Fyxer vs Shortwave in 2026: Which AI Email Assistant Fits How You Work?

Key facts

What Fyxer is

An AI assistant that works inside Gmail and Outlook, labeling mail, drafting replies, recording meetings, and sending a daily briefing.

What Shortwave is

A separate email client built on Gmail, with an AI assistant, AI search, AI filters, and personalized writing.

Pricing (October 2026)

Fyxer: Free, Pro $49 ($37 yearly), Team $99 ($64 yearly). Shortwave: Free, Pro $18, Business $30, Premier $45, Max $120.

Meeting notes

Built into Fyxer for Meet, Teams, and Zoom; not offered by Shortwave.

G2 rating (Oct 20, 2026)

Fyxer 4.1/5 from 20 reviews; Shortwave 4.4/5 from 68 reviews.

What Fyxer and Shortwave actually are

Fyxer is an AI assistant that connects to Gmail or Outlook and does its work inside them, so after you sign in with Google or Microsoft you keep using your normal inbox. It labels incoming mail, writes draft replies inside your inbox, joins your calls to take notes, and sends a daily briefing, but it never sends email on your behalf.

Shortwave is a complete email client. You sign in with a Gmail or Google Workspace account and then read and write mail in Shortwave's app instead of Gmail's. Its headline feature is an AI agent you can prompt to organize, search, schedule, and write, running on Anthropic's Claude models, along with power-user tools such as Splits, Bundles, snooze, and a command palette. In short, Fyxer is a layer you add to your existing inbox, while Shortwave is a new place you move into.

Draft voice quality: which one sounds more like you?

Both tools learn from your sent mail, so neither starts from a generic template, but they differ in when and how drafts appear.

Fyxer reviews your past emails to learn your vocabulary, phrasing, and style. On Pro and above it drafts replies automatically for the emails it judges need a response, so a draft is often waiting when you open the thread. It can also pull context from your meeting notes and from uploaded files such as contracts, which means a reply can reflect what was agreed on yesterday's call, and it drafts follow-ups on threads that went quiet.

Shortwave calls its version "personalized AI writing," which learns your writing style, your tone, and even facts about you from the emails you send. It is included on Pro and above but not on the Free plan. Drafting is mostly on demand through instant replies, autocomplete, or a prompt to the assistant, and paid plans run on Claude Sonnet 4.6, or Opus 4.6 on Max. For drafts that appear automatically as mail arrives, Shortwave points you to Tasklet, a separate sister product.

So Fyxer is better at hands-off drafting that you approve and send, while Shortwave is better at steered drafting that you shape with prompts. Reviews show the limits of both: some Fyxer users on Trustpilot say they rewrite drafts that feel impersonal, and one Shortwave reviewer on G2 mentions editing limits. Neither vendor says it adapts tone to the specific person you are writing to.

Inbox categorisation: labels inside Gmail vs a new client

Fyxer sorts mail into categories such as To respond, FYI, and Marketing, based on content and sender, and the labels live in Gmail or Outlook where you already work. You choose which categories stay in the inbox and which move to folders, and when Fyxer gets one wrong you correct it and it learns. Sorting starts on Pro, since the Free plan does not sort, and it uses credits at five emails per credit, although new paid accounts get unlimited credits for the first three months.

Shortwave organizes mail inside its own app. Splits divide the inbox into tabs, Bundles group newsletters and automated mail, and on Pro and above a one-click AI organizer archives low-priority mail, stars important threads, and groups action items into todos. The standout is AI filters, which are rules written in plain English that can label, archive, star, or delete new mail, with 3 filters on Business, 10 on Premier, and 50 on Max, and none on Free or Pro.

Fyxer categorisation is more automatic and stays in your current inbox, while Shortwave categorisation is more configurable but requires switching clients and, for custom AI rules, paying for Business or higher.

Fyxer pricing vs Shortwave pricing (October 2026)

These figures come from each vendor's own pricing page, checked on October 20, 2026; both changed pricing this year, so older comparisons are often out of date.

Fyxer Free costs $0 and includes 400 credits a month, a daily dashboard briefing, and audio-only meeting notes, but no sorting and no drafts. Pro is $49 per person per month on monthly billing or $37 billed annually, Team is $99 or $64 billed annually, and Enterprise is priced by contract. The 14-day trial runs on the Team plan and then drops you to Free unless you pay.

Shortwave Free offers basic AI with a limited daily quota, 90 days of search history, and a "Sent with Shortwave" signature. Pro is $18 per seat per month, Business $30, Premier $45, and Max $120, and new subscriptions are billed monthly. A third-party pricing tracker logged a rise on June 30, 2026, when Pro moved from $14 to $18 and annual billing left the page.

Reviews: what G2 and Trustpilot users say

On October 20, 2026, G2 showed Fyxer at 4.1 out of 5 from 20 reviews and Shortwave at 4.4 out of 5 from 68 reviews, so both samples are small and the gap should be read with care. Fyxer has a much larger footprint on Trustpilot, with a TrustScore of 4.0 from 745 reviews, while Shortwave had no Trustpilot reviews. Fyxer's positive reviews focus on time saved, a calmer inbox, and fast support, and its negative ones mention cost, hard-to-find filed mail, and drafts that need editing. Shortwave's G2 reviewers mostly praise ease of use and AI features, and the few critical notes cover price, editing limits, and its dependence on Gmail.

Adding a notetaker: the Fyxer or Shortwave plus Fireflies stack

With Shortwave, adding Fireflies makes sense, because Shortwave has no meeting notetaker. Fireflies records Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and other platforms, and as of October 2026 it lists a free plan, Pro at $10 per seat per month billed annually, and Business at $19. Shortwave Pro plus Fireflies Pro comes to about $28 a month, and Shortwave Business plus Fireflies Business to about $49, with the trade-off of two apps, two bills, and notes that live apart from your email.

With Fyxer, a second notetaker is usually redundant. Fyxer's notetaker joins Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom and can record in person, and Pro adds video recording plus a drafted follow-up email after each meeting. Those notes also feed Fyxer's reply drafts, so paying for Fireflies on top mostly duplicates the work unless your team relies on Fireflies' own features.

Fyxer vs Shortwave at a glance

Each row reflects what the vendor publicly documents as of October 2026, with Usenti included as a reference column for the third option discussed below.

✓ = built in  ·  ~ = partial, add-on, or approached differently  ·  – = not offered or not described by the vendor. Vendor-documented as of October 20, 2026; confirm on each maker's site before buying.

Where Usenti fits, and who should pick it

Usenti publishes this page, so here is a plain account of where it fits. It connects Gmail, Outlook and Microsoft 365, Zoho Mail, AWS WorkMail, and any IMAP or SMTP inbox, plus Slack, and sorts mail in real time into categories such as To Respond, Awaiting Reply, Important, and FYI, mirroring those labels back to Gmail and Outlook. Drafts match your tone and go a step further: Usenti checks your past mail to that exact person, falling back to mail sent to others at the same company, so a reply to a long-time client won't read like one to a stranger.

Beyond email, Usenti includes a meeting notetaker for Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Slack huddles, a unified calendar across Google, Outlook, Apple / CalDAV, and iCal, and Donna, an AI assistant that pulls your calendar, the mail waiting in To Respond, and suggested to-dos into one daily brief. Your mail is not used to train AI models. There is no free plan, since every account starts with a 14-day trial for a one-time $1 and then costs $45 per month.

Pick Fyxer if…

You are on Gmail or Outlook, you don't want to change apps, and you want drafts and labels to appear on their own, with notes and follow-up drafts for a calendar full of client calls.

Pick Shortwave if…

You are fully on Gmail or Google Workspace and want an AI you can steer, with deep search over years of mail, custom AI filters, and careful drafts on request, at the lowest paid entry price here.

Pick Usenti if…

Your team mixes providers, such as Microsoft 365 alongside a Zoho or IMAP mailbox, you want drafts that change tone by recipient, or you would rather pay for one tool covering email, notes, and calendar than stack Shortwave with a separate notetaker.

Want the wider field? See the best Fyxer AI alternatives, ranked, the best AI email assistants in 2026, or the best Superhuman alternatives.

Frequently asked questions