Otter.ai alternatives: 7 options with real free tiers
Otter.ai costs
Free plan · from $16.99/mo
Cheaper options here
3
With a free tier
6
We are not affiliated with Otter.ai. Prices below come from each vendor's own pricing
page. how we rate.
Why people look for an alternative
Otter is a competent product with a specific set of irritations, and people usually leave over one of four:
The lifetime import cap. The free plan advertises 300 minutes a month, but allows three file imports for the life of the account. If you have recordings already, the free tier is over before you start.
Changed terms. Plan limits and pricing were revised repeatedly through 2024–2025, and long-time subscribers describe it as shrinkflation: the allowance they bought quietly became smaller.
The bot in the meeting. Otter joins as a visible participant and can email full transcripts to external attendees who never agreed to be recorded. In some organisations that ends the conversation.
Accuracy on hard audio. Heavy accents, crosstalk and technical jargon produce labelled-but-garbled 'Speaker 1 / Speaker 2' transcripts. Every tool in this category struggles here, but it is a common reason to go looking.
The options below are grouped by which of those is your problem. All of them are in our index with pricing read from the vendor's own page.
Pick it if: you want a free tier that includes summaries, not just transcripts
The closest like-for-like swap. Same year of founding, same coverage of Zoom, Teams and Meet, $1/mo more expensive, but the free plan gives unlimited transcription and summaries within 400 minutes of team storage, with no lifetime import trap.
It is the better archive: search across months of calls is the point of the product rather than a feature. The cost is speaker labelling, which guesses badly unless people say their names.
Price
Free plan · from $18/mo
Free tier
400 minutes of storage per team, unlimited transcription and summaries, 20 AI credits
vs Otter.ai
Free plan meters storage, not summaries
Checked
August 2026
Trade-off: Speaker identification is weak unless each speaker states their name aloud
Unlimited recordings, transcripts and clips for free, only the advanced AI summaries are limited. For one person recording their own calls, this replaces a paid Otter subscription outright.
Paid is $19/mo if you want the full summary set. Known issue: timestamp bugs on very long calls, where a multi-hour recording is mis-marked as a few minutes.
Price
Free plan · from $19/mo
Free tier
Unlimited recordings/transcripts/clips; advanced AI summary generation is limited on the free tier
vs Otter.ai
Unlimited recordings on the free plan
Checked
August 2026
Trade-off: Reported timestamp bugs where multi-hour calls are mis-marked as only a few minutes long
Granola solves the Otter complaint that has nothing to do with features: it never joins the meeting. It listens on your machine and merges your typed notes with what was said, so no external participant appears and no audio is retained.
At $14/mo it is cheaper than Otter. The absolute trade-off: no recording means no playback. If anyone might need to re-listen to a call, this is the wrong swap.
Price
Free plan · from $14/mo
Free tier
Limited meeting history (exact number of meetings/months not disclosed on pricing page)
vs Otter.ai
Listens locally, joins nothing, records nothing
Checked
August 2026
Trade-off: Doesn't actually record audio/video - no playback exists, only transcript + notes, which limits verification of what was said
The cheapest real subscription in the category at $11/mo, and a different philosophy: agendas and action items are the product, AI recording is attached to them. Teams whose meetings are badly run get more from this than from a better transcript.
Ignore the free tier, its 5 AI notes are a lifetime allowance, which is more restrictive than the Otter cap you are escaping.
Price
Free plan · from $11/mo
Free tier
5 AI notes and 5 AI recordings total per user, lifetime (not monthly)
vs Otter.ai
Entry plan at $11/mo
Checked
August 2026
Trade-off: Free tier's 5 AI notes/recordings are a lifetime cap, not monthly, making it unusable for ongoing free use
Read.ai layers sentiment and engagement analytics over the transcript, which is useful for sales coaching in a way plain notes are not. Free tier: 5 transcripts and 5 reports a month, one hour per meeting; paid $19.75/mo.
If you are leaving Otter over the meeting bot, this is a step in the wrong direction. Read.ai's bot joins calendar meetings three to five minutes early, which is a documented complaint.
Trade-off: Serious, recurring privacy complaints: the bot joins meetings 3-5 minutes early based on calendar events, and other attendees may never have consented to recording
Pick it if: a revenue team that needs coaching, not notes
A deliberate upgrade rather than a sideways move: deal analytics and coaching on top of transcription, aimed at sales and customer success organisations.
There is no free tier, a 14-day trial, then $29/mo, the top of the category's range. Sembly does the same job from $17/mo if the budget matters more than depth.
Price
From $29/mo
Free tier
No free tier
vs Otter.ai
Conversation intelligence rather than transcription
Checked
August 2026
Trade-off: No genuine free tier for recording/transcribing - cheapest path in is a 14-day trial, then $29+/seat
No clean fix: test Fireflies and Fathom on your own worst call before committing
You need more than notes
Avoma or Sembly
What none of these fix
Transcription accuracy on heavy accents, crosstalk and jargon is a category-wide weakness, not an Otter-specific one. If that is your reason for leaving, run a free trial on a recording of your hardest call, the eight-person one with two people talking over each other, before you migrate anything.
The other constant is consent. Every tool here except Granola sends a visible participant into the meeting. Switching vendors does not change the conversation you need to have with the people on the call.
We are not affiliated with Otter.ai or any product listed here, and no placement on this page was paid for, see our editorial policy.
Questions people ask
What is the closest free alternative to Otter.ai?
Fathom, which gives unlimited recordings and transcripts on its free plan, with only advanced summaries limited. Fireflies is the better choice if you want the free summaries and plan to search calls later; it caps free use at 400 minutes of storage rather than metering meetings.
Why does Otter's free plan run out so fast?
Usually because of imports rather than minutes. The plan includes 300 transcription minutes a month but only three file imports for the lifetime of the account, so any backlog of existing recordings exhausts it immediately.
Is there an alternative that does not join the meeting?
Granola. It listens on your device and merges your typed notes with what was said, so no bot appears as a participant and no recording is kept. The trade-off is that there is no playback afterwards.
Are these cheaper than Otter?
Some are: Fellow at $11/mo and Notta at $13.61/mo sit below Otter's $16.99/mo. Fireflies ($18), Fathom ($19), Read.ai ($19.75) and Avoma ($29) cost more, and you are paying for archive search, unlimited free recording or coaching analytics rather than better transcription.
Staying with Otter.ai? Read the full profile with pricing and limits: Otter.ai.