Otter.ai Alternatives: 6 Options Compared by Limits and Price

Most people who search for an Otter.ai alternative are running into one of its caps. Pro gives each user 1,200 transcription minutes a month and 90 minutes per conversation; Basic stops at 300 minutes and 30 minutes. Six alternatives answer different complaints. Granola removes the meeting bot. Fireflies.ai sells annual seats close to Otter's price with longer recordings. Fathom puts HIPAA on its Team plan. Read AI publishes prices for SAML and SCIM. Notion and Zoom's AI assistant put notes inside tools you may already pay for. Pick by the limit that hurts. If no limit hurts, stay.

What you give up when you leave Otter

Otter is priced per user a month. Pro costs $16.99 per user a month billed monthly, or $8.33 per user a month billed annually; Business costs $19.99 per user a month billed annually, or $30 per user a month billed monthly, with first-time subscribers on monthly billing paying $24 a month for the first three months ^[1]. Minutes on Basic and Pro form one shared monthly pool across meetings, recordings and imports, with no rollover and no extra minutes for sale. Business lifts the monthly cap on meeting and in-app recording minutes, but still holds each conversation to 4 hours and imports to 6,000 minutes per user a month.

Under Otter's Terms, subscriptions are non-refundable; Otter documents narrow exceptions elsewhere, so cancel at least 24 hours before renewal; our Otter.ai pricing guide covers the billing rules. Before you switch, count what Otter keeps in one account. Otter Notetaker (formerly OtterPilot) joins Zoom, Teams and Meet from your calendar, while the desktop app for Mac and Windows records without any bot. You can import files up to 5 GB. The MCP server, which lets assistants such as Claude search your transcripts, is on every plan, Basic included.

Otter's ratings hold up on business review sites and in both app stores. So the case for leaving rests on limits and fit, not on sentiment. The free plans differ more than the paid ones, and they are where most people test a switch. Each has a different ceiling. Otter's is minutes. Granola's is history, Read AI's is a count of transcripts, and Zoom's is a count of hosted meetings.

Granola: for people who never want a bot in the call

Granola captures audio from your own computer, so no attendee joins the meeting, on Zoom, Meet, Teams or any other app. It also never joins on its own: you start each note yourself. It does not store audio, only transcripts and notes, and it cannot import pre-recorded files. Its phone apps cannot capture virtual meetings either. Where it pulls ahead is languages: 31 on desktop and 17 on mobile, against Otter's six, of which German and Chinese (Simplified) are still in beta.

Granola Basic is free with 30 days of history. Granola Business costs $14 per user a month, billed monthly, and adds unlimited history, integrations, MCP and API access ^[2]. Granola Enterprise is priced at $35 per user a month or more. Granola sells annual billing only on Enterprise. Against Otter Pro billed monthly at $16.99, Granola Business is $2.99 a month cheaper per user; for five users that is $70 against $84.95 a month, by our arithmetic. Otter Pro at $8.33 per user a month billed annually has no Granola counterpart below Enterprise.

Switch if you run your own notes, dislike a visible bot, or meet in languages Otter lacks. Stay if you transcribe recorded files or need the audio afterward. Granola's SSO needs 50 or more users on Enterprise, against Otter's 100-user minimum. Accepted students and startups get 12 months of Granola Business free. Our Otter.ai vs Granola comparison goes deeper.

Fireflies.ai: longer recordings at a similar annual seat price

Fireflies is bot-based, though its Chrome extension can record without the bot. Recordings run up to 2 hours on the Free and Pro plans, against 90 minutes per conversation on Otter Pro. It lists more than 100 languages and desktop, iOS and Android apps. Its API is open on the Free plan, while Otter keeps its public API and webhooks for Enterprise. Fireflies says customer data is never used for AI training.

Fireflies Pro costs $10 per seat a month billed annually, with 8,000 minutes of storage per seat; Business costs $19 per seat a month billed annually, with unlimited storage. Enterprise is $39 per seat a month, annual only, and adds SSO, SCIM, audit logs, HIPAA and private storage. Otter Pro at $8.33 per user a month billed annually is $1.67 a month cheaper than Fireflies Pro, and Otter Business at $19.99 per user a month billed annually is $0.99 dearer than Fireflies Business. For five users a year, Otter Pro comes to $499.80 and Fireflies Pro to $600. The units differ, though. Otter caps transcription minutes each month; Fireflies caps storage.

Switch if your meetings run between 90 minutes and 2 hours, your team works in many languages, or a developer needs an API without an Enterprise contract. Stay on Otter Pro if minutes fit and price per seat decides.

Fathom: a free plan without minute caps and HIPAA below Enterprise

Fathom's free plan lists unlimited recordings and transcriptions with instant AI call summaries. You choose bot capture or bot-free capture, which Fathom still labels beta. That answers Otter Basic's 300-minute monthly cap head-on. Paid plans carry a 90-day guarantee, while Otter's subscriptions are non-refundable. That is a real difference.

Compliance is the bigger one. Fathom's Team plan includes HIPAA with a standard BAA ^[3]. Otter offers HIPAA only on Enterprise, as an add-on with a signed BAA and no published price. One catch matters for sales teams. Fathom caps CRM sync at 3 users per domain; Otter syncs notes to Salesforce or HubSpot for 1 user on Pro, 5 on Business and unlimited users on Enterprise. We print no Fathom prices here; check its pricing page for current per-user figures.

Switch if you are a small clinic or practice that needs a BAA without an enterprise contract, or a solo user who outgrew Otter Basic. Stay if more than three people on one domain need CRM sync.

Read AI: published prices for HIPAA, SAML and SCIM

Read AI's free plan gives 5 meeting transcripts a month, for meetings up to 1 hour, with no card. Read AI Pro costs $15 per user a month billed annually, or $19.75 billed monthly ^[4]. Read AI Enterprise costs $22.50 per user a month billed annually, or $29.75 billed monthly, and requires 5 or more licences. Read AI Enterprise+ costs $29.75 per user a month billed annually, or $39.75 billed monthly, and adds HIPAA, SAML and SCIM.

That last tier is the reason to look. Otter puts SSO and SCIM on Enterprise only, with a 100-user minimum licence and a price you get from sales. A 30-person team that needs SAML and SCIM can price Read AI from its own page. The billing terms match Otter's on two points buyers often miss: Read AI offers no refunds and takes no PayPal. It also keeps every licence in a workspace on one plan.

Switch if identity management and HIPAA are requirements and your headcount sits far below 100. For a light user, Otter Basic's 300 minutes cover ten 30-minute meetings a month, against Read AI's five transcripts of up to an hour each.

Notion and Zoom: notes inside tools you already pay for

Notion AI Meeting Notes

Notion is a workspace for docs, wikis and databases, not a dedicated notetaker. Its AI Meeting Notes start on Notion Business, which costs $20 a seat a month billed annually, or $24 billed monthly, and also brings Notion Agent, Enterprise Search and SAML SSO. Notion's Free and Plus plans include only a Notion AI trial. Notion lists speaker identification, real-time transcription, calendar sync, consent disclosures, configurable transcript retention, SOC 2 Type 2 and no training on customer data.

On annual billing, Notion Business and Otter Business sit $0.01 apart per seat a month; on monthly billing, Notion Business is $6 a month below Otter Business's $30 list price. Switch if your team already plans and documents in Notion and wants notes to land beside the work. Otter Pro has no Notion equivalent at its price. Our Notion review covers the rest of the workspace.

Zoom's AI assistant (ZoomMate)

ZoomMate Basic comes free with Zoom Workplace Basic. It gives meeting summaries and in-meeting questions for 3 hosted meetings a month, My Notes for 3 uses a month, 20 AI queries a month and 40-minute meetings. Paid ZoomMate is sold per user per month with 2,200 AI credits a month; Zoom's page does not show the dollar amounts, so we print none. This suits a team that lives in Zoom and needs no more than three summaries a month. Daily meetings outgrow it fast.

The bottom line

Leave Otter only for a limit you can name. Granola fits people who want no bot and can live without audio or imports; Fireflies fits multilingual teams with meetings up to 2 hours; Fathom fits small practices that need a BAA; Read AI fits teams that need SAML and SCIM below 100 users; Notion and Zoom fit teams already paying for them. If none of those limits applies, Otter still keeps a Notetaker, bot-free desktop recording and file imports in one product.