Otter.ai is an AI meeting transcription and note-taking tool that joins your video calls (or records in-person meetings via its mobile app) and delivers real-time transcriptions with speaker identification, time-stamped search, and AI-generated summaries. It's one of the most widely used meeting AI tools with a generous free tier and good accuracy across English-language meetings in standard audio conditions.

The OtterPilot feature joins Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams meetings automatically, taking notes and generating a summary that you and your meeting participants receive by email after the call. The highlight feature lets you mark important moments during the meeting, and the Q&A feature (powered by AI) lets you ask questions about the transcript after the fact — 'what did we decide about the timeline?' — for quick retrieval without re-reading the full transcript.

Otter's free tier is the most generous in its category: 300 monthly minutes of transcription with access to core features is enough for light meeting recording needs without any cost. The paid plans add more minutes, longer meeting recording limits, advanced AI summaries, and team workspace features for collaborative note-taking. Otter competes most directly with Fathom and Fireflies.ai — each has different pricing and feature emphases but similar core capabilities.

🐱 SAGE SAYS

Start with Otter's free tier and the OtterPilot auto-join feature — it takes 5 minutes to set up and the value is immediately visible from the first meeting summary you receive. The limit on free minutes will tell you how much of a paid plan you need.

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