If you spend all your day in phone calls, in online web meetings, there is a high chance that one of the tasks at hand for someone is to be taking notes.
You have researched well enough and are thinking of using Otter ai alternative, you have most likely decided that you are not going to waste time with taking meeting notes.
Are you still wondering what other note-taking automation tools are out there? Or maybe you would like to find out a more suitable alternative to Otter.ai that better fits your business?
We can answer both of those questions.
What is Otter ai alternative?
In essence it is a note-taking software that also transcribes voice conversations.
It uses speech-to-text technology, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to generate transcriptions of your meetings and conversations.
Can be integrated to work with Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet. All of this is stored in one place for you to access.
Why an alternative to Otter ai could be of your interest?
Maybe because you want the tool to be way more flexible and simple to use.
How about a browser extension that works with the most popular web meeting tools? Not only with Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, but anything else that you use in your browser for meetings and calls – Jitsi, Dialpad, Big Blue Button, Zoho Meeting, FreeConference.com, Lifesize, FreeConferenceCall.com, Cisco Webex, GoToMeeting, Skype for web, Whereby.
Get to upload prerecorded conversations in audio files to get a written transcript of the audio. Multiple file formats supported (mp3, ogg, wav, flac, webm), big file size limit (500MB).
You would like to try a product or service first, before committing to a payment.
There is an actual Free plan to try it out, which includes enough storage and transcription minutes so that you can properly test the tool and decide if it’s worth your time and money.
And if you really like it – then the paid plan is the best in the business that you will find – $10 per month gets you to record audio without limits and transcriptions up to 1200 minutes each month.
NOT only that but you will also get to download your recordings, transcripts, even try the Speech To Text API if you are up to the task!
You are like most people – want to get the best value for your money?
Otter.ai has a free tier giving 600 minutes of transcripts per month, but there is a limit of 30 minutes meeting duration. That means that if you regularly have longer meeting, you would have to upgrade to one of their paid tiers.
If you want, you can always upgrade to one of Otter.ai’s paid tiers, which include advanced features. Note that the cheapest plan starts at $16.99 per month, or if billed annually – $8.33 per month.
That is more than what you would be paying for Banafo, starting at $8 per month if billed annually – or $10 per month, which gives you more transcription minutes and access to all recordings and uploads.
Here is what the affordable plan of $8 per month will get you:
– Browser extension that woks with most web browsers and can record from all popular web meeting tools – easy to use, for FREE
– Automatically will be uploading your recordings and generating transcriptions
– Access to all recordings and 1200 minutes of transcripts per month
– Ability to download both the recording and transcript of your meetings
– Uploading of an audio file to your account to get an automated transcription for it
The 7 best Otter ai alternatives
1. Banafo – Record and transcribe your conversations with 1 click
If you are looking for a simple tool or platform that automatically records and transcribes your meetings and calls – Banafo is a great option.
The main factor is that it automatically uploads your recordings of meetings and calls, creates transcripts and stores all your important conversations in one centered single place where you can find, listen to, and read it all. If you value your time and want to optimize your work – instead of jotting down notes during calls and meetings, then Banafo can do exactly that.
And the most important thing: its transcriptions are automated, quick, and cheap. Banafo has its own in-house artificial intelligence and machine learning teams of engineers, analysts and specialists that are hard at work on improving its automatic speech recognition and AI. Our ML language algorithm is built in-house and is constantly improving to provide the most accurate transcription service.
This in itself is the biggest difference compared to most other recording transcription platforms and tools because they use outsourced transcription services, which means that it’s probably slower and more expensive than what Banafo has to offer.
At the end of every web meeting, Banafo automatically can email you an informative notification mail when your recording transcriptions are ready, and more:
Your conversations have all details needed – web meeting URL as a source, so you know which service or tool you have used, date and time, you can place a summary of the meeting or separate notes linked to timestamps on the recording itself.
Banafo does other things too – which business teams would find very useful:
For example, it can be linked to your business’ CRM of choice and sync up with it so you know exactly the contact details of your meeting participant. This is tied to the CRM so you can even leave a cross-link both in Banafo and the customer relationship management software that you use daily. That way you can continue to use your CRM, and if you want to check out a meeting with a specific business lead – you can click on it and get transferred to the recording directly.
Currently, there is support for Hubspot, but the team is working on bringing in the most popular ones out there, including Salesforce, Zoho, Freshsales, Pipedrive, Nimble, Zendesk, Agile, and Teamleader!
What makes Banafo a good alternative to Otter.ai?
One of the biggest advantages of going with a solution like Banafo over Otter.ai is that you’re getting a truly easy to use conversations recording platform that works across multitude of web conferencing tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Dialpad, Big Blue Button, you name it.
Web meetings, video conferences, calls – whatever the case – recordings and transcriptions of these is included in one simple package.
No need to toggle between different apps constantly, no need to keep track of multiple platforms or manage multiple tools (which takes the load off your IT support team).
All that being said, if you are considering using your current web based voice or video conferencing platform of choice or optimizing keeping track of your business conversations and note taking, Banafo is one of the best alternatives to Otter.ai. And if you have a customer support, contact center team, sales team, that’s an even bigger benefit of going with Banafo since it will soon support teams and team management with a bulk tiered plan.
In special industries like outbound sales and customer support, this is extremely important. “Our sales representatives and support staff are on the phone all day”, says Jonathan Smith, Executive Vice President at HiTechPartners Ltd., a commercial partner to one of the biggest consumer appliances chains in the country.
“Banafo makes it easy to record, track web meetings, log notes for conversations, refer back to transcripts for critical client details, and quickly guide and help new and existing team members and staff.”
Jonathan Smith
What you get with Banafo that you don’t get with Otter.ai:
Great platform: Banafo’s web extension is FREE and is published to most popular web browsers’ extension stores. You can record all your web conferences and meetings with the same simple click across multitude of different web based tools.
No limits to recordings: Even Otter.ai’s more expensive pricing tiers have limits on the number of transcriptions and minutes. Banafo doesn’t cap your recording time – you can use this to your advantage and transcribe your conversations.
More supported web meeting tools – Banafo offers a wider range of supported conferencing third-party platforms (like Zoom, Teams, Meet, etc.) compared to Otter.ai – and it also has a dedicated API if you want to build your own custom integrations and make use of our in-house built transcription.
Pricing:
Banafo has a totally free tier and a monthly one at $8 per month (if billed annually). We are working towards bringing a Team plan, which will be the perfect fit for your small business organization.
Are you looking for the best Otter.ai alternative?
Take a closer look at Banafo and try it out for free. It takes a few clicks for a registration and you will be set up right away to record and transcribe your web meetings!
2. Rev ai
Rev is a well known speech-to-text service that uses artificial intelligence that can provide transcriptions to your audio and video files.
From our experience, Rev has been pretty good, but the thing to note is that Rev is mainly a service, not a platform, web software and does not have a free extension like Banafo.
With Rev, there is a choice to be made between manual and automated transcriptions, along with extra features like:
Timestamps, Verbatim transcription, Rush transcription
What makes it a good alternative to Otter ai?
Rev has many features in common with Otter ai including annotations, automatic transcription, file sharing, text editor, speech recognition and more. The auto transcription that Rev offers has a 90% accuracy rate and is ready in 5 minutes. If you want higher accuracy – Rev offers a human assisted transcription service for 99% accuracy.
With Rev, you can also upload existing video or audio files for transcription. But it does not record web meetings or video calls. Instead its main focus is solely on transcripts only, while aiming to be the best when it comes to this service.
Pricing
There are several different types of pay tiers for Rev:
Prices start at $0.25 per minute for Rev’s automated transcriptions and at $1.50 per minute of audio for human ‘assisted’ transcription. There are also Pro packages based on custom pricing and volume discounts available for larger organizations.
Check out all plans here.
3. Fireflies
Fireflies is essentially a tool that helps your team record meetings, get transcriptions and search voice conversations. It is maybe one of the options closest in its feature set to Otter.ai
Similar to Otter.ai, Fireflies does not include audio or video call conference features, so you will have to use it with a standalone tool for making calls.
Top free features include:
– Can be integrated with Zoom, Google Meet and other video conferencing tools
– 800 minutes of storage per seat
– More advanced and tailored features, like custom vocabulary and searchable transcriptions are only available with the paid tier plans.
What makes it a good alternative to Otter.ai?
If there is any reason you are not willing to give Otter.ai free plan a c hance, then Fireflies is probably the closest alternative. Transcription limits and storage caps are a bit different, therefore the best approach is to compare both services by yourself and figure out which one will fit your team’s requirements better.
Pricing
Starts with a free plan per user per month, but goes quickly up – from $10 per user per month, billed annually or $18 per user per month, with monthly payments.
4. Dialpad
Dialpad is an interesting alternative to Otter.ai – allows you to combine meeting transcriptions with phone calls and messages. Its platform has a built-in AI that can also be custom programmed to recognize specific jargon or help out your staff in different ways.
Even if it is more of a communications platform, Dialpad is still similar to Otter.ai in some ways. It can be used instead of Otter.ai for Natural language processing with real-time voice recognition, when using its AI powered assistant.
Different to Otter.ai is that Dialpad’s AI transcriptions can be used in combination with their offering for business communication – both audio and video are supported. Limited integration with some communication tools is available.
What makes it a good alternative to Otter.ai?
Even if Dialpad is not one of the most obvious Otter.ai alternatives, it could still be a replacement for teams requiring transcriptions of their calls. Works quite well in a combination of calls, video meetings and other channels for communication.
Pricing
Free plan starts at $0 per month for personal use, and although it supports audio recordings, meetings are limited to 45 minutes and no transcriptions are available. You can always upgrade to the next level and get more stuff where transcripts are now included, but the price starts at $20 per user per month or $15 if billed annually.
5. Airgram
Airgram is a transcription software that offers a variety of features that make it easy to record, transcribe, and share your meetings. It has a live transcription feature that allows you to transcribe audio files in real-time, and it also has a speaker detection feature that makes it easy to follow who is speaking. Additionally, it offers multilingual transcription, so you can use it in a variety of languages.
This app also has a great text editor that allows you to edit meeting minutes and assign due dates to action items. It also allows for easy collaboration between team members, so you can edit and share meeting minutes in real-time. Additionally, it allows you to review HD videos and notes from meetings with timestamps, making it easy to identify critical points and follow up on action items.
Key features of Airgram include one-click live transcription, notes and action items that are open for collaboration, and the ability to use clips to extract highlights. The software is available for Windows and Mac and it offers a free tier, as well as a team and enterprise plan.
What makes it a good alternative to Otter.ai?
One of the main advantages of Airgram over other transcription software, like Otter.ai, is that it can clip video snippets, making it easy to find and share the most important parts of your conversation. Additionally, it has a screen sharing function that allows you to share your screen with others, which Otter does not have. However, it does not have a function to auto-join on Google Meet and Teams and also doesn’t have mobile app.
Pricing
The pricing for this transcription software includes a free plan at $0 per month with 5 recordings per month and features such as 1 hour recording duration, live transcription in 8 languages, and collaborative note-taking for Zoom, Meet, and Teams.
For those looking for additional features, there is a Pro plan starting at $8.99 per month for 10 recordings, with options to upgrade to 20 recordings for $17.99 or 30 for $26.99 per month.
The Pro plan includes added features such as 2 hour recording duration, an agenda timer, AI topic extraction, the ability to tag meeting notes, create clips, search and replace, download video recording, and export capabilities.
6. OBS Studio
Open Broadcast Software or commonly known as OBS was one of the first full featured, free and open source program for live streaming and game recording. OBS Studio includes many features and advanced options for users that want to capture and create professional audio and video.
OBS Studios features real-time audio and video capture with high performance. Users can create separate scenes from multiple source like browser windows, webcam, window captures and more. Specially useful is the audio mixer, which can provide users a lot of control due to noise suppression and gain options that are per-source filters.
As software goes, while OBS Studio is quite popular and often used by livestreams, gamers and the like, it is not for everyone. All its features and options can be very confusing at first and raise the bar for learning it, especially considering the time and effort required to learn to get the most out of it.
If you plan to use OBS for capturing audio from a web browser – let’s say a conversation from your favorite web meeting platform, make sure you are willing to put enough time and effort in learning the software.
That’s why, if you do not need anything more than simple live streaming, or game recording, you are probably better off with an OBS alternative.
Some of the key features of OBS Studio are:
– High performance real time video/audio capturing and mixing. Create scenes made up of multiple sources including window captures, images, text, browser windows, webcams, capture cards and more.
– Intuitive audio mixer with per-source filters such as noise gate, noise suppression, and gain. Get full control with VST plugin support.
– Powerful and easy to use configuration options. Add new Sources, duplicate existing ones, and adjust their properties.
– Set up an unlimited number of scenes you can switch between seamlessly via custom transitions.
7. Notta – transcribe audio from any source with high accuracy
Notta is an app that you can use to easily record your business meetings from Google Meet . It is a free software and you do not need to have a Google Workspace account to use.
Additionally, Notta can also create a transcription of your meeting, export audio recordings, users can upload audio files to it.
The app can convert your voice recordings into clear, editable text. The software makes transcription faster and easier than even before. Eliminating the need to hire an expensive transcription professional who charges by the minute.
Notable features:
– Recording conversations in real time – users can record lectures, meetings and interviews and have them transcribed automatically using Notta
– Users can upload audio/video files, most of the popular audio and video formats are supported
– Transcribing an online meeting – the software can sync with your Google Calendar events. Users have the option to sync with their google account, which in turn Notta will send a bot your previously scheduled Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams meetings.
– Notta bot is a good way to get audio recordings from a Google Meet, but note that the bot feature is not available for free accounts.
Pricing
There is the Basic plan, which is free but is limited to 120 transcription minutes per month. The details of this are as follows: 3 minutes of real-time recording transcription, 5 minutes of file transcription and 3 minutes of online meeting transcription. This free plan offers at least the option for someone interested to test it.
Note that some features are also not available in this free tier – like changing the playback speed, multiple languages, exporting audio and transcripts.
If users want to actually test out more features with longer meetings, they would have to upgrade to the Pro plan, starting at $13.99 per user per month, or $8.25 per user per month if paid annually.
Check all plans here.