Otter AI
by Otter.ai
Getting-started guide
An AI notetaker that joins your meetings, transcribes them live, and hands you a searchable summary afterward.
Current prices: Free, from $16.99/user/mo billed monthly · See all plans
Last reviewed 2026-07-13 · for Otter AI
Otter works by connecting once and then running on its own. You link your calendar and grant access to your meeting tool; from then on its bot shows up as a participant in your scheduled calls, captures the audio, and turns it into a live transcript with speakers labelled. Afterwards you get a summary and a searchable record.
Otter is a meeting assistant. You connect it to your calendar, and its bot joins your Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet calls, transcribes everyone in real time, and produces a summary with action items you can search later. It's aimed at people who sit in a lot of meetings — students in lectures, salespeople on calls, anyone who'd rather pay attention than scramble to take notes.
The free Basic plan gives you a limited monthly allowance of transcription minutes, a cap on how long any one conversation can be, and only a handful of file uploads ever (lifetime, not monthly). It's enough to test the quality and the meeting integration, but a couple of long meetings will exhaust it. Pro, a paid monthly plan that is cheaper billed annually, gives you a much larger allowance.
The single most important thing: an AI bot joining a call to record it affects everyone on the call, not just you. Handle consent before you turn it on (more below).
Set up the calendar and meeting-tool connection first — that's the "recipe" that makes Otter run on its own.
Otter's whole model is that a bot joins your meeting and records everyone in it. In many places, recording a conversation requires the other participants' knowledge or consent — and it's simply good practice regardless of the law. Tell people the notetaker is on, or let the visible bot do that for you, before the real conversation starts.
As of early 2026, Google Meet began flagging third-party notetaker bots (Otter among them) as a potential security concern, and organizations on strict security settings can auto-eject the bot. If your workplace runs a locked-down Meet, test that Otter can actually join before you rely on it.
Link Otter to your calendar and grant access to Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet so its bot can auto-join scheduled calls.
Why this one: This is the setup that makes everything else automatic; without it you're uploading files by hand.
Tweak: Only want it on some meetings? You can control which calls the bot joins.
Decide how you'll let participants know they're being recorded — a note in the invite, a verbal heads-up, or relying on the visible bot — and make it your default.
Why this one: It's the difference between a useful tool and an awkward (or non-compliant) surprise.
Tweak: For external calls, put the disclosure in the meeting invite so it's on record.
Let Otter capture a low-stakes internal meeting, then open the transcript, try the search, and ask its chat "what were the action items?"
Why this one: One real run shows you the accuracy and whether the summary is trustworthy for your use.
Tweak: Compare the summary against your own memory of the call to calibrate how much to trust it.
Want the full picture first? See the Otter AI overview for pricing, the free tier and related tools.
