Subanana vs Fireflies (2026): A Documentation-Based Comparison

Fireflies is built for sales teams that live inside a CRM. Its strongest pull is automatic meeting-to-Salesforce/HubSpot/Affinity flow, layered with conversation intelligence — sentiment, topics, talk-listen ratios — for sales coaching. Subanana plays elsewhere: multilingual transcription (Cantonese, Mandarin, mixed-language), user-selectable summary LLM, and live multilingual translation with audience-facing captions. Two products solving different problems; the right pick depends entirely on which one your team's meetings actually need.

Disclosure: I run Subanana. This post compares each tool using its own published documentation — pricing, features, integrations — pulled in May 2026. No fabricated head-to-head benchmark; both tools have free tiers, and your own audio is the right way to test accuracy.

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TL;DR

• Pick Fireflies if your team lives inside a CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Affinity, etc.) and you want sentiment/topic/talk-listen analytics for sales coaching. Fireflies advertises 100+ integrations.
• Pick Subanana if you need Cantonese / Mandarin / mixed-language transcription, want to choose the LLM that writes your summaries, or run live multilingual events.
• Honest framing: these aren't competing for the same buyer. Fireflies is "the sales team's meeting tool." Subanana is "the multilingual / creator / live-event meeting tool."

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Pricing snapshot (May 2026)

Fireflies (per fireflies.ai/pricing)

Per-seat pricing. Pro adds talk-time analytics, AI Skills, action items, unlimited integrations. Business adds conversation intelligence, multi-language mode, video recording, team analytics. Enterprise adds SSO, SCIM, HIPAA, private storage.

Subanana (per subanana.com/en/pricing)

Per-workspace pricing. Free tier doesn't allow subtitle/transcript download and caps export at 720p; paid tiers enable downloads and 4K export. Subanana minutes do not roll over across billing cycles.

The two pricing models are different shapes — Fireflies bills per seat, Subanana bills per workspace. Past 2-3 users, Subanana's per-workspace pricing tends to be cheaper at similar usage. The free tiers also use different shapes (see "Free-tier shape" below).

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Where Fireflies wins

I'll start here because it's where the comparison is most lopsided in Fireflies' favour.

1. Integration breadth

Fireflies advertises 100+ integrations. Per its integrations page that includes:

• Video conferencing: Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Webex, GoToMeeting, Dialpad, Lifesize
• CRMs: HubSpot, Salesforce, Affinity, Wealthbox, Redtail, Supersales
• Collaboration: Slack, SharePoint, Confluence, Workplace
• Notes / docs: Google Docs, Notion, OneNote
• Storage: Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box
• Project management: Linear, Airtable, Any.do
• Dialers: Zoom Phone, RingCentral, Aircall, OpenPhone
• ATS: BambooHR, Greenhouse, Lever
• Custom: Zapier, Skyvia, Latenode

Subanana does not currently ship native CRM, dialer, or push-out integrations, and does not advertise a public Zapier integration. The current Subanana workflow for getting meeting content into another system is manual export. If your sales workflow is CRM-centric, Fireflies' integration density is a real advantage.

2. Conversation intelligence (sentiment, topics, talk-listen)

Fireflies' Business tier and above include sentiment analysis, topic tracking, and talk-listen ratio monitoring. These are sales-coaching tools — managers reviewing rep performance, tracking deal health from conversational signals.

Subanana does not advertise conversation intelligence features. The product focus is transcription accuracy, summary quality, and live captioning — not analytical KPIs over sales conversations.

3. Phone dialer integrations

Fireflies natively integrates with RingCentral, Aircall, OpenPhone, and Zoom Phone for outbound call recording and transcription. Subanana does not advertise dialer integrations.

4. Free-tier shape (different model)

Fireflies Free pools 800 minutes of storage per seat — a total quota you draw down across all your meetings. Subanana Free works differently: it caps each individual file at 15 minutes (and 3 GB) but doesn't impose a workspace-total minute pool, so you can keep adding new files indefinitely as long as each one fits the per-file limit.

For a single user testing one or two long meetings, Fireflies' larger pool is more forgiving. For someone testing the product on many short clips, Subanana's per-file model has no aggregate ceiling. Pick by how you actually try the product.

5. HIPAA + private storage at Enterprise

Fireflies Enterprise includes HIPAA compliance and private storage. Subanana does not currently advertise HIPAA compliance.

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Where Subanana wins

1. Cantonese, Mandarin, and Cantonese-English mixed transcription

Subanana publishes a public-safe Cantonese accuracy figure of approximately 95%, with Mandarin accuracy higher than that. It also includes colloquial-to-formal Chinese conversion — turning spoken Cantonese into written Chinese during transcription, which is specifically useful for Hong Kong workplaces with bilingual code-switching.

Fireflies advertises 100+ languages but does not publish per-language accuracy figures. Cantonese specifically is not called out in its feature documentation.

2. User-selectable summary LLM

Subanana's meeting summary lets the user pick which LLM generates the summary, organised into three tiers (Standard / Advanced / Premium). Subanana continuously evaluates frontier models and updates the menu as new models ship and older ones lose their edge. Fireflies uses a single underlying summary model that isn't user-selectable.

This is the only Subanana feature where the user picks the LLM — translation and subtitle correction are routed internally.

3. Live multilingual translation with audience-facing display

Subanana runs real-time captioning + translation for live events with an audience-facing shareable link — attendees scan a QR code and choose how to display the live captions on their phones — source, translated, or both side-by-side, among the languages the host pre-configured for the event. Fireflies is a meeting tool, not an event captioning platform, and doesn't compete in this space.

4. URL import from public YouTube / Instagram / Facebook

Subanana accepts a public YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook URL directly — paste the link and the system fetches and transcribes (Shorts and Reels included). Fireflies' workflow is built around live meeting capture, not URL ingestion.

5. Subtitle-friendly export formats and bilingual SRT

Subanana exports SRT, VTT, TXT, DOCX, XLSX, and Markdown. It also produces a single bilingual SRT file (source + translation in one cue stack) and one-click renders video files with subtitles burned in (single-language or bilingual). For content creators producing video, that workflow is direct. Fireflies' exports are oriented toward sales document formats.

6. Workspace-based pricing for teams

Per-workspace pricing means a 10-person team pays the same as a 1-person team at the same tier — meaningful past 2-3 users versus Fireflies' per-seat model.

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Side-by-side feature table

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So which should you pick?

Pick Fireflies if:

• You live inside a CRM and need meetings to flow there automatically
• Conversation intelligence (sentiment, topics, talk-listen) is a coaching tool you actually use
• Your team uses RingCentral / Aircall / Zoom Phone / OpenPhone for sales calls
• Your meetings are exclusively English
• HIPAA compliance is required

Pick Subanana if:

• Any meaningful portion of your meetings involves Cantonese, Mandarin, or mixed Asian languages
• You want to choose the LLM that writes your summaries
• You run live multilingual events
• You import audio from public YouTube / Instagram / Facebook URLs
• You produce bilingual or burned-in subtitled video output
• You're a team of 3+ and want workspace-based pricing
• You don't need CRM-native integration (manual export from Subanana is acceptable)

The honest framing: Fireflies is "the sales team's meeting tool." Subanana is "the multilingual / creator / live-event meeting tool." Different products serving different teams.

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FAQ

Have you actually tested both head-to-head?

Not in a publishable benchmark — and any comparison post that claims to without showing the audio set and scoring method should be read sceptically. This comparison is documentation-based. Both tools have free tiers; the right way to compare on YOUR audio is to run the same content through each.

Is Subanana cheaper than Fireflies for teams?

For teams of 3+ on similar usage patterns, Subanana's per-workspace pricing tends to be lower than Fireflies' per-seat pricing. The break-even point varies — run the numbers for your team size and minute consumption.

Does Fireflies support Cantonese?

Fireflies advertises 100+ language support but does not publish per-language accuracy figures, and Cantonese specifically isn't called out in its feature documentation. Test on the free tier before committing if Cantonese matters.

Does Subanana push meeting notes to my CRM?

Not natively today — there's no shipped Salesforce, HubSpot, or other CRM integration. Current workflow is manual export of the meeting summary or transcript. For sales teams whose entire workflow is CRM-centric, Fireflies' native integration is the better fit.

Does Subanana have a public API?

Not currently advertised. If you need a public API for custom workflow integration, Fireflies (Enterprise tier) is the better choice today.

Can I migrate from Fireflies to Subanana?

Yes. Subanana imports common audio/video files (mp4, mov, m4a, mp3, ogg, webm). Fireflies lets you export recordings, which can then be re-processed in Subanana. You can also paste public YouTube / Instagram / Facebook URLs directly.

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Closing

Fireflies has built a mature product for sales teams who live in CRMs. Subanana wins on Cantonese / Mandarin / mixed-language transcription, user-selectable summary LLM, live multilingual translation, and subtitle / video output. Match the strengths to the meetings you actually have.

Try Subanana free → — no payment method required.