Otter.ai

Otter.ai is an AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes conversations in real time. Its bot — branded OtterPilot — connects to your calendar and automatically joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet calls, so a searchable live transcript appears without anyone hitting record. After the meeting it produces a summary, a list of action items, and an outline of what was discussed.

Otter was one of the earliest movers in AI transcription and remains a default choice for note-free meetings. Beyond raw transcription it adds “Otter AI Chat,” where you can ask questions about a meeting or across your meeting history (“what did we decide about the launch date?”), plus automated meeting-notes emails and integrations that push summaries into Slack, Notion, and CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot.

Competitors include Fireflies.ai, Otter’s closest rival on features and price, plus Zoom’s own AI Companion and standalone tools like Fathom and Grain. Otter’s strengths are its polished live-transcript view and its long track record; its accuracy on tough audio is good but not flawless.

Key Features

• OtterPilot auto-joins Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet via calendar
• Real-time, searchable transcription
• Automatic summaries, outlines, and action items
• Otter AI Chat to query current and past meetings
• Speaker identification and highlights
• Integrations with Slack, Notion, Salesforce, and HubSpot
• Import and transcribe uploaded audio and video files

Pricing

• Free / Basic: A few hundred transcription minutes per month with per-conversation limits
• Pro (~$USD 17/user/month): More monthly minutes plus advanced summary and search features
• Business (~$USD 30/user/month): Higher/expanded limits, admin controls, and CRM integrations
• Enterprise: Custom, with SSO, security, and org-wide controls

Minute allowances shift with plan changes; annual billing lowers the monthly rate.

Best For

Professionals and teams who sit in a lot of meetings and want automatic transcripts, summaries, and action items — sales teams wanting CRM sync, and anyone who would rather listen than scribble notes.

Limitations

Transcription quality dips with strong accents, overlapping speakers, poor audio, or heavy domain jargon, and speaker labels often need manual correction. The free tier’s monthly minute cap is easy to blow through if you meet daily. Feature-for-feature, Fireflies.ai is a close competitor worth comparing, and if you live in Zoom, its built-in AI Companion may cover the basics for free.