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Otter.ai

By Otter

Live meeting transcription with speaker labels and AI-generated summaries; integrates with Zoom, Meet, Teams.

Visit Otter.aiFreemium

Overview

Otter is the established leader in live meeting transcription, with deep roots in education and accessibility before it pivoted to enterprise meetings. The product joins your Zoom/Meet/Teams call as a bot, transcribes in real time, and generates summaries and action items afterward. Otter AI Chat lets you query past meetings as a knowledge base. Otter's strength is breadth: it works with every major video platform, has solid mobile apps for in-person meetings, and a generous free tier (300 minutes/month) that makes it the easiest tool to recommend to anyone who just needs transcripts. Its weakness is that the bot-joins-the-meeting model is increasingly disliked — sales teams gravitate to Fireflies for CRM, founders to Granola for the bot-less experience. Honest take: Otter is the safe default. It works, it scales to teams, transcripts are accurate, and the free tier is the best in the category. But it's no longer obviously the best choice — it depends on your workflow.

Best for

  • meeting transcription
  • live captions
  • team note-sharing

Strengths

  • ✓Best free tier in the category — 300 minutes/month is generous and rarely matched
  • ✓Real-time transcription with live captions during the call
  • ✓Works across Zoom, Meet, Teams, and in-person via mobile
  • ✓Otter AI Chat turns past meetings into a queryable knowledge base
  • ✓Education/accessibility roots show in solid speaker labels and live captions

Weaknesses

  • ✗Bot-joins-meeting model can feel intrusive and is sometimes blocked
  • ✗Less CRM-native than Fireflies for sales workflows
  • ✗Summaries are decent but not as sharp as Granola or newer tools
  • ✗Mobile-first features are great, but desktop UX feels dated

Pricing

Free (Basic)

Free

300 transcription minutes/mo, 30-min cap per conversation, 3 imports/lifetime. Best free tier in meeting transcription.

Pro

$17/mo

1,200 minutes/mo, 90-min conversation cap, advanced search, custom vocabulary, exports. Default tier for individuals.

Business

$30/seat/mo

6,000 minutes/seat/mo, admin features, OtterPilot for Sales, usage analytics, shared vocabulary. Default for teams.

Enterprise

Custom

SSO, audit logs, custom retention, deployment controls, dedicated support. Aimed at regulated industries.

Use cases

  • General-purpose meeting transcription for individuals

    Free tier covers most knowledge workers. Pro upgrade is cheap if you outgrow it.

  • Education and lecture capture

    Original use case. Live captions, speaker labels, and student-friendly pricing keep it strong here.

  • Accessibility for hard-of-hearing participants

    Live captioning during Zoom is genuinely useful and works without setup.

  • Searchable team meeting archive

    Otter AI Chat lets you ask "what did we decide about pricing?" across months of past calls.

  • In-person meeting capture via mobile

    Mobile app is best-in-class for face-to-face conversations and 1:1s without a video bot.

  • Research interviews

    Custom vocabulary handles domain terms; transcripts export cleanly to Notion/Docs.

When not to use

  • ✗You run a sales team and need CRM sync — Fireflies or Avoma fit better
  • ✗You don't want a bot in the meeting — Granola is the answer
  • ✗You only need post-call notes, no live transcript — Fathom is simpler and free
  • ✗You need on-device / fully private transcription — Otter is cloud-only

Alternatives

Fireflies

Meeting note-taker that joins your calls (Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex), produces searchable transcripts, and pushes summaries to Slack, Notion, and CRMs.

Granola

Mac-native meeting note-taker that augments your own notes with AI rather than replacing them.

Fathom

Free meeting recorder for sales and CS teams; produces structured notes and pushes them into your CRM.

tl;dv

Meeting recorder and AI note-taker that joins Zoom/Meet/Teams, syncs with CRMs, and analyzes patterns across many calls for sales coaching.

Read.AI

Meeting analytics platform that scores meetings on engagement and sentiment, plus AI summaries shared via Slack, email, or as a daily digest.

Avoma

Conversation intelligence for revenue teams — records calls, generates structured notes, scores deals, and surfaces coaching insights for managers.

See it compared

Otter vs FirefliesGranola vs Otter

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Free meeting recorder for sales and CS teams; produces structured notes and pushes them into your CRM.

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Mac-native meeting note-taker that augments your own notes with AI rather than replacing them.

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