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Pricing and verdict · Otter verified August 23, 2026 · Notta verified August 24, 2026
Otter.ai (about $99.96/year Pro) wins for meeting bots and CRM logging; Notta ($97.99/year Pro) wins for translation, 5-hour recordings, and 1,800 minutes
Otter Basic is free with 300 monthly minutes, Zoom/Teams/Meet bots, and speaker ID, but only 3 file imports for the lifetime of the account. Notta's free plan caps every recording at 3 minutes, so real use starts at Pro: $97.99 a year for 1,800 minutes, 5-hour recordings, 100 uploads, translation, and a custom vocabulary. Otter Pro is about $99.96 a year for 1,200 minutes, 90-minute meetings, and named Salesforce and HubSpot integrations. If your audio is self-recorded sessions, files, and PDFs instead of scheduled calls, HyNote AI (an affiliate partner of ours) covers the same 1,200-minute allowance for $79.99 a year with a no-card free plan.
Verdict: Otter.ai is the pick when a bot must join your calls; Notta is the pick for translation, five-hour recordings, and more minutes per dollar
Otter.ai and Notta nearly tie on the headline number: Otter Pro is $8.33 per user per month billed annually, about $99.96 a year, and Notta Pro is $8.17 per month billed annually, $97.99 a year. The two dollars of daylight hide the real differences. Otter sends bots into Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet, includes speaker identification and AI chat from the free tier up, and names Salesforce and HubSpot integrations on Pro. Notta hands you 50% more minutes at the entry tier, 1,800 against Otter's 1,200, allows recordings up to 5 hours where Otter Pro caps meetings at 90 minutes, and lists translation plus a custom vocabulary, neither of which appears on the Otter plan pages we reviewed.
The free plans split just as cleanly. Otter Basic can capture real meetings until its 300 monthly minutes run out, but permits only 3 file imports for the lifetime of the account. Notta's free plan allows 50 uploads a month yet caps every recording at 3 minutes, so it demos the engine rather than doing the job. Meeting-first teams should lean Otter; multilingual and long-form recorders should lean Notta. And if your audio is self-made recordings, files, and PDFs rather than scheduled calls, a third tool we do earn a commission on, HyNote AI, undercuts both at $79.99 a year; we lay out its numbers, disclosure first, further down.
Weigh the third option: try HyNote AI free →
How this comparison was prepared
Every Otter.ai figure below comes from the official Otter.ai pricing and product pages checked on August 23, 2026, and every Notta figure from the official Notta pricing pages checked on August 24, 2026. HyNote AI figures come from its official pricing page checked on August 23, 2026. We ran no transcription-accuracy benchmark on any of the three, so nothing here repeats a vendor's accuracy marketing as fact; where a feature is absent from a vendor's public plan pages we say it is not listed, which is different from saying it does not exist.
Money, plainly: neither Otter.ai nor Notta pays us anything, and their links here carry no affiliate identifier. HyNote AI links are affiliate links that may earn RIA LLC a commission at no extra cost to you. That changes no number in this article, and if Otter or Notta is the better fit for you, the sections below say so without a detour. Our standards are described in How We Evaluate Software.
Free plans: 300 minutes a month versus a 3-minute cap per recording
Start free, because the free tiers already predict which paid tier you would land on.
- Otter Basic ($0): 300 transcription minutes a month that reset monthly, bots that join Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet, live transcription, speaker identification, AI chat over transcripts, and 3 file imports for the lifetime of the account.
- Notta Free ($0): 120 minutes a month with a 3-minute maximum per recording, 50 uploads a month, live transcription, speaker identification, and recording of Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex calls.
Each plan has one number that decides everything. For Otter it is the 3 lifetime imports: a genuinely workable tier for a handful of video calls a month becomes a dead end the week you try to bring in recordings made anywhere else, because that cap never resets. For Notta it is the 3-minute recording ceiling: whatever else the plan includes, no real meeting or lecture fits inside it, so the free tier can only audition the transcript quality on short clips of your own audio.
Put differently, Otter's free plan is a small product and Notta's is a test drive. If a few short video calls a month is your entire workload, Otter Basic can carry it indefinitely at $0, and you can stop reading. Everyone else is choosing which paid tier to buy, which is where the order flips.
Paid tiers: $97.99 versus about $99.96, and very different monthly gaps
All prices are US list figures from the official pages, checked August 23, 2026 for Otter.ai and August 24, 2026 for Notta.
| Plan detail | Otter.ai | Notta |
|---|---|---|
| Entry tier, billed annually | Pro: $8.33/user/month (about $99.96/year) | Pro: $8.17/month ($97.99/year) |
| Entry tier, billed monthly | Pro: $16.99/user/month | Pro: $13.61/month |
| Minutes on entry tier | 1,200 in-app minutes/month | 1,800 minutes/month |
| Longest single session on entry tier | Meetings up to 90 minutes | Recordings up to 5 hours |
| Uploads on entry tier | 10 imports/month | 100 uploads/month |
| Entry-tier extras | Salesforce and HubSpot integrations | Exports, translation, custom vocabulary, Chrome extension |
| Mid tier | Business: $19.99/user/month annually or $30 monthly; unlimited minutes, 4-hour meetings, 3 concurrent meetings, admin features | Business: $16.67/month annually ($199.99/year) or $27.78 monthly; unlimited minutes, 200 uploads, meeting video recording, CRM integration, admin controls |
| Top tier | Enterprise: custom pricing; SSO/SCIM, HIPAA, API | Enterprise: custom pricing, 51+ seats |
| Free trial on paid plans | Check the vendor's pricing page | Check the vendor's pricing page |
Annually, Notta Pro is $1.97 a year cheaper and carries 600 more minutes, a longer session ceiling, and ten times the upload allowance. Month to month the gap widens in Notta's favor: $13.61 against $16.99, because Otter's annual discount is unusually steep and its monthly rate correspondingly high; our Otter.ai pricing guide walks through what that gap costs over a year. The one entry-tier item Otter holds alone is the named Salesforce and HubSpot integrations; Notta does not offer CRM integration until Business, and its pages do not name which CRMs.
The limits that actually force upgrades
On Otter: imports, minutes, then meeting length
Three thresholds do the pushing. The 3-lifetime-import wall on the free plan catches anyone whose audio is not born in a Zoom, Teams, or Meet call, usually within days. The 300 free monthly minutes catch heavier meeting schedules; five one-hour calls exhaust them. Then, already on Pro, the 90-minute meeting cap catches workshops and long trainings, and the fix is Business at $19.99 per user per month annually, roughly two and a half times Pro's cost, for 4-hour meetings, 3 concurrent meetings, and unlimited minutes.
On Notta: the 3-minute cap, then video and CRM
Notta's free tier forces the decision immediately, since no real session fits in 3 minutes; in effect the entry price of using Notta at all is Pro. After that, Pro is roomy: 1,800 minutes, 5-hour recordings, and 100 uploads cover most individual workloads. What sends Notta users to Business at $199.99 a year is a feature list, not a meter: meeting video recording, CRM integration, admin controls, unlimited minutes, and 200 uploads. Notta's Enterprise tier starts at 51 seats, so small teams price Business per user and stop there.
On quality: nobody gets a verdict here
Both vendors describe AI transcription with speaker identification, and their pages naturally present it well. We did not benchmark either engine, and accuracy varies with audio quality, accents, and vocabulary, so the honest advice is mechanical: run the same short clip of your own speech, names and jargon included, through both free tiers before any card comes out. Notta's 3-minute cap is no obstacle to that specific test.
Decision by situation
| Your situation | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Back-to-back Zoom, Teams, or Meet calls and you never press record | Otter.ai | Bots join for you, from the free tier up |
| Meetings that cross languages | Notta | Translation and custom vocabulary on Pro; Otter's plan pages list neither |
| Sessions longer than 90 minutes without paying Business prices | Notta | 5-hour recordings on Pro; Otter needs Business for 4-hour meetings |
| Your calls happen on Webex | Notta | Webex recording is listed even on the free plan; Otter's bot list is Zoom, Teams, Meet |
| Sales calls logged to Salesforce or HubSpot | Otter.ai Pro | Both CRMs named on Pro; Notta's CRM integration waits until Business and is unnamed |
| A backlog of files to transcribe on a $0 budget | Notta Free, in pieces | 50 uploads/month against Otter's 3 lifetime imports, if clips fit the caps |
| Most minutes per dollar at the entry tier | Notta | 1,800 minutes for $97.99/year versus 1,200 for about $99.96 |
| Lectures you record yourself, plus readings and PDFs | Neither is built for it | See the third option below |
If two rows point opposite ways, weigh the one tied to money you would actually spend. A team that needs both translation and a true auto-joining bot has no single winner on these pages and should trial its harder requirement first.
The third option: HyNote AI, and yes, this is the one we earn on
Disclosure first: HyNote AI links are affiliate links, and neither Otter nor Notta pays us. With that said, the numbers are why it belongs in this article. HyNote Pro costs $6.66 per month billed annually, $79.99 per year, against Notta's $97.99 and Otter's roughly $99.96, for a 1,200-minute monthly allowance matching Otter Pro's. Its free plan needs no card and allows sessions up to 120 minutes each, with the limit stated per session rather than per month, so a full lecture or interview fits on day one, something neither Otter's import wall nor Notta's 3-minute cap permits.
The structural difference is input. HyNote accepts live recordings, uploaded audio and video, PDFs, and documents, formatted through 30+ templates aimed at students, researchers, engineers, sales, and clinicians. Speaker identification and transfer to Google Docs and Notion arrive on Plus ($10.83 per month billed annually, $129.99 per year); unlimited real-time transcription and CRM integration on Unlimited ($189.99 per year); paid plans carry a 7-day trial.
The honest limits: HyNote does not advertise a bot that joins calls, does not list translation or a custom vocabulary on any tier, and reserves speaker ID for Plus while Otter includes it free. It is the cheapest of the three when your audio is material you bring yourself; it is the wrong pick when your requirement is the bot or the translation. Our HyNote vs Otter.ai and HyNote vs Notta head-to-heads take each pairing further, and you can check HyNote's current plan wording against ours in a minute.
Who should just pick Otter, and who should just pick Notta
Just pick Otter.ai if...
- Your working week is Zoom, Teams, and Meet calls and you want a bot to attend them unprompted.
- You will actually connect the Salesforce or HubSpot integration on Pro.
- Free speaker identification and AI chat on a $0 plan cover your light meeting load as it stands.
- You need Enterprise-grade boxes ticked: SSO, SCIM, HIPAA, API.
Just pick Notta if...
- Your meetings cross languages and translation with a custom vocabulary is the point.
- You record sessions of two to five hours and refuse to pay a Business tier to do it.
- You upload heavily: 100 uploads a month on Pro against Otter's 10 imports.
- Your calls run on Webex, which Otter's bot list does not cover.
If neither list sounds like your week, and what you actually hold is a phone full of your own recordings, lecture audio, and PDFs, price the cheaper third door before defaulting to the bigger name; the wider alternatives field is broader than these two.
See HyNote AI plans and start free →
Frequently asked questions
Is Notta better than Otter?
Neither is better outright; they are built for different jobs. Per the official pages checked in August 2026, Otter Pro (about $99.96 a year) sends bots into Zoom, Teams, and Meet, includes free speaker identification, and names Salesforce and HubSpot integrations. Notta Pro ($97.99 a year) gives 1,800 minutes to Otter's 1,200, allows 5-hour recordings against Otter's 90-minute meeting cap, and lists translation with a custom vocabulary. Pick by requirement, not reputation.
Which has the better free plan, Otter or Notta?
Otter, for actually working at $0. Otter Basic includes 300 transcription minutes a month, meeting bots, live transcription, speaker ID, and AI chat, though only 3 file imports for the lifetime of the account. Notta's free plan allows 120 minutes a month and 50 uploads but caps every recording at 3 minutes, so it can audition transcript quality on short clips and little else. Upload-heavy users on a $0 budget are the one group Notta's free tier serves better.
Is Notta cheaper than Otter?
Slightly on annual billing and clearly on monthly. Notta Pro is $8.17 a month billed annually ($97.99 a year) versus Otter Pro's $8.33 per user per month (about $99.96 a year), and Notta's month-to-month rate is $13.61 against Otter's $16.99. Notta's tier also carries more: 1,800 minutes to 1,200 and 100 uploads to 10. At the mid tier the order holds, with Notta Business at $16.67 a month annually against Otter Business at $19.99.
Do Otter and Notta support languages other than English?
Notta's Pro plan lists translation, which renders a transcript in a language other than the one spoken, plus a custom vocabulary for names and jargon. The Otter plan pages we reviewed in August 2026 do not list translation or a language count, which is not proof of absence, only that it is not a stated plan benefit. If a specific language pair is the purchase decision, confirm it with each vendor before paying.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Otter and Notta?
HyNote AI, which we should disclose is an affiliate partner of ours, prices its Pro plan at $79.99 a year ($6.66 a month billed annually) for a 1,200-minute allowance matching Otter Pro's, and its free plan allows 120-minute sessions with no card and no lifetime import wall. It is built around uploads, PDFs, and documents rather than meeting bots, does not list translation, and reserves speaker ID for its $129.99-a-year Plus tier, so it replaces Otter or Notta only when your audio is material you bring yourself.
Can I test Otter or Notta on a real meeting for free?
Otter, yes: the free Basic plan's bots can sit in a genuine Zoom, Teams, or Meet call within the 300-minute monthly budget. Notta, effectively no: its free plan's 3-minute cap per recording rules out any real session, so testing Notta on actual meetings means paying for a month of Pro at $13.61 or checking the vendor's pricing page for current trial terms. Both free tiers can still compare raw transcript quality on the same short clip.
Fact-checking note: all Otter.ai figures come from the official Otter.ai pricing and product pages reviewed August 23, 2026; all Notta figures from the official Notta pricing pages reviewed August 24, 2026; all HyNote AI figures from HyNote's official pricing page reviewed August 23, 2026. Otter's roughly $99.96 annual total is derived from its $8.33 per user per month annual price. Otter.ai and Notta are not affiliate partners and pay us nothing; HyNote AI links are affiliate links. Reconfirm prices, plan limits, and features on the official pages before purchase.