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.

Meetings Brief processing choice: The device-only instructions below require On this device. Live notes also offer Online with Groq when available: selected audio leaves your device in short batches after your processing choice, with shared limits. Online is available for existing recordings: audio goes through private Supabase upload storage to the provider named before upload (Cloudflare Workers AI or Groq), subject to shared usage limits. Check permissions and privacy; AI briefs separately send transcript text to Anthropic.

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 covers up to ten full half-hour conversations if you use no minutes elsewhere; a longer conversation reaches the per-conversation limit even when monthly minutes remain.

The history-access limit matters. Basic gives access to your 25 most recent conversations. Older conversations are archived, not deleted; check the available export and unarchiving options before relying on free access to your whole history.

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.

Otter Basic is a continuing free plan with usage and history-access limits, not a time-limited trial. Check those limits against your meeting pattern before building a workflow around 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 beats Otter's 300 minutes as long as you let its bot auto-join your calendar meetings (accounts opened since September 1, 2026 otherwise get 3 meeting transcriptions). The constraint moved somewhere less obvious: storage. The free plan has limited storage and summaries, with advanced AI credits counted separately.

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 — and it still transcribes them live. Share your Google Meet or Zoom tab in Chrome or Edge on a desktop and the conversation is transcribed during the call. Nothing joins the call, so tell the others you are transcribing. If the alternative you are weighing is Zoom's own transcript, read Otter vs Zoom's built-in transcript.

What Otter and Fireflies still do that we do not: send a bot into a meeting you are not attending, and join your recurring calls automatically from your calendar. If that is the job you need done, use one of them.

On this device: Meetings Brief also transcribes a recording you already have, in your browser, free — with no account and no minute limit. The speech model is downloaded into the page and runs on your own machine, so the audio file never leaves your device. That avoids an audio upload and a metered transcription allowance. Your organization's rules still govern whether you may transcribe the recording or send its text for an AI brief.

There is a practical distinction beyond privacy: a policy against third-party meeting bots covers their bot modes. A bot ban does not rule out every capture mode: Otter's desktop app can record supported meetings without Notetaker, and Fireflies' Chrome extension captures Google Meet without a bot. Your organization's recording and vendor policies still apply. Transcribing a file also 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, AI search of your most recent notes, and an AI assistant that remembers what you tell her 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, check their botless modes and your recording policy instead.

On this device: You already have the recording. Transcribe the file — it is free in the browser with no minute limit, 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

For free live transcription, compare Fireflies' auto-join conditions and storage allowance with Otter's monthly and per-conversation limits. Those documented limits do not establish which product is more accurate, faster or easier to use; this guide is not a hands-on performance ranking.

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 optimizing. 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.

If the reason you are looking is privacy rather than price, the deeper question is what happens to your audio after it is uploaded — we cover that, and the consent rules around it, in AI meeting assistants and privacy.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a completely free Otter.ai alternative?

Fireflies offers unlimited transcription on its free plan when its bot auto-joins your calendar meetings, with limited storage, summaries and separate advanced AI credits. That is one option for frequent live meetings; storage, summary and capture-method limits still matter. Compare it with other free plans for your intended workload.

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 free access to your 25 most recent conversations; older conversations are archived rather than deleted.

Does Meetings Brief transcribe Zoom or Google Meet calls?

On this device: Yes. Meetings Brief's live meeting transcription transcribes a Google Meet, Zoom or Teams call that is open in a Chrome or Edge tab on a desktop computer, with no bot joining and no minute limit, because the speech model runs on your computer. For a recording you already have, transcribe the file in your browser. It is free with no account required.

Why do free transcription tools limit storage instead of minutes?

Transcription allowances and stored-history allowances measure different things. A plan can accept new meetings while restricting access to older results. Check the provider's retention, export and deletion rules instead of assuming "unlimited transcription" includes an unlimited usable archive.

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.