Otter.ai

Otter.ai started as a transcription company and has rebuilt itself into an AI meeting assistant — OtterPilot joins your Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams calls, captures audio, generates real-time captions and a final transcript, then produces summaries, action items, and insights. For meeting-heavy teams it's a category-defining product.

For podcasters, it's still useful as a transcription engine for recorded interviews, but the product's center of gravity has shifted noticeably. Pricing: Free includes 300 transcription minutes per month (30 min per individual conversation) with limited exports; Pro at $8.33/mo annual unlocks 1,200 minutes/month plus custom vocabulary and bulk export; Business at $19.99/user/mo annual gives unlimited transcription minutes with a 4-hour-per-meeting cap and team workspaces; Enterprise is custom with SSO, SOC 2, and API access.

Real-time transcription, speaker identification, and shareable highlights work cleanly. The language limitation is the biggest gap — only English, French, and Spanish — which kills it for international podcast workflows.

The 4-hour cap on Business is fine for meetings but tight for long-form interview shows. Best for corporate teams running on Zoom/Meet/Teams, sales orgs capturing call insights, podcasters in supported languages who don't mind a meeting-first interface. Wrong fit for non-English content or for teams who need a specifically podcast-shaped transcription tool.