Otter.ai
Otter.ai records and transcribes meetings, then turns each conversation into a summary, action items and a searchable record. A Notetaker can join Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet calls on a schedule, or a user can record without a bot from the desktop app, the browser extension or a phone. Otter AI Chat answers questions across a user's meeting history and connected apps, and an MCP server lets ChatGPT, Claude and other assistants query that history directly.
The sales product sits on top of the same transcription engine. Before a call it assembles a briefing from earlier meetings and CRM context; during the call Live Assist prompts the rep from conversation history and company playbooks; afterward it drafts a follow up email and pushes deal details, notes and next steps into Salesforce or HubSpot. A separate SDR Agent works on the seller's website, qualifying visitors through voice or chat, running a tailored product demo on a live video call, scoring the lead against custom criteria and booking the meeting.
Plans run from a free tier with 300 transcription minutes a month to Pro at $8.33 per user per month on annual billing and Business at $19.99, which removes the meeting minute cap and allows four hours per conversation. Enterprise is quoted and carries the Sales Notetaker, custom CRM and dialer integrations, the API and webhooks, SSO and SCIM from 100 licenses, and a HIPAA add on. The SDR Agent is sold through a demo.
Recording consent is the live issue around the product. In re Otter.AI Privacy Litigation, a consolidated proposed class action in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that the Notetaker joined and recorded meetings without the consent of every participant. The first of its four complaints was filed on August 15, 2025. On August 13, 2026 the court declined to dismiss the wiretap, California privacy and Illinois biometric claims, a ruling on the pleadings that leaves them as allegations. Otter's controls include a named Notetaker participant, a chat announcement when it joins, optional pre recording emails to every invitee, lockable auto join defaults, and on Enterprise a Teams permission page each guest must accept.
Otter trains its own models on deidentified recordings and transcripts, with an opt out available to Enterprise customers. It passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025 and has transcribed more than a billion meetings, across sales, education, media and recruiting teams, with transcription in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese.
Capability Axes
Capability grades
17 of 17 axes rated · 14 graded A or B
Speech recognition, speaker identification, summaries, action items and AI Chat are the product, and none of it works without the models. Sales features extend the same engine: briefings before a call, Live Assist prompts during it, drafted follow ups and CRM field extraction afterward. The SDR Agent qualifies website visitors and runs demos on a live video call. Otter trains proprietary models on deidentified recordings and transcripts rather than reselling a general assistant.
By default the Notetaker joins every calendar meeting with a video link. Admins can narrow that to hosted, external, internal or manually chosen meetings, lock the setting for members, and switch Notetaker off per person; a host can remove it mid call. Follow up emails arrive as drafts. The SDR Agent qualifies, demos, scores and books without a rep, and no limit on what it may promise or a way to halt it is described.
Otter runs its own models, trained on deidentified audio and transcripts with help from data labeling providers, while any outside language model providers behind summaries and chat go unnamed. Recording presence is visible: the Notetaker joins under a name and posts a chat message linking the live transcript. How the SDR Agent identifies itself on a video call with a website visitor is not described, and drafted follow ups carry no AI label.
Customer quotes carry the results: Aiden Technologies' sales vice president describes a conservative 33 percent of time returned, and a Canidium marketing manager reports saving hours each week. A headline figure of more than four hours saved per user per week comes from user reports with no sample or period.
Company milestones of $100 million in annual recurring revenue and a billion meetings processed describe scale rather than customer outcomes, and no figure ties the sales agent to meetings booked or pipeline.
Recording law is the regulated surface here. Otter treats California, Illinois and Florida as all party states and offers pre recording emails to every invitee, a join announcement, lockable auto join defaults and, on Enterprise, a Teams permission page each guest accepts before entry. Pre recording emails stay off until a member or admin enables them.
In re Otter.AI Privacy Litigation, a proposed class action in the Northern District of California whose first complaint was filed on August 15, 2025, alleges recording without every participant's consent; on August 13, 2026 the court let the wiretap, California privacy and Illinois biometric claims proceed past the pleadings.
Otter certifies under the EU US, UK and Swiss Data Privacy Frameworks and relies on standard contractual clauses for other transfers. The policy covers erasure, portability, consent withdrawal and a do not sell or share route under CCPA, and relies on consent or legitimate interest. People recorded in a meeting who never signed up for Otter are the hard case: their lawful basis and notice rest on the host's settings, which is the question the pending class action turns on.
Training material comes from customers' own conversations: deidentified audio recordings plus transcriptions that may still hold personal information, annotated by outside data labeling providers. Otter holds no prospect database, so provenance here means the recorded meeting itself. The deidentification method is not described, and the plaintiffs in the pending case argue it leaves confidential content and speaker identity intact.
The Notetaker joins Zoom, Teams and Meet as a visible participant through each platform's own meeting and app routes, and Salesforce and HubSpot connect through official integrations. Zoom setup asks the customer to auto approve recording requests from external participants, and Google Meet needs no host side configuration. Meeting hosts on the other side of a call can block the bot through waiting rooms or domain rules.
Customer recordings and transcripts train Otter's proprietary models by default after deidentification. Enterprise customers can opt their organization out through an account manager, and the HIPAA tier restricts training on customer data. Enterprise also adds custom retention policies and audio removal from conversations. Outside Enterprise, retention runs as long as needed for the stated purposes, with no fixed period.
People on the other side of a recorded call see a named Notetaker in the participant list and a chat message linking the live transcript, and members control whether that announcement posts. Pre recording emails reach every invitee once switched on, and the Teams permission page requires each guest to click through a disclaimer. Otter takes no position on Article 50 of the EU AI Act, including for the SDR Agent that talks to website visitors on video.
Salesforce and HubSpot receive transcripts, notes and extracted deal details, with synced users capped at one on Pro and five on Business; AI Chat can also query Salesforce. Zapier, Slack, Notion, Jira, Asana, Google Docs, Dropbox, Glean and Greenhouse connect as well, and an MCP server opens meeting history to outside assistants on every plan. The API and webhooks, dialer connections and custom CRM work arrive with Enterprise. Field mapping and sync direction for the CRM connections are not spelled out.
Otter is multitenant cloud software with desktop, browser and mobile capture clients, and its compute and storage run on Amazon Web Services, a US provider. Partners and service providers may store and process data outside the user's country, under the transfer frameworks above. No hosting region is named, and no EU or other regional storage option is offered.
Otter holds SOC 2 Type II and announced HIPAA compliance in July 2025, with a business associate agreement on the Enterprise add on. A trust center runs on SafeBase. Product controls include TLS and AES 256 encryption, authenticator app and SMS two factor sign in, activity logs, and SSO with SCIM on Enterprise from 100 licenses. The audit period and the terms for reading the report are not given.
Free gives 300 minutes a month and 30 minutes per conversation. Pro costs $16.99 per user monthly or $8.33 on annual billing with 1,200 minutes, and Business $30 monthly or $19.99 annually with unlimited meeting minutes and four hours per call. Usage limits are explicit, down to AI Chat queries and synced CRM users. The Sales Notetaker, live coaching for sales teams and the SDR Agent sit in Enterprise or behind a demo, with no figure attached.
Conversations export as mp3, txt, pdf, docx and srt, with bulk export on Business and Enterprise. Subscriptions renew automatically unless either side gives notice at least 30 days before the next period, and fee changes for a renewal need 45 days' written notice. After termination, customer content stays available for electronic retrieval for 30 days, then Otter deletes or retains it as the customer directs, with no deletion deadline beyond that instruction.
Otter sends little on a customer's behalf: pre recording notices to meeting invitees and the follow up drafts a rep chooses to send. Neither comes with sending infrastructure, volume limits or reputation monitoring. The SDR Agent works inbound on the seller's own website rather than through outbound email.
Plans run from individuals through 25 seat Business workspaces to Enterprise, with dedicated products for sales, education, media and recruiting. Salesforce, Harvard, NBCUniversal, Amazon, IBM, Walgreens and Mastercard appear among customer logos. Transcription covers English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese, and Otter entered Japan with local language support. The share of the base running Otter for revenue teams rather than general meetings is not broken out.
Alternatives to Otter.ai
Vendors in the same categories as Otter.ai whose graded profiles look most alike, with a line on what each product does.
Similar is not the same, so check that each one does the job you need. No vendor pays for placement.
Krisp began as AI noise cancellation and now sells an AI Meeting Assistant that removes background noise, softens accents and takes notes in any calling app.
Read AI joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet calls, records and transcribes them, and turns each meeting into a report with a summary, topics, action items, key questions and a full…
Granola is an AI notepad for people who spend the day in meetings.
tl;dv records, transcribes and summarizes Zoom, Google Meet and Teams calls, either through a bot that joins the meeting or through a desktop app for Mac and Windows that captures audio without one.
Bluedot is an AI note taker that records meetings without sending a bot into the call.
AI Conversation Expert, sold as ACE and formerly called RingSense, analyzes recorded customer conversations for sales, service and compliance teams.
Ordered by how closely the graded profiles match across the seventeen axes, inside the same categories. See how each axis is graded in the methodology.
Pricing
What this vendor charges, what it commits to in writing, and where the bill can move. Figures the vendor publishes itself are labeled Vendor Published. Figures labeled Estimated come from other sources and the vendor has not confirmed them.
- ›Basic is free with 300 transcription minutes a month and 30 minutes per conversation. Pro costs $16.99 per user monthly or $8.33 billed annually, with 1,200 minutes and Salesforce or HubSpot sync for one user. Business costs $30 monthly or $19.99 billed annually, removes the meeting minute cap, allows four hours per conversation and syncs CRM notes for five users. Enterprise is quoted and adds the Sales Notetaker, API and webhooks, SSO and SCIM.
How the price works
What you are charged for, and what makes the bill go up.
Per user subscription with monthly transcription minute limits
What the contract says about your data
What the vendor commits to in writing once your data is in the product.
Business associate agreement available as an Enterprise HIPAA add on.
Getting started
What it costs and what is included before the product is running.
No implementation fee listed; Enterprise includes a customer success program.
What to watch for
Where this pricing can surprise a buyer who has not read it closely.
The Sales Notetaker, custom CRM and dialer integrations and the API sit in quoted Enterprise contracts, and the SDR Agent is sold through a demo with no price. SSO and SCIM require at least 100 licenses. HIPAA compliance is an Enterprise add on. Imported file transcription is capped at 6,000 minutes per user on Business and Enterprise, and live RTMP transcription carries extra fees.