# Is Otter.ai Free? What the Basic Plan Gives and Where It Stops

> Otter.ai Basic is free with no card: 300 minutes per user a month, 30 viewable per conversation. The Business trial is 7 days, needs a card and auto-bills.

_Source: https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/is-otter-ai-free — The Professional's Toolkit · updated November 2026_

---

Yes. Otter.ai's Basic plan is free with no end date, and signing up asks for no credit card [1]. Each user gets 300 transcription minutes a month, but Basic shows only the first 30 minutes of any conversation, allows 3 file imports for the life of the account, and keeps just your 25 most recent conversations in view. That covers short calls well. It does not cover hour-long meetings. The free trial you see advertised is a different thing: it is a 7-day trial of Business, it needs a card, and it converts to a paid plan automatically when it ends. Otter advertises no trial for Pro.


**300 min** — Free transcription per user a month on Otter.ai Basic, shared across meetings, recordings and imports.



- **30 min** — Viewable per conversation on Basic; recording continues
- **3 imports** — Per user on Basic, for the account's lifetime
- **7 days** — Business trial; card required, converts automatically


## What the free Basic plan gives you

| What you get | Basic (free) |
|---|---|
| Transcription minutes | 300 per user a month, one shared pool, no rollover |
| Length per conversation | First 30 minutes viewable; recording continues |
| File imports | 3 per user, lifetime (not monthly) |
| Conversation history | 25 most recent; older ones archived, not deleted |
| AI Chat | 20 queries per user a month, at most 3 per conversation |
| Notetaker in meetings at once | 1 |
| Exports | mp3 and txt |
| Custom vocabulary | 5 terms |
| Workspace | Up to 5 members |

The core of the product is not held back on the free plan. Otter Notetaker (formerly OtterPilot) still joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet calls from a connected calendar, transcribes live, labels speakers and writes a summary with action items and an outline. AI Chat across your meetings, the Chrome extension, the Slack app, the Otter MCP server and two-factor sign-in through an authenticator app all work on Basic. What starts on Pro is the long tail: unlimited history, pdf, docx and srt exports, search by speaker or date range, playback faster than 1x, and Zapier.

The 300 minutes are **one shared pool**. Meeting recordings, recordings made in the app, imported files and integration imports all draw from it. The pool resets on your account's monthly cycle date rather than on the 1st, unused minutes do not roll over, and Otter sells no extra minutes; its answer is to upgrade. Deleting a conversation gives nothing back. When the pool runs dry, recording and importing stop until the next cycle begins.

## Where Basic stops: 30 minutes, 3 imports, 25 conversations

The tighter wall is the per-conversation cap. On Basic each conversation and each import is limited to 30 minutes; the recording keeps going, but only the first 30 minutes of transcript are open until you upgrade and unlock the full transcript [2]. A weekly one-hour team meeting therefore yields half a readable transcript on the free plan. By our arithmetic, 300 minutes equals ten full 30-minute conversations a month, or about 69 minutes a week, so this cap usually bites well before the monthly pool does.


> ⚠ **Long meetings lock after 30 minutes:** On Basic the recording continues past 30 minutes, but the rest of the transcript stays locked until you upgrade to a paid plan.


Imports are a sample, not a workflow. Basic allows 3 imported audio or video files per user for the lifetime of the account, each file can be up to 5 GB, and each import is still held to the 30-minute view and still deducts from the 300 minutes. If your main job is transcribing recorded interviews, lectures or podcasts, three files only show you what the output looks like. Pro raises the allowance to 10 imports a month.

History is the limit people notice last. Basic shows the 25 most recent conversations; older ones are archived rather than deleted, can still be exported, and return when you upgrade. Exporting and then deleting recent ones frees slots. One catch matters for teams: archiving follows the owner's plan, so a conversation shared by a Basic user can become unreadable to colleagues who pay. Basic also sends the Notetaker to one meeting at a time, and that count includes both auto-joined and manually added meetings.


> 💡 **Cancel the Business trial in time:** Only an admin can cancel, under Account Settings, Plan, Cancel trial, before the 7 days end. Otherwise every seat is billed at the Business monthly rate.




> ⚠ **Deleting does not return minutes:** On Basic and Pro, deleted conversations still count against the monthly minute pool, and Otter sells no extra minutes.

## The 7-day free trial is for Business, and it needs a card

Otter's product pages offer a 7-day free trial of Business. Starting it requires a credit card, nothing is charged during the trial, and at the end the card is billed automatically for the current number of seats at the Business monthly rate unless an admin cancels first, under Account Settings, then Plan, then Cancel trial [3]. The trial unlocks Business features for the week. Pro has no advertised trial. Under Otter's Terms, subscriptions are non-refundable; Otter documents narrow exceptions elsewhere (a Domain Capture migration, an Enterprise contract ended for Otter's breach), so a missed cancellation date is costly; our [Otter.ai pricing guide](/articles/otter-ai-pricing) covers the renewal and cancellation rules.

There is a second, quieter trial. People who join a paid workspace through discovery or a shared-conversation invite become trial members with workspace features for a limited time, and they convert to paid licences at the end unless an admin cancels them. People invited directly by an admin are charged at once. A person gets a workspace trial only once, and re-inviting someone whose trial was cancelled charges immediately. On plans bought through sales, the admin chooses which trial members convert to paid. Switching the workspace to annual billing also turns every trial member into a paid licence on the spot.

## When free stops being enough

The useful test is your week, not your feature list. If your recorded calls run 30 minutes or less and total about an hour a week, Basic holds. **Any meeting longer than 30 minutes** is the first trigger to pay, because the rest of that transcript stays locked. The cheapest step is Pro. Pro costs $16.99 per user a month billed monthly, or $8.33 per user a month billed annually, which comes to $99.96 a year by our arithmetic. Pro allows 90 minutes per conversation and 1,200 minutes a month, about 4.6 hours a week.

Annual Pro wins if you keep it six months or longer: $99.96 a year divided by $16.99 per user a month is 5.9 months. Below that, monthly billing is cheaper, and Under Otter's Terms, subscriptions are non-refundable if you stop early. The second trigger is a week above roughly 4.6 recorded hours, a regular meeting longer than 90 minutes, or more than two overlapping meetings. That points to Business. Business costs $19.99 per user a month billed annually, or $30 per user a month billed monthly; first-time subscribers on monthly billing pay $24 a month for the first three months. It removes the monthly cap on meeting and in-app recording minutes, but each conversation stops at 4 hours and imported files stay capped at 6,000 minutes per user a month.


> 💡 **Count your weekly recorded minutes:** Basic's 300 minutes a month is about 69 minutes a week by our arithmetic, and Pro's 1,200 minutes about 4.6 hours. Check a typical week before you pay.


## Discounts and free routes Otter publishes

Students and teachers with a .edu email get 20% off Pro: $6.67 a month billed $79.99 annually, or $13.59 a month on Pro Monthly [4]. The conditions are strict. It covers only the individual Pro plan with no workspace features, it is paid by credit card only, and Otter provides no invoices or purchase orders for it. Anyone already in a workspace must leave it first, and anyone on a paid plan must cancel, with no refund of earlier fees. Students, faculty and full-time staff of nonprofit or accredited educational institutions and school districts qualify, and a school domain not ending in .edu can go through support with proof of accredited status; affiliated hospitals and government education offices do not. Our [Otter.ai for students guide](/articles/otter-ai-for-students) covers lecture use.

Nonprofits get a Business discount only through TechSoup validation, redeemed at checkout with annual billing selected. If the nonprofit does not renew through TechSoup, the plan renews at the regular Business rate. Otter's help page states no percentage. Referrals are the last route. A referred friend receives one month of Otter Pro Lite with 300 minutes a month, and referral rewards are not available to Business users. None of these turns Basic into an unlimited plan.

## How Otter's free plan sits next to other free notetakers

Free plans in this space limit different things, so compare the limit that hits your use. Granola's Basic plan is free and bot-free: it captures audio from your device, keeps meeting history for 30 days, offers Slack as its only app integration plus MCP over those 30 days and cannot import recorded files. Granola also gives accepted students and startups 12 months of its Business plan free. Fireflies' Free plan lists unlimited transcription with limited AI summaries, 400 minutes of storage per team, 20 AI credits and a 2-hour recording limit.

Fathom's Free plan lists unlimited recordings and transcriptions with instant AI call summaries, captured by a bot or bot-free in beta. Read AI's Free plan gives 5 meeting transcripts a month for meetings up to 1 hour, with no card required. Zoom's free ZoomMate Basic comes with Zoom Workplace Basic and covers meeting summaries for 3 hosted meetings a month, My Notes 3 times a month, 20 AI queries a month and 40-minute meetings. Against these, Otter's Basic adds file imports, which Granola lacks, and gives ground on length: 30 viewable minutes per conversation, against 1 hour on Read AI's free plan and 2 hours on Fireflies' free plan. Our [Otter.ai alternatives guide](/articles/otter-ai-alternatives) compares the paid plans.


## FAQ

**Does the free Otter.ai plan work on desktop and mobile?**

Yes. Otter's desktop app for Mac and Windows is available on all plans, including Basic, alongside the web app and the iOS and Android apps.

**What happens to my conversations when a paid plan ends?**

Otter never deletes conversations on a downgrade. The workspace moves to Basic, the 25 most recent conversations stay visible, and older ones are archived, exportable and restored if you upgrade again.

**Can I use Otter.ai's free plan for patient information?**

No. HIPAA support exists only on Enterprise as an add-on with a signed BAA, so Basic, Pro and Business are not meant for protected health information.

**Can I pay for Otter.ai with PayPal?**

Not yet, according to Otter's pricing FAQ. On the website it takes credit and debit cards, and the mobile apps sell subscriptions through the Apple App Store and Google Play.


## The bottom line

Otter.ai is genuinely free on Basic, with no card and no end date, and the free plan keeps the Notetaker, live transcription, summaries and AI Chat. Its real limits are 30 viewable minutes per conversation, 300 minutes per user a month, 3 lifetime imports and a 25-conversation window. Use it as is for short calls. Once your meetings run past 30 minutes, Pro is the cheapest fix, and annual billing pays off from six months of use. Treat the 7-day Business trial as a paid plan with a delay: it needs a card and bills every seat unless an admin cancels in time.



## Sources

[1] Pricing — https://otter.ai/pricing (2026-11)
[2] Otter help: Conversation, import, and app limits on the Basic free plan — https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/360047538094-Conversation-import-and-app-limits-on-the-Basic-free-plan (2026-11)
[3] Otter help: About your Otter Business free trial — https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/1500007864861-About-your-Otter-Business-free-trial (2026-11)
[4] Otter help: Student & Teacher discount program for the Pro plan — https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/4402467517847-Student-Teacher-discount-program-for-the-Pro-plan (2026-11)
[5] Otter.ai help center — https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us
[6] Otter.ai Terms of Service — https://otter.ai/terms-of-service
[7] Otter.ai Privacy Policy — https://otter.ai/privacy-policy