Otter.ai
Otter.ai is an AI meeting assistant that joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet calls, or records without a bot from desktop, producing real-time transcripts, automatic summaries and assigned action items your team can search later.
What is Otter.ai?
Otter.ai is a meeting transcription and knowledge platform published by Otter.ai, Inc., a Delaware-registered company based in Mountain View, California. The publisher previously operated as AISense, a name still visible in the Android package identifier com.aisense.otter. The product now positions itself beyond simple note-taking, as what the vendor calls a Conversational Knowledge Engine: every meeting becomes searchable material rather than a file to archive.
The tool captures conversations three ways. An agent joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet automatically through a connected calendar; a desktop application for macOS 12.3 or later and Windows 10 or later records without any bot appearing in the call; and mobile applications capture conversations in person. During a meeting Otter produces live transcription with speaker identification, custom vocabulary for names and jargon, and synchronised word highlighting on playback. Afterwards it generates summaries containing decisions, outlines and action items assigned to participants.
Otter AI Chat searches across past meetings and connected applications to answer questions, draft follow-ups and produce reports. An MCP server exposes that meeting knowledge to external assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude. Five role-specific agents extend the base product for sales, education, media, recruiting and outbound prospecting, the last of these conducting personalised live demonstrations for website visitors.
Transcription covers six languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese. Thirty-five named integrations are individually documented, among them Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Zoom, Notion, Jira, Snowflake and Amazon S3. Exports include mp3, txt, pdf, docx and srt, with bulk export above the Pro tier.
Security rests on AWS storage with AES-256 server-side encryption, TLS in transit, two-factor authentication on every plan, and a SOC 2 Type 2 report. Enterprise customers add single sign-on, SCIM provisioning, audit logging, custom retention and an optional HIPAA package. The vendor states it trains its proprietary models on de-identified audio and transcripts, and offers organisations an opt-out arranged through an account manager. The site claims fifty million meeting summaries produced and around four hours saved per user each week.
What it does
- Transcribe meetings in real time with speaker identification
- Generate summaries with decisions, outlines and assigned action items
- Answer questions across every past meeting through AI Chat
- Join Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet automatically from your calendar
- Record bot-free from a Mac or Windows desktop
- Push notes and insights into Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Jira and Notion
- Expose meeting knowledge to ChatGPT and Claude through an MCP server
When to use Otter.ai / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Otter.ai is the right fit.
When to use Otter.ai
- Sales teams that need call notes, live coaching cues and automatic write-back to Salesforce or HubSpot
- Higher education and K-12 staff capturing lectures, seminars and study sessions as searchable notes
- Journalists and media production teams transcribing interviews and pulling quotes from recordings
- Recruiters running structured interviews who want candidate insights and Greenhouse synchronisation
- Organisations needing SSO, SCIM, audit logging and custom retention across many meeting-heavy teams
When not to use Otter.ai
- Teams working in languages other than English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese or Chinese
- Anyone under 13, whom the terms of service explicitly bar from the service
- Organisations that must exclude their data from AI training without an Enterprise contract, since the opt-out runs through an account manager
- Developers wanting an openly documented API, as it is an Enterprise-tier feature with no public documentation
- Buyers requiring data residency inside the European Union, as hosting is United States only
How to use Otter.ai
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create a free account at the sign-up page, or log in with Google, Apple or Microsoft
- Connect Google Calendar, iCal or Outlook so the agent joins scheduled meetings automatically
- Alternatively install the desktop application for macOS or Windows to record without a bot
- Or add the Chrome extension, or the iOS and Android applications for mobile capture
- Tell participants they are being recorded and obtain their consent, as the vendor requires
- Start the meeting and follow the live transcript, annotating and highlighting as it runs
- Review the automatic summary, decisions and action items once the meeting ends
- Share the conversation through a private channel or a public link, or export it
- Query past meetings through Otter AI Chat to draft follow-ups or reports
- Upgrade from Settings, or apply the student and teacher discount with a .edu address
Pros & Cons
Pros
- A genuinely permanent free plan with unlimited meetings, not just a trial
- Three capture modes, including desktop recording with no bot joining the call
- An unusually detailed subprocessor page, dated and naming each entity and its country
- Solid compliance file: SOC 2 Type 2, DPA with Standard Contractual Clauses, Data Privacy Framework certification
- An AI training opt-out is explicitly offered to organisations, which few competitors document
- Thirty-five integrations plus an MCP server that opens the data to ChatGPT and Claude
- Complete application coverage across web, desktop, iOS, Android and Chrome
Cons
- Training on de-identified recordings and transcripts is on by default
- The training opt-out is not a self-service setting: it requires an Enterprise account manager
- Only six transcription languages are supported
- Single sign-on and SCIM require a minimum 100-user licence
- The API is Enterprise-only and has no public documentation
- The free plan is tightly capped at 300 minutes a month and three lifetime imports
- Monthly billing costs more than double the annual rate on the Pro plan
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free plan is available. Otter.ai offers a Basic tier at no cost, described as free forever, which includes unlimited meetings and 300 transcription minutes per user each month. The cheapest paid entry point is the Pro plan at 8.33 USD per user per month on annual billing, rising to 16.99 USD per user per month if billed monthly. Business is priced at 19.99 USD per user per month annually, or 30 USD monthly, and includes a seven-day free trial. Enterprise pricing is available on request. All prices are stated in United States dollars, and the terms specify that fees are non-refundable.
- unlimited meetings
- 300 transcription minutes per user monthly
- 30 minutes maximum per conversation
- three lifetime file imports
- 25 most recent conversations
- 20 AI Chat queries
- up to five members
- 1
- 200 minutes per user monthly
- 90 minutes per conversation
- ten monthly imports
- unlimited storage
- 50 AI Chat queries
- advanced search and export
- unlimited meetings and recordings
- 6
- 000 import minutes
- four hours per conversation
- three concurrent meetings
- 200 AI Chat queries
- activity logs
- usage analytics
- single sign-on
- SCIM provisioning
- Domain Capture
- custom data retention
- Otter API and webhooks
- optional HIPAA compliance
- customer success programme
- unlimited members
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Otter.ai handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR commitments are concrete rather than declarative. A Data Processing Agreement is incorporated directly into the terms of service, carrying Standard Contractual Clauses and a UK Addendum, subprocessor objection rights and deletion obligations. Otter.ai certifies under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, its UK Extension and the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework with the U.S. Department of Commerce, with JAMS as alternative dispute resolution provider. The privacy and security page states GDPR standards are incorporated into data practices. Requests reach privacy@otter.ai, marked for the Privacy Officer, or an online form and a toll-free number. Rights covered include access, correction, erasure and opting out of sale and targeted advertising. No Article 27 representative in the European Union is named anywhere on the site.
Who owns the data?
Customers keep ownership. The terms of service state that users retain any copyright and proprietary rights in the content they upload, and that customers retain all ownership rights to content processed by the service. Otter.ai takes a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, process and display that content in order to run the service, exercised in a manner the customer controls. Where a business or enterprise agreement exists, the employer becomes the data controller and Otter.ai acts as processor on that customer's documented instructions. Deleted conversations pass through a trash folder, after which the vendor states no record remains and the content cannot be recreated.
Reuse rights
Users may freely reuse, edit, export and share their own transcripts and recordings without asking permission, subject to the sharing permissions their workspace administrator sets. Exports are available as mp3, txt, pdf, docx and srt, with bulk export from the Business tier. On the vendor side, the privacy policy lists training its proprietary AI technology on de-identified audio recordings and transcriptions among its purposes, and the terms permit machine learning on user content and usage data, plus aggregated or de-identified data for training and benchmarking. Imported files from Google Workspace are excluded from training. Third-party AI providers, named as Anthropic and OpenAI, neither train on customer data nor store it. Human review of recordings requires explicit prior customer consent.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Data is hosted in the United States. The privacy policy names Amazon Web Services, based in the United States, among the cloud providers relied on for compute and data storage, and the subprocessor page lists AWS as the core infrastructure provider, with Google Cloud Platform and Crusoe also present as cloud providers, all registered as United States entities. Storage uses AWS S3 with server-side encryption, applying 256-bit AES to data buckets and machine volumes, with the root key rotated regularly. Traffic is protected by TLS in transit, and real-time content is encrypted with AES-256. The resolved server address belongs to Amazon's network in Oregon. Because the jurisdiction is American, transfers from Europe rely on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework certification and on the Standard Contractual Clauses attached to the Data Processing Agreement. No European or regional data residency option is advertised anywhere on the site.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Otter.ai.
- Your meetings train the vendor's models by default, and the opt-out is Enterprise-only, arranged through an account manager rather than a setting
- The people recorded are rarely the people who accepted the terms: consent is legally your responsibility, not the vendor's, and colleagues may not realise a transcript exists
- Perfect recall of every meeting changes how people speak; candour tends to drop once participants know an assistant is listening and searchable forever
- Leaning on automatic summaries can erode the habit of listening and note-taking, and a wrong action item that nobody checks propagates quietly into a CRM
- Data is hosted in the United States only, with no European residency option, which may not suit organisations with strict transfer requirements
- Binding arbitration and a class action waiver apply unless you post a written opt-out within 30 days, and fees are non-refundable
- One support subprocessor is accessed from the Philippines and Honduras, the only non-United States access point on the published list
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low for an individual. Signing up is free and immediate, with Google, Apple or Microsoft login available, and connecting a calendar takes a few clicks so the agent joins meetings by itself. Installing the desktop application for bot-free recording requires macOS 12.3 or Windows 10 or later. Organisational deployment is a heavier exercise: single sign-on, SCIM provisioning and Domain Capture are Enterprise features and require a licence of at least 100 users. The API and webhooks are likewise Enterprise-only and carry no public documentation, so integration work needs vendor contact.
Deployment
Apps stores
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Otter.ai
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Otter.ai.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free version of Otter.ai?
Which languages can Otter.ai transcribe?
Does Otter.ai train its AI on my meetings?
Can I stop my data being used for AI training?
Do third-party AI providers see my data?
Where is my data hosted?
What security certifications does Otter.ai hold?
How long is my data kept after I delete it?
Is there a minimum age to use Otter.ai?
Do I need to tell people I am recording them?
Should you pick Otter.ai?
Otter.ai is one of the more established tools in its category, with a publisher active since 2017, two disclosed funding rounds and a documented base of institutional customers including universities and mid-market software firms. For anyone whose week is built around meetings, the combination of three capture modes, searchable transcripts and an AI chat layer over past conversations is a genuinely useful package, and the permanent free plan makes it easy to judge before paying.
Its compliance file is among the more thorough you will find: a dated subprocessor list naming every entity and its country, a Data Processing Agreement built into the terms with Standard Contractual Clauses, SOC 2 Type 2 attestation, and Data Privacy Framework certification. That level of disclosure deserves credit, because it is the exception rather than the rule.
The reservation is specific and worth weighing. Otter trains its own models on de-identified recordings and transcripts by default, and the opt-out is reserved for Enterprise customers who arrange it with an account manager. For a tool that sits inside confidential conversations, that default matters, and the people whose voices are captured are usually not the ones who accepted the terms. Hosting is United States only, with no European residency option, and the obligation to obtain participants' consent falls squarely on the user.
Practical limits round out the picture: six transcription languages, an Enterprise-only API without public documentation, single sign-on gated behind a 100-user licence, and monthly billing that costs more than double the annual rate on Pro. Judge it on the training default first; if your organisation can live with it, or can afford the Enterprise tier that removes it, the product itself is mature and well integrated.
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