Otter.ai Review 2026: Honest Look at Meeting Transcription
Otter.ai Review 2026: Honest Look at Meeting Transcription
Remote work has made meeting transcription a legitimate business need, not a nice-to-have. If your team runs on Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, you’ve probably lost at least a few hours chasing down action items that weren’t written down, or trying to reconstruct a decision that got made on a call you weren’t on. For a broader look at meeting tools, check our guide to the best AI meeting assistants in 2026.
Otter.ai has been one of the most visible tools trying to solve this problem since 2016. It offers real-time transcription, AI-generated summaries, speaker identification, and a meeting bot that can attend calls on your behalf. It’s also, by 2026, facing serious competition from tools like Fireflies.ai and Fathom that have caught up technically and in some cases pulled ahead on specific features. We’ve tested the competition in depth — see our roundup of the best Otter.ai alternatives.
We tested Otter.ai across dozens of real meetings — internal team calls, client presentations, interviews, and panel discussions. Here’s our honest take on where it works, where it doesn’t, and who should actually pay for it.
TL;DR
Rating: 7.6 / 10
Best for: Individuals and small teams needing reliable English transcription for Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams meetings
Not ideal for: Multilingual teams, heavy CRM integration requirements, large enterprises needing deep analytics
Pricing: Free (300 min/month); Pro at $8.33-$16.99/month; Business at $20-$30/user/month
Free plan: Yes, meaningfully limited
CTA: Try Otter.ai Free →
What is Otter.ai?
Otter.ai is an AI-powered meeting assistant built around automatic transcription. The core product: join a meeting, and Otter produces a timestamped, speaker-identified text transcript, followed by an AI-generated summary and list of action items.
The platform integrates with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. The Otter Assistant — a bot that joins meetings — can attend on your behalf when you’re double-booked or need to step away, producing the full transcript and summary for later review.
Beyond transcription, Otter has developed features for meeting collaboration: you can add highlights during a call, comment on specific transcript sections, and share annotated summaries with teammates. A paid AI Chat feature lets you query across multiple meeting transcripts — useful for finding when a specific topic was discussed across a month of calls.
Otter is used across a range of sectors: sales teams tracking client conversations, journalists recording interviews, academics transcribing research interviews, remote teams maintaining meeting records.
Key Features
1. Real-Time Transcription
Otter’s most used feature is its real-time transcription. When you start a meeting with Otter connected, the transcript appears live on screen as people speak. For anyone who wants to search back through what was said during a call, or share a text version of the meeting immediately after, this is genuinely useful.
Accuracy in our testing was strong under good conditions — clear audio, single speaker, native English. In these circumstances, we saw accuracy in the 93-95% range. That’s solid: good enough to follow the conversation without losing meaning, though you’ll still want to review before sharing externally.
The accuracy drops under real-world conditions: multiple speakers talking over each other, heavy accents, domain-specific technical terminology, or poor audio quality from a laptop microphone. Under stress conditions, accuracy can drop to 80-85%, which is enough to follow the gist but not reliable for word-for-word records.
One genuinely good feature: Otter handles late joiners reasonably well. If someone jumps into a meeting with bad audio quality, Otter still identifies them as a separate speaker rather than merging their speech into another participant’s transcript.
2. Speaker Identification
Otter assigns different speakers to separate labeled tracks in the transcript. It learns speaker identities over time — if you introduce yourself at the start of calls or label speakers after the fact, Otter gets better at recognizing voices across meetings.
In practice, speaker identification accuracy improves with regular use. New meeting participants or guests tend to appear as “Speaker 1,” “Speaker 2” labels until Otter has enough data to identify them. Most teams need 2-3 weeks of regular use before speaker identification becomes reliably accurate.
3. AI Summaries and Action Items
After a meeting ends, Otter generates:
- A meeting summary: A paragraph or two covering the main discussion points
- Action items: A bulleted list of tasks mentioned during the call
- Outline: A structured breakdown of topics discussed with timestamps
The summaries are useful and save real time. The action items are hit-or-miss: Otter captures explicitly stated commitments (“I’ll send that report by Friday”) well, but misses implicit commitments or action items buried in longer discussions.
The outline feature is underrated — being able to jump to the section of a transcript where a specific topic was discussed saves significant time when reviewing long meetings.
4. Otter Assistant (Meeting Bot)
The Otter Assistant is a bot that joins your Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet calls automatically. You can configure it to join all meetings from your calendar, specific meetings, or only when you manually invite it.
The bot joins the call as a visible participant — everyone in the meeting can see it. This is worth noting: unlike some tools that operate more quietly, Otter’s presence is visible, which means you don’t need to disclose you’re recording (the bot’s presence serves as disclosure) but participants will see it.
The bot can attend meetings you’re not in, which is one of its most useful applications: when you’re double-booked, Otter can cover one meeting while you’re in another, and you get the full transcript and summary to review afterward.
5. AI Chat (Meeting Memory)
On paid plans, AI Chat lets you ask questions across your meeting history: “What did we decide about the Q1 budget?” or “When did we last discuss the vendor contract?” Otter searches across all your stored transcripts to find relevant sections.
In testing, this feature works well for specific, concrete queries. It’s less reliable for vague or contextual questions. But for teams with a long history of recorded meetings, being able to search across transcripts is genuinely valuable — the alternative is manually scrolling through dozens of documents.
6. Integrations
Otter integrates with:
- Zoom: Native integration; cloud recordings sync automatically on Business plan
- Microsoft Teams: Live transcription and note-taking
- Google Meet: Meeting bot support
- Google Calendar and Outlook: Auto-join meetings from your calendar
- Zapier: For custom automation workflows
- Salesforce and HubSpot: On Enterprise plan only
The integration list is notably shorter than Fireflies.ai, which connects to 50+ tools including Slack, Notion, Asana, and various CRMs on standard paid plans. Otter’s CRM integrations are gated to Enterprise, which is a significant limitation for sales teams.
Pricing
As of February 2026, Otter.ai’s pricing:
| Plan | Price (Monthly) | Price (Annual) | Key Limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 300 min/month, 30 min max per meeting, 3 file uploads lifetime |
| Pro | $16.99/month | $8.33/month | 1,200 min/month, 90 min max per meeting, unlimited conversations |
| Business | $20-$30/user/month | (varies) | 6,000 min/user/month, team features, cloud recording sync |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | SSO, SOC 2 compliance, API, Salesforce/HubSpot, Otter Sales Agent |
The pricing gap between monthly and annual is significant for Pro: $16.99/month vs $8.33/month is nearly half the cost, which is unusually large. If you plan to use Otter for more than a few months, the annual commitment is worth taking.
Education discount: Students and teachers with a .edu email address get 20% off Pro — $6.67/month (annual) or $13.59/month (monthly).
Free plan honest assessment: 300 minutes per month is tight. For someone with five 30-minute team meetings per week, that’s only 2.5 weeks of coverage before hitting the cap. And the 30-minute maximum per meeting means the free plan can’t cover longer workshops, webinars, or client presentations. The free plan is useful for occasional personal interviews or short meetings — not for a professional meeting workflow.
Non-refundable subscriptions: Worth noting that as of 2026, Otter.ai subscriptions are non-refundable, even if cancelled mid-cycle. This is an unusual policy that has drawn complaints; be sure you’ve tested the tool adequately before committing to annual billing.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Strong transcription accuracy in good conditions: 93-95% for clear English audio, which is among the best in the category
- Real-time transcription: Useful for following along during calls, not just post-meeting review
- Clean, searchable transcript interface: Easy to navigate, highlight, and annotate
- AI summaries save genuine time: Post-meeting summaries are clear and useful
- AI Chat for meeting memory: Querying across historical transcripts is a genuine productivity feature
- Competitive annual Pro pricing: At $8.33/month (annual), Pro is among the most affordable options for core transcription
- Education discount: Good value for students and academics
Cons
- Only English, French, and Spanish: In 2026, three-language support is severely limited; Fireflies.ai covers 100+ languages
- Only Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet: No support for other platforms; Fireflies covers 40+ video platforms
- CRM integrations require Enterprise: Salesforce and HubSpot are locked to the most expensive plan, which disadvantages sales teams significantly
- Free plan is overly restrictive: 300 minutes and 3 file uploads lifetime makes it hard to properly evaluate the tool
- Non-refundable subscriptions: An unusual policy that adds risk to annual billing
- No video recording on lower plans: Otter captures audio and transcript, not video, which limits its utility as a full meeting record
- Limited workflow automation: Unlike Fireflies, Otter doesn’t automatically create tasks or push meeting notes to project management tools
- Accuracy degrades meaningfully with accents or poor audio: Below-average conditions can push accuracy to 80-85%
Who Should Use Otter.ai?
Journalists and researchers who conduct interviews. Otter’s real-time transcription and accurate speaker labeling make it a solid tool for turning recorded interviews into searchable, citable text quickly. The AI summaries and transcript search are particularly useful for longer interview sessions.
Small remote teams that run primarily on Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet and need a reliable way to document meetings without a dedicated note-taker. The meeting bot and AI summaries deliver genuine time savings.
Individuals managing multiple commitments: When you’re double-booked or need to step away from a call, the Otter Assistant provides coverage. Being able to review a full transcript and summary afterward, rather than relying on secondhand notes, is a meaningful benefit.
Students and academics: The education discount makes the Pro plan very affordable, and the search-across-transcripts feature is useful for research interviews and lecture notes.
English-first teams: If your meetings are primarily in English, Otter’s accuracy in that language is genuine strength. The language limitation matters much less if English is your only working language.
Who Should NOT Use Otter.ai?
Multilingual teams: If your team operates across multiple languages — Spanish, French, and English are covered, but anything else is not — Otter.ai is not the tool. Fireflies.ai supports 100+ languages and is the better choice for international teams.
Sales teams relying on CRM data: Otter’s CRM integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot) are Enterprise-only. For sales teams that need meeting notes automatically pushed to their CRM, Fireflies.ai does this on its paid plans at much lower per-seat pricing.
Teams on other video platforms: If your team uses Webex, Jitsi, BlueJeans, GoTo Meeting, or any platform beyond the three Otter supports, the tool simply won’t work for your primary use case.
Teams needing detailed analytics: Otter provides basic usage analytics but doesn’t offer conversation analytics — speaker talk time ratios, topic frequency analysis, sentiment tracking. Fireflies.ai has these on its paid plans; Otter doesn’t.
Heavy documentation workflows: If you need meeting notes automatically posted to Slack, tasks created in Asana, or content pushed to Notion, Otter’s limited integration set will disappoint. You’ll be doing most of that manual transfer yourself.
Otter.ai vs. Alternatives
| Feature | Otter.ai | Fireflies.ai | Fathom |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free / $8.33/month | Free / $10/seat/month | Free / $19/user/month |
| Free plan limits | 300 min/month | 800 min/month | Unlimited recordings |
| Transcription accuracy | 93-95% (good conditions) | 90-95% | 90-93% |
| Language support | English, French, Spanish | 100+ languages | English-primary |
| Platform support | Zoom, Teams, Meet (3) | Zoom, Teams, Meet + 40 others | Zoom primarily |
| CRM integration | Enterprise only | Pro plan ($10/seat) | Limited |
| Workflow automation | Limited (Zapier) | Comprehensive (50+ integrations) | Limited |
| Real-time transcription | Yes | Limited | Yes |
| Conversation analytics | Basic | Yes (paid plans) | Basic |
| Best for | Accurate English transcription | Sales teams, CRM-heavy workflows | Free individual use |
Otter vs. Fireflies.ai: Fireflies wins on language support, platform breadth, CRM integrations, and workflow automation. Otter edges ahead on real-time transcription quality and has a slightly cleaner interface for individual users. For team-based workflows with CRM requirements, Fireflies is typically the better choice. For individuals and small teams focused on accurate English transcription, Otter holds its own.
Otter vs. Fathom: Fathom offers unlimited free recordings for individuals on its free plan, making it unbeatable for solo users who want to avoid paying. However, Fathom is essentially Zoom-only, which is a major constraint. Otter’s support for Teams and Meet makes it more versatile, and the paid plans are similarly priced. Choose Fathom if you live in Zoom and don’t need CRM integrations; choose Otter if you need Teams or Meet support.
Our Verdict
Otter.ai does its core job well: if you need accurate English transcription for Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet meetings, it delivers consistently. The real-time transcription, speaker identification, AI summaries, and transcript search are all genuinely useful features that save real time.
The limitations are also real and worth taking seriously. Three languages and three platforms is a narrow scope in 2026. CRM integrations locked to Enterprise pricing disadvantages sales teams who could be Otter’s natural customers. The non-refundable subscription policy is an unnecessary friction point.
Where Otter.ai fits: small to mid-size teams running primarily English-language meetings on the major platforms, individuals who want reliable meeting documentation, and professionals (journalists, researchers, academics) who do a lot of recorded interviews.
Where Otter doesn’t fit: multilingual teams, sales organizations that need automatic CRM updates, or teams using platforms beyond the three Otter supports.
At $8.33/month annually for Pro, the pricing is reasonable for what you get. Just go in with clear eyes about the language and integration limitations, and test the free plan on real meetings before committing to annual billing.
Rating: 7.6 / 10
Frequently Asked Questions
How accurate is Otter.ai’s transcription?
Under good conditions — clear audio, native English speakers, minimal background noise — Otter typically achieves 93-95% accuracy. With heavy accents, multiple overlapping speakers, or poor audio quality, accuracy can drop to 80-85%. Always review transcripts before sharing externally, particularly for important meetings.
Does Otter.ai record video or just audio?
Otter.ai captures audio and produces a text transcript. It does not record video on standard plans. If you need both video recording and transcript, you would need to use a separate tool for video recording (like Zoom’s native recording), with Otter handling the transcription.
Can Otter attend meetings I’m not in?
Yes. The Otter Assistant is a bot that can join your calendar-connected meetings automatically, even if you’re not present. It will appear as a visible participant in the meeting, produce the full transcript, and send you the summary afterward. All meeting participants can see the bot is present.
Is my meeting data private and secure?
Otter.ai stores transcripts on its servers and uses meeting content to improve its AI models by default. You can opt out of data use for model training in your account settings. For sensitive meetings, review Otter’s data privacy policy carefully. Enterprise plans include SOC 2 compliance and enhanced data controls.
How does Otter.ai handle multiple languages?
Otter.ai supports English, French, and Spanish for real-time transcription. If your meeting participants speak other languages, those portions of the meeting will not be accurately transcribed. For meetings in other languages, consider Fireflies.ai, which supports 100+ languages.
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