How to Migrate from Otter to Fireflies: Your Complete Switching Guide [2026]

You've made the call to migrate from Otter to Fireflies, and the question now is what happens to the months of recordings, transcripts, and meeting history sitting in your Otter account. Ideally without spending a weekend exporting files one at a time. The good news is that you do not have to. Switching from Otter to Fireflies runs from inside your Fireflies settings, and this guide covers how to start it, what you need on hand, how long it takes, and what carries over.

How the Migration Works

The migration runs from inside Fireflies. You hand over your Otter login, Fireflies signs in on your behalf, downloads your library, converts the files, and imports them into your account. No exporting, no zip files, no manual uploads.

Two things need to be in place first. You need an active Fireflies account for the recordings to land in, and you need your Otter email and password. You also need to disable MFA, so Fireflies can import your meetings. Turn it back on once the migration finishes.

One thing to check before anything else. Import Data is switched on by request, so if you open Settings and it is not there, your workspace has not been enabled yet. Click the purple help widget in the bottom right of your dashboard and ask support to turn it on.

Once you have it, the setup is seven steps.

Step 1: Log in to the Fireflies web app and click Settings in the left menu.
Step 2: Under the Personal tab, click Import Data.
Step 3: Click Import Data again to open the list of migration sources.
Step 4: Select Otter.
Step 5: Enter the email address and password for your Otter account.
Step 6: Click Next.
Step 7: Click Notify Me if you want an email when the import finishes.

That's it. A progress view appears and the job starts running in the background. You do not need to stay logged in, and closing the browser will not stop it.

The progress page is worth checking once or twice rather than watching. It shows how many recordings have been processed against the total, which stage the job is in, whether that is Downloading, Converting, or Importing, an estimated completion time, and any recordings that ran into trouble.

You can keep using Otter the whole time. The migration only reads your data, so your Otter account and your team's access to it are untouched.

Stopping partway is safe too. If you halt a migration or one stalls, restarting picks up where it left off and skips anything already imported. That also means running the migration twice will not duplicate your library, because Fireflies checks each recording against what it already has.

What gets migrated from Otter to Fireflies?

Everything in your Otter library comes across. That covers the audio files, the full transcript text, your meeting notes, and the metadata attached to each recording, meaning dates, titles, and participants. Timestamps and speaker information carry over as well, so a migrated transcript reads in Fireflies the way it read in Otter.

What the migration does not do is touch your Otter account. Nothing is deleted or moved out, and your Otter subscription keeps running until you cancel it yourself. There is nothing stopping you from keeping Otter alive for a month as a safety net while you settle in.

Individual recordings do occasionally fail. It is rare, and when it happens the recording is listed in your migration report, so you know exactly which one it was. From there you can check the file in Otter, rerun the migration, which retries only what didn't arrive. If a recording keeps failing, contact Fireflies support. If you would rather start clean, you can delete the imported recordings from Fireflies and run the migration again.

How long does migration take?

Migration time depends on how many recordings you have and how large they are. A library of 10 to 50 recordings generally finishes somewhere between 30 minutes and two hours. Between 50 and 500 recordings, expect two to eight hours. Past 500, the job can run anywhere from eight to 48 hours.

Large libraries are the reason the import is built to run unattended. Nothing about it requires you to sit and wait, and a job that looks frozen usually is not. Give it 10 minutes and check whether the processed count has moved before you assume something has gone wrong. If it has genuinely stalled, refresh the page, check your connection, and start the migration again. It resumes rather than restarts.

What You Get After Migrating: Key Fireflies Capabilities

Most people who migrate from Otter to Fireflies do it for one of a handful of reasons. Language coverage is a common one, since Otter transcribes in six languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese (Simplified), while Fireflies handles more than 100 at 99% accuracy for English and 95% for the rest. What else changes shows up in what you can do with a transcript once the meeting is over, starting with how the AI meeting notes themselves are structured.

AskFred

AskFred answers questions across your meetings instead of making you open them one at a time. You can ask what a client said about pricing last quarter, or which calls brought up a competitor, and get an answer pointing back to the source. AskFred is on every plan, with limited use on Free.

Migrated Otter meetings work the same way. Once the import finishes, AskFred can search, summarize, and answer questions about them exactly as it does for meetings Fireflies captured itself.

Still deciding? Read our full Fireflies vs Otter comparison to see how the two stack up feature by feature before you migrate.

AI Skills

AI Skills turn a finished meeting into work that is already done. A skill can draft the follow up email, pull out the objections a prospect raised, or write the summary in whatever format your team uses, and it runs on its own once the transcript exists. The AI Skills library has prebuilt skills you can add, and you can build your own against your team's process. AI Skills are available from the Pro plan up.

Autofill CRM

Autofill CRM updates Salesforce, HubSpot, and 45 other CRMs straight from the call, including a filled out BANT, MEDDIC, or SPICED scorecard. It runs on the Business plan alongside Deal Intelligence, which flags risk on open deals.

100+ integrations

Fireflies connects to 100+ integrations, which is where most of the time saving actually lands. Notes and action items push into HubSpot and Salesforce without anyone retyping them, and the Microsoft side covers Teams, OneNote, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Unlimited integrations are included from Pro up.

Live Assist

Live Assist works during the call rather than after it. It surfaces suggestions while you are still talking, which matters if you left Otter because you wanted help in the moment instead of a document an hour later.

MCP connectors

MCP connectors pull your meeting context straight into Claude and ChatGPT, so you can query your transcripts from inside the assistant you already work in rather than switching back to Fireflies to look something up. The Fireflies MCP integration covers the setup.

Data Security and Compliance

Compliance questions tend to come up before a migration rather than after, because moving a few hundred recorded conversations into a new system is exactly the kind of thing a security reviewer wants to look at first.

Fireflies holds SOC 2 Type II certification and complies with GDPR, and both apply on every plan, including Free. HIPAA compliance is available on Enterprise and runs through a business associate agreement, which is what healthcare teams need in place before recorded calls can involve protected health information. Meeting data is encrypted with AES 256 at rest and SSL/TLS in transit. The Fireflies security page carries the full detail, including the Trust Center reports your reviewer will probably ask for by name.

On model training, the policy is short enough to quote in full. Fireflies.ai does not use customer data to train any AI models. Your personal data is never used to train AI models. Users own their data.

That is worth reading before you migrate rather than after. The policy your transcripts land under is the one that governs every conversation in the library, including the years of Otter calls you are about to bring across.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I export my transcripts from Otter?

You do not need to export your transcripts from Otter to migrate them to Fireflies. The Fireflies migration signs in to your Otter account and pulls the recordings, transcripts, and metadata across directly, so there is no file to download, zip, or re-upload. Manual export from Otter is only worth doing if you want a personal copy for your own records.

Does Fireflies import Otter transcripts automatically?

Fireflies imports Otter transcripts automatically through the Import Data tool in your Fireflies settings. You select Otter as the migration source, enter your Otter email and password, and the import runs in the background without further input. Import Data is enabled by request, so if it is not visible under Settings, message support through the purple help widget in your dashboard to have it turned on.

How long does the migration take?

Migration from Otter to Fireflies takes between 30 minutes and 48 hours, depending on how many recordings you have. A library of 10 to 50 recordings finishes in 30 minutes to two hours, 50 to 500 recordings takes two to eight hours, and anything above 500 recordings runs from eight to 48 hours. The import continues in the background even if you log out or close your browser.

What happens to my old Otter transcripts after migration?

Your old Otter transcripts stay exactly where they are after migration. The Fireflies import copies your data rather than moving it, so nothing is deleted from Otter and your Otter account keeps working normally. You decide when, or whether, to cancel it.

Can I search my old Otter transcripts in Fireflies?

You can search your old Otter transcripts in Fireflies once the migration completes. Imported Otter meetings become fully searchable in your Fireflies workspace, the same as meetings Fireflies captured itself, which means keyword search, AI summaries, highlights, and action items all work on them. AskFred can also search, summarize, and answer questions about your migrated Otter meetings.

What data gets migrated from Otter to Fireflies?

Five kinds of data get migrated from Otter to Fireflies. The import brings across all of your Otter recordings, the complete transcripts, meeting notes and metadata such as dates and participants, the underlying audio files, and timestamps with speaker information.

Do I need to cancel Otter before migrating?

You do not need to cancel Otter before migrating to Fireflies. The migration only reads your Otter data and makes no changes to your Otter account, so you can keep recording in Otter while the import runs. Keeping both running until you have confirmed everything arrived, then cancelling, is the lower risk order.

What format does Fireflies accept for imported transcripts?

File formats do not apply to the Otter migration, because Fireflies pulls the data straight from your Otter account rather than accepting an uploaded file. Separately from migration, Fireflies supports uploading audio and video files for transcription on every plan, including Free.

Is there a cost to migrate from Otter to Fireflies?

No. Migration is free, and there's no extra charge to bring your meetings, transcripts, and notes across. You'll need a Fireflies account for the data to land in. If you're importing a large Otter history, check that your plan's storage covers it, since free plans have a storage cap. If you don't see the Import Data option in your settings, contact Support and they'll switch it on for you.

Will my Otter timestamps and speaker labels carry over?

Your Otter timestamps and speaker information carry over during migration. Both are listed among the data types the Fireflies import brings across, so a migrated transcript reads in Fireflies the way it read in Otter. If a specific recording arrives with an issue, it appears in your migration report rather than failing without notice.

Conclusion

Migrating from Otter to Fireflies takes about a minute of setup and then runs on its own, with most libraries landing the same day. Your Otter account stays intact throughout, and once the import finishes, every historical call is searchable in Fireflies alongside the meetings you record from that point on. The full Fireflies feature set applies to your old conversations from day one, not just your new ones.