What Can You Use Instead of Otter AI When the Free Plan Runs Out?

What Otter's limits are

Otter's own pricing page is the place to measure the gap. As of 2026-11-09, the free Basic plan gives 300 transcription minutes a month, 3 lifetime file imports and up to 30 minutes per conversation. Pro lists $16.99 a month, or $8.33 a month billed annually, with 1,200 minutes a month, 10 imports a month and 90 minutes per conversation. The longer breakdown is in Otter's free plan limits.

Which of those limits hurts decides where to go next.

Free meeting notes

If your meetings are in Teams, start with Teams itself. On desktop, open More actions in the meeting controls and choose Captions; on mobile, tap More options, then Turn on live captions (Microsoft's guide). Teams doesn't save captions, so turn on transcription if you want text afterwards. Translated captions need a Teams Premium or Microsoft Copilot add-on license, and an admin can switch captions off. More in Teams live captions.

Fireflies has a free tier, and its pricing page lists a Chrome extension that records without the Fireflies bot. That page doesn't say which plans include the extension or what the free tier's caps are, so check the plan table before relying on it. The bot question is covered in Fireflies without the bot.

Cheaper, or paid once

MacWhisper Pro is a one-time €64 per license with lifetime updates, and a free version exists (MacWhisper). Compared with Otter Pro's $8.33 a month on annual billing, a year of Otter costs about $100 and MacWhisper is paid once. The catch is that it's a Mac app: no phone app, no shared workspace, no teammates reading the same notes.

It records Zoom, Teams, Webex, Skype, Chime and Discord meetings without a bot joining, and it detects when a meeting starts and ends. It also transcribes files you already have, which is what Otter's 3 lifetime imports on the free plan make hard. The MacWhisper guide has setup steps.

If you're staying with Otter but want to compare what the Mac app adds, see Otter's Mac desktop app. For another meeting-notes service side by side, there's Notta vs Otter.

Local and private

MacWhisper can run transcription entirely on your Mac, so audio never leaves it. It also offers optional cloud AI providers, and you choose whether to use them. That makes it the pick here if the reason you're leaving Otter is where recordings go.

Captions for lectures and conversations

Otter, Fireflies and MacWhisper are built around meeting notes. If you want to read what is being said as it's said, in a lecture, a video or a face-to-face conversation, that's a live-captions job.

Vocena is our app for that. It listens to your device's audio, joins no meeting and runs no bot. Live captions are free with no time limit, and you can pick the microphone, system audio, or both. It runs on iPhone and iPad (iOS or iPadOS 26 or later) and on Mac (macOS 15.5 or later). Captioning audio from other apps on an iPhone needs an iOS 27 physical device; on a Mac there's no such requirement. iPhone and iPad require signing in. Translation and AI features are paid, so the free part is captions only. For lecture use, see captions for lectures.

Which one to pick

• Otter's 30-minute cap is the problem and you use Teams: Teams captions plus transcription.
• The monthly price is the problem and you have a Mac: MacWhisper Pro.
• Privacy is the problem: MacWhisper with local transcription.
• You need to follow speech live and not file meeting notes: Vocena.
• You need a team workspace with shared notes: stay on a paid Otter plan, or compare Notta.