Otter.ai is one of the oldest and best-known meeting assistants, built by a US company. It joins Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams meetings, or records in-person meetings through the mobile app. It turns the conversation into text live, separates the speakers and, at the end, produces a summary and a list of action items. You can also ask questions across all your past meetings. What sets it apart from competitors is strong live transcription and a long track record, but its language coverage is limited.
What is Otter.ai good for?#
- Meetings with clients or colleagues abroad: a freelancer or software team meeting an English-speaking client gets a full transcript and a summary of commitments afterward.
- English classes and webinars: a student in an online course sees the text in real time during class and can search it later.
- Job and research interviews in English: the interviewer can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes.
- Questions about past meetings: a project manager asks, "What did we say about the delivery date in this month's meetings?"
- Automatic summary sharing: it sends the summary and next steps to attendees or to a project management tool.
Strengths and weaknesses#
Strengths:
- Accurate live transcription for English
- Automatic calendar connection and joining of meetings
- A good mobile app for in-person meetings
- Search and Q&A across the meeting archive
Weaknesses:
- Limited set of supported languages
- A bot that joins meetings automatically can annoy or worry attendees
- The free plan is not enough for long meetings
- Recording a meeting without others' consent is ethically and legally problematic
Free plan and pricing#
Otter is freemium. The free plan has limited monthly minutes, a cap on the length of each meeting and a small number of file uploads. Paid plans unlock more minutes, longer meetings, team features and integrations with work tools. Check the official site for current prices.
Language support and privacy#
Otter transcribes and summarizes only in its supported languages, mainly English. If your meetings are in another language, check the official list first or look at the alternatives below.
Before using it in work meetings, think about attendee privacy and the confidentiality of the conversation, and get people's consent.
Getting started in three steps#
- Sign up and connect your work calendar.
- Decide which meetings the bot should join automatically; it is better to choose manually at first.
- After the meeting, read the summary and correct it before sharing it with others.
Otter.ai alternatives#
- Fireflies.ai: many more languages and broader integrations.
- Fathom: a more generous free plan for recording meetings.
- Whisper: free, local transcription of audio files with wide language support.
Before handing work meetings to any online assistant, read what we should never give to AI: keys, passwords and customer data and an AI usage policy for teams and companies.
