Otter.ai: AI Meeting Transcription & Notes Guide
Never miss a meeting detail with Otter.ai. Learn about real-time transcription, action items, integrations, team features, and pricing.
Best AI Tools 2026
February 22, 2026
Otter.ai transforms meetings from memory-dependent events into searchable, shareable documents. It joins your Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams calls automatically, transcribes everything in real-time, identifies who said what, and generates summaries with action items. For professionals who spend hours in meetings each week, Otter ensures nothing important is lost and follow-up tasks are clear.
How Otter Works
Connect Otter to your Google or Microsoft calendar, and it automatically joins scheduled meetings as a participant. The OtterPilot bot appears in the meeting, records audio, and transcribes speech in real-time with speaker identification. During the meeting, you can see the live transcript, highlight key moments, and add notes. After the meeting ends, Otter generates a Meeting Summary with key topics discussed, decisions made, and action items assigned to specific participants. The full transcript is searchable and shareable, and you can click on any sentence to hear the original audio at that moment.
Key Features
Real-time transcription appears as people speak, making it useful during the meeting for catching missed details. Speaker identification labels who said what, which is critical for meetings with multiple participants. AI Chat lets you ask questions about the meeting afterward — "What did Sarah say about the timeline?" or "Summarize the budget discussion." Action items are automatically extracted with assigned owners and can be exported to task management tools. Keyword highlights let you mark important moments during the meeting. Clips create shareable audio/video snippets from specific transcript sections for sharing context with people who were not in the meeting.
Integration Ecosystem
Otter integrates with the tools where meeting follow-up happens. Salesforce integration automatically logs meeting notes to relevant opportunity records. HubSpot gets call summaries and action items added to contact records. Slack receives meeting summaries in designated channels. Notion gets structured meeting notes with action items. Google Docs and Microsoft Word export the full transcript for editing and archiving. Calendar integrations with Google Calendar and Outlook ensure OtterPilot joins the right meetings automatically.
For Teams and Organizations
Otter Business is designed for team-wide deployment. Shared workspaces centralize all meeting transcripts for the team. Analytics show meeting frequency, talk-time distribution, and keyword trends across conversations. Vocabulary customization teaches Otter industry-specific terms, product names, and jargon that improve transcription accuracy. Admin controls manage who can access recordings, set retention policies, and enforce security compliance. For sales teams, the combination of automatic transcription, CRM integration, and AI-generated call summaries provides a lightweight conversation intelligence solution.
Tips for Best Results
Ensure good audio quality — use headphones with built-in microphones rather than laptop speakers. In conference rooms, use a dedicated speakerphone or conference microphone. Ask participants to speak clearly and one at a time when possible. After meetings, review the AI-generated summary and correct any errors — Otter learns from corrections. Use the custom vocabulary feature to add names, technical terms, and acronyms specific to your work. Tag meetings with relevant topics for easier search later. Share summaries immediately after meetings to maintain momentum on action items.
Pricing
The free plan includes 300 monthly transcription minutes and basic features. Otter Pro at $16.99/month provides 1,200 minutes, advanced search, custom vocabulary, and file import. Otter Business at $30/month per user adds admin controls, Salesforce/HubSpot integrations, analytics, and team workspaces. Enterprise plans include custom pricing with SSO, advanced security, and dedicated support. All plans include real-time transcription and AI summaries.
Getting Started
Sign up at otter.ai, connect your calendar, and let OtterPilot join your next meeting. After the meeting, review the summary and explore the searchable transcript. The "aha moment" typically comes when you search for something discussed in a meeting from weeks ago and find it instantly. For team adoption, start with a pilot group of frequent meeting attendees and expand based on their feedback.
Frequently Asked Questions
Otter primarily focuses on audio transcription and speaker identification. For Zoom and some other platforms, it can also capture screen content. The main value is in the text transcript, AI summary, and action items rather than video recording.
Otter typically achieves 85-95% accuracy depending on audio quality, speaker clarity, and accents. Custom vocabulary improves accuracy for industry-specific terms. Clear audio with one speaker at a time produces the best results.
Yes, OtterPilot connects to your Google or Microsoft calendar and automatically joins scheduled meetings on Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. You can configure which meetings it joins and set it to skip certain events.