In the era of widespread remote work, you need a transcription service that keeps up with all the video and phone calls on your schedule. Otter is a fully automated solution that accurately transcribes audio and takes notes in real time. It also offers a top-notch user experience on every platform and a capable AI assistant that seamlessly integrates with popular video conferencing platforms. It even provides most of its functionality for free, with the option for reasonably priced paid plans. We would prefer Otter do away with its limits on prerecorded uploads, but it still easily earns our Editors’ Choice award thanks to its advanced AI tools, intuitive apps, and versatility. If you need the utmost accuracy, however, you should look to GoTranscript, our Editors’ Choice winner for human-based transcription jobs.
How Much Does Otter Cost?
Otter has long been popular because of its generous free plan. You get 300 free minutes per month and a maximum recording time of 30 minutes. Free users can upload just three prerecorded audio or video files per lifetime. As I will discuss later, that limitation could prove problematic if Otter ever fails during a live meeting. On the positive side, the free tier includes access to the service’s AI-based OtterChat and OtterPilot assistant. The former lets you chat live with a bot and your teammates, as well as translate meeting audio. The latter can record audio, take notes, and answer questions during meetings in real time, even if you aren’t there.
(Credit: Otter/PCMag)
Benefits increase sharply for the paid tiers. The Pro plan ($8.33 per user per month, billed annually) includes 1,200 minutes per month and supports recordings of up to 90 minutes. It also allows team members to share an account. This plan still limits your number of prerecorded uploads to 10 per month, however. The Business plan ($20 per user per month, billed annually) ups the transcription limit to 6,000 minutes and allows four-hour conversations. It lets you upload as many prerecorded files as you want, too.
Purchasing a subscription through the Apple App Store or Google Play costs more than via the web; Otter says this is due to the service fees those platforms charge.
Enterprise plans are available, though you must contact the Otter team directly for details. Students and teachers can get a discount on a plan. Unlike with other transcription services I reviewed, individual orders aren’t an option.
Rev’s free tier allows for just 45 minutes of AI-based transcription per month. Paying for a Basic plan ($9.99 per user per month, billed annually) similarly gets you up to 1,200 minutes. Alternatively, you can pay $1.99 or $0.25 per minute for human and automatic transcriptions, respectively. GoTranscript’s automatic transcription subscription plan ($35 per month) allows for 35 hours of transcription, or you can pay $0.20 per minute for individual jobs. Its five-day, human-based service costs $1.20 per minute (for jobs under 2,500 minutes).
Getting Started With Otter
Signing up for Otter takes just a few moments. You don’t even need to provide payment information.
Otter’s web interface is simple to use. You can access your account settings via a left-hand menu and navigate between workspaces, saved conversations, channels, folders, and direct messages. Channels are for sharing projects with a team, such as recordings of meetings or to-do lists. Direct messaging allows you to chat with anyone you’ve shared an Otter conversation with; this is useful for collaborative projects. Recording and importing tools are on the right side, along with a calendar of transcription events.
The center of the page is a long, scrolling ledger of all the conversations Otter has transcribed. AI-generated keywords make finding conversations within the list simple. For example, searching the keyword “trauma” brought up each point in multiple conversations in which someone used that word. This search function is especially helpful if you are working on large projects that involve many recordings.
(Credit: Otter/PCMag)
The editing tools work well. You can edit text directly in the transcript, and a search feature at the top right lets you look for specific words. Audio controls at the bottom let you listen along at various speeds as well as jump forward or backward at five-second intervals. Otter labels speakers numerically, but you can add names by clicking once on the word Speaker in the transcript. Highlighting sections of text, which you can do in real time during meetings or after the fact, creates summaries along the right-hand side of the screen. Unlike Rev, Otter also lets you add comments and corrections to a transcript during a call in real time.
Extensions allow Otter to interact with Dropbox, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom. These integrations are painless to set up, though the software failed to record entire Zoom meetings in two instances. Situations like these are when the limit on uploading prerecorded files is a major drawback. I used my iPhone’s voice memo feature as a backup for recording but then had to give up one of my limited number of uploads to correct Otter’s failure.
If you need help from Otter, you can submit a request through its Help Center. Live chat isn’t available, but Otter’s chatbot can provide helpful tips and troubleshooting steps.
How Does Otter Work?
Otter uses voice recognition software to transcribe meetings and conversations in real time. It ignores filler words (such as “ah,” “um,” and “uh”) and can learn your voice so that it correctly labels you in each transcript. Its voice recognition skills are effective, but you can also add custom vocabulary words via the Account Settings section to further improve accuracy. This is useful if you work in a field with a unique lexicon, such as medicine. Competitors like Rev and Trint offer a similar option.
Otter transcribes both the American and UK dialects of English, along with Spanish and French. For other languages, you can ask Otter Chat to translate a transcript. Otter claims to be able to handle a wide range of accents, but I still noticed more errors than typical with such speakers.
(Credit: Otter/PCMag)
Otter continues to add AI features, including the aforementioned OtterPilot assistant. If you are a free user, you can use this feature for only one meeting at a time, but paid tiers let you set it to attend two or three meetings at once, depending on your plan.
On Zoom, OtterPilot looks like any other attendee and can answer real-time questions from you or anyone else, such as, “What has been discussed in the meeting thus far?” The notes OtterPilot compiles are relevant and arrive alongside a transcript and audio recording after a meeting ends. A new feature called My Action Items creates a to-do list for each participant. OtterPilot could be especially helpful if you have auditory processing concerns or struggle to follow along in meetings.
How Accurate Is Otter?
With a five-minute recording involving two native English speakers, no background noise, and little cross-talk, Otter made 26 word errors and was generally inaccurate with periods and sentence breaks. In a live meeting with OtterPilot, two speakers, and some background noise, it made 22 errors in a five-minute conversation. Both speakers were female and from nearby Midwestern cities. Otter was able to distinguish between the speakers—something it didn’t do the last time I tested it. The resulting transcript was readable, while the screenshots and notes summaries from OtterPilot were useful.
When I tested Otter with some place names and unusual words like Ashtabula (a city in Ohio), it oddly chose “Ask the Mueller” as the replacement. I then tried a two-minute recording of a reading from a Marguerite Henry book about Assateague Island’s wild ponies. Otter made three errors related to proper nouns but didn’t place punctuation correctly several times. Although Rev’s automated service made six true errors related to proper nouns here, its transcript read a bit cleaner because of its more accurate punctuation.
All of this is to say that you will need to do some work to correct any automated transcript. Otter’s web editor at least makes that easy. Human-based transcription services are practically flawless, so those are the way to go if you don’t want to spend time editing.
Is Your Data Safe With Otter?
Like most transcription services, Otter employs pretty hefty safety features—after all, many recordings are sensitive and private. It has a detailed privacy policy that outlines how it uses data, its relationship with advertisers, and law enforcement’s right to recordings in relation to crimes. You can delete your data at any time. All tiers support two-factor authentication.
Full-Featured Mobile Apps
Otter offers mobile apps for Android and iOS, and I tested both. They are quite intuitive, with a sharp blue-and-white color scheme. The tutorial that pops up upon first use is helpful, but you likely won’t need it.
Once I installed the app, it synced with my Google Calendar since I had already granted that permission via the web. Afterward, you can add Otter to any meeting on your calendar with a single click. To add the OtterPilot feature, simply paste the meeting URL into the app.
(Credit: Otter/PCMag)
From the app, you can record live audio like you would with your phone’s voice memo feature, and Otter will transcribe it in real time. You can edit any transcripts you create in the app directly or on the web.
The agenda, conversations, and folders sections are simple to navigate along the left side of the app. You can share recordings through the app with email contacts or by adding colleagues to channels of shared information.
Verdict: Accessible AI-Powered Transcription
Otter provides an impressive range of AI-backed transcription features for both its free and paid users, including the OtterPilot assistant, which can answer questions, record audio, and take notes during meetings in real time. Its well-designed web and mobile apps make it easy to generate transcriptions wherever you are, while a long list of integrations means it works flawlessly with all the productivity apps you likely use. We wish Otter was a bit better about punctuation, but its innovative tools, seamless user experience, and generous free tier make it an obvious Editors’ Choice winner. If you want to pay for individual transcription jobs or need the accuracy of a human editor, you should choose GoTranscript, our other Editors’ Choice winner.
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The Bottom Line
The slick, AI-based Otter can boost your productivity by automatically transcribing conversations and taking notes during meetings you don’t even attend.
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About Meg St-Esprit
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