Free Otter.ai Alternatives: What You Actually Get (2026)

Most "best Otter.ai alternatives" lists compare feature checkboxes and never mention the number that decides everything: what the free tier actually gives you before it stops.

This guide does the opposite. Every limit below is taken from each tool's own pricing page, and where a free plan runs out, it says so plainly.

Why people look for an Otter.ai alternative

Three reasons come up repeatedly, and they lead to different answers.

The free tier ran out. Otter's Basic plan includes 300 transcription minutes a month, capped at 30 minutes per conversation. That is roughly five half-hour meetings. If you have four calls on a Tuesday, you are done for the week.

The retention limit bit. Basic keeps your 25 most recent conversations. The transcript from six weeks ago, the one with the decision you now need to prove, has quietly aged out.

The price per seat is hard to justify. Otter Pro is $8.33 per user per month billed annually, or $16.99 month to month. Business is $19.99 per user per month annually, $30 monthly. For a team of six on Business, that is a real line item for something that mostly produces text.

None of that means Otter is bad. It means the free plan is a trial, not a tool, and it is worth knowing that before you build a workflow on it.

The free tiers, side by side

Two things in that table deserve more than a row each.

Fireflies' free plan is more generous than most lists admit

Fireflies advertises unlimited transcription on its free tier, which genuinely beats Otter's 300 minutes. The constraint moved somewhere less obvious: storage. The free plan gives 400 minutes of storage per team, and 20 AI credits.

So you can transcribe as much as you like, but you cannot keep much of it. For someone who needs a transcript during and immediately after a call and does not care about an archive, that is a good deal. For anyone building a searchable record, the storage cap is the same wall as Otter's retention limit wearing a different hat.

Paid tiers start at $10 per seat per month annually for Pro (8,000 minutes of storage per seat), $19 for Business with unlimited storage, and $39 for Enterprise.

What Meetings Brief does and does not do

Being direct, because a comparison guide that oversells its own product is worthless.

No bot joins your live calls. There is nothing that sits in a Google Meet or Zoom call and records it. If that is the job you need done, Otter and Fireflies do it and we do not — use one of them.

What Meetings Brief does instead is transcribe a recording you already have, in your browser, free — with no account, no minute cap and no storage cap. The speech model is downloaded into the page and runs on your own machine, so the audio file never leaves your device. That is what makes it unlimited rather than metered, and it means it works for recordings you would not be permitted to upload to a third-party service at all.

There is a practical edge to that beyond privacy: many organisations block third-party bots from joining meetings, which rules out Otter and Fireflies regardless of their pricing. Transcribing a file adds no participant to the call.

Around the meeting it also does voice capture in 13 languages, AI summaries in six formats, automatic action-item extraction, semantic search across everything you have captured, and persistent memory that carries context between sessions — all free, with no account required.

That makes it a different tool, not a cheaper Otter. Which one you want depends on the job.

Which one fits which job

You need a bot to sit in a live call and capture it. Otter or Fireflies. Fireflies' free tier stretches further on volume; Otter's is easier to live with if you only have a few short calls a month and want them kept tidy. If your employer blocks meeting bots, neither is an option and you are recording it yourself either way.

You already have the recording. Transcribe the file — it is free and uncapped in the browser, and nothing is uploaded.

You need to remember what was decided and what you owe people. This is a different problem from transcription, and a transcript is a poor solution to it — nobody rereads 4,000 words to find one commitment. Structured summaries and action items matter more than word-for-word accuracy.

You are on your phone, between things, and the thought will be gone in ninety seconds. Voice capture with automatic structuring. Opening a laptop, starting a recorder and inviting a bot is more friction than the thought will survive.

You want an archive you can search in six months. Check the retention and storage limits before anything else. This is where free plans quietly fail, and you only discover it at the moment you need the old material.

How to judge a free tier before you commit

Four questions, in the order that matters.

What runs out first, and when? Minutes, storage, retained conversations, or AI credits. Every free plan has one binding constraint. Find it and multiply by your actual weekly meeting load.

What happens to old material? If the tool deletes or hides your history, it is a live utility, not a record. That is fine, as long as you know it.

Does it require an account before you can tell whether it works? Signup friction before value is how good tools lose people who would have stayed.

Does the output need cleanup? A transcript that still needs twenty minutes of editing has moved the work, not removed it. Judge tools on what you can use directly.

The honest summary

If you want live meeting transcription for free, Fireflies' unlimited transcription is the strongest starting point, with storage as the limit to watch. Otter is the more polished product and the more restrictive free tier.

If what you actually need is to stop losing decisions and follow-ups — and you have noticed that you never reread the transcripts anyway — the transcript may not be the thing worth optimising. That is the gap Meetings Brief works on, free and without an account.

Pick based on the job, not the feature list. And check the limit that will bite you before you build a habit on top of it.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a completely free Otter.ai alternative?

Fireflies offers unlimited transcription on its free plan, limited to 400 minutes of storage per team and 20 AI credits. That is the closest thing to unrestricted free transcription among the mainstream tools, though the storage cap means it suits live use more than archiving.

How many minutes does Otter.ai give you for free?

Otter's Basic plan includes 300 transcription minutes per month with a 30-minute cap on any single conversation, three lifetime file imports, and retention of your 25 most recent conversations.

Does Meetings Brief transcribe Zoom or Google Meet calls?

Not currently. Meetings Brief covers voice capture, AI summaries, action items, semantic search and persistent memory, and it is free with no account required. For live call transcription you would want a dedicated transcription tool.

Why do free transcription tools limit storage instead of minutes?

Transcription is a one-off compute cost, while storage is charged every month the file exists. Limiting storage lets a provider advertise unlimited transcription honestly while still capping the recurring cost, which is why the constraint has moved there across the market.

What should I check before switching transcription tools?

Find the binding constraint on the free tier — minutes, storage, retention or credits — and compare it against your real weekly meeting load. Then check whether the output is usable without editing, because cleanup time is the cost that does not appear on any pricing page.

Are AI meeting transcripts accurate enough to rely on?

For clear audio and a common accent, modern transcription is accurate enough for recall and search. It is less reliable with crosstalk, heavy accents, technical vocabulary and poor microphones. For anything consequential — legal, medical, contractual — treat the transcript as a draft rather than a record.