the live cross-language case — and still gives you the translated transcript and summary.
- Add
bot@sageio.netto your Google Meet calendar invite. It joins on its own — no extension. - Each participant picks their own caption language. Sageio translates into 20+ languages, built Asian-language-first — so the Hanoi team reads Vietnamese while a colleague reads English, at the same time, from the same speech.
- Everyone speaks naturally. Translated captions appear in about two seconds.
- Afterward, a translated, searchable transcript and an AI summary arrive within about five minutes, shared at the host's discretion.
(Today Sageio runs on Google Meet; Zoom and Microsoft Teams support is coming soon. Sageio is focused on live translation rather than CRM/analytics — if you need those, weigh that in.)
On privacy: Sageio doesn't use your meeting content to train AI models, audio is processed in memory and discarded, and the transcript and summary are stored encrypted in the region you choose (US, EU, or APAC), with self-hosting on Enterprise.
How to choose in five minutes
Decide which problem you have. If it's "we meet in various languages and want good notes and analytics," Fireflies' breadth and integrations are a strong fit. If it's "people in our meetings can't all understand each other live," that's translation, and a transcription tool — however many languages it lists — won't close that gap. Run one real mixed-language call and ask whether a non-speaker of the source language could follow it as it happened.
Frequently asked questions
Does Fireflies.ai translate meetings between languages? Fireflies transcribes 100+ languages, including Asian ones, capturing each meeting in the language it was spoken. That's transcription, not live translation — it doesn't render one participant's speech into another participant's language as real-time captions. For that you need a translation tool.
Fireflies supports my language — isn't that enough for a multilingual team? It's enough to get an accurate transcript in that language. It's not the same as everyone in the meeting understanding each other live. If your team members read different languages and need to follow the conversation in real time, you need translation, which is a separate capability from transcription coverage.
What's a good Fireflies alternative for cross-language meetings? Look for live translated captions, per-participant language choice, and a translated transcript and summary. Sageio is built for that — 20+ languages, Asian-first, each person reads their own. (Fireflies remains strong if your priority is transcription breadth plus CRM and analytics.)
What does Sageio cost to try? Every plan starts with a free 60-minute trial, no credit card required. After that, Professional is $49/month and Teams is $99 per seat/month (annual billing includes 2 months free); Enterprise is custom-priced.
Fireflies is a strong multilingual transcription platform — that's real. But transcription and translation are different jobs. If your meetings need people to understand each other live across languages, run one real call and check whether they can. Add the bot to your next meeting and see the difference.
Fireflies and Fireflies.ai are trademarks of their respective owner. Sageio is not affiliated with or endorsed by Fireflies.ai. This comparison reflects publicly available information from Fireflies' own pages as of June 2026; features and pricing may have changed since.