Does Otter AI record meetings?
Yes. Otter AI records and transcribes meetings live. Its Notetaker bot auto-joins Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams from your synced calendar, capturing audio and producing a real-time transcript, speaker labels, and an automatic summary. The free Basic plan allows 300 recording minutes per month, capped at 30 minutes per meeting.
Why — the first-principles explanation
Otter runs on automatic speech recognition (ASR). A microphone turns sound waves into a stream of numbers, and a neural network trained on millions of hours of labeled speech maps those sound patterns to the most likely sequence of words. Otter does this in a streaming way, so text appears a second or two behind the talking instead of only after the meeting ends.
To capture a meeting that lives inside Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams, Otter uses a Notetaker bot. You connect your Google or Microsoft calendar once; Otter reads the meeting link on your events and dials the bot into the call like any other guest. Inside the call it receives the same shared audio everyone hears, so it can transcribe every speaker rather than just the person holding the phone.
Because the bot appears in the participant list, Otter's 'recording' is really a live transcript plus a saved audio file in your account, not a hidden wiretap. Speaker identification works by grouping voice fingerprints into separate speakers, which you can name once so Otter tags them automatically next time.
An example that makes it click
Think of Otter as a very fast court stenographer you invite into the room. When 4 people sit around a table, the stenographer listens, writes down who said what, and hands you a neat typed page a moment later. Otter does the same thing, except the 'stenographer' is a small robot guest that shows up on the video call.
And just like a human note-taker who can only stay for one class period, the free version has a stopwatch: it will write for 30 minutes at a stretch and 300 minutes across the whole month before it needs an upgrade.
How to do it
- Create a free Otter account at otter.ai and open the web app or install the iOS/Android app.
- For a live in-person meeting, tap the record button in the app to start capturing and transcribing audio.
- For a Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams call, connect your Google or Microsoft calendar in Settings so Otter can see your events.
- Turn on AI Notetaker (formerly OtterPilot) and choose whether it auto-joins every synced meeting or only ones you pick.
- After the meeting, open the conversation in Otter to read the transcript, play back the audio, and view the auto-summary.
Key facts
- Otter records live audio and produces a real-time transcript with speaker labels for in-person and online meetings.
- The Notetaker bot joins Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams as a visible participant via calendar sync.
- Free Basic plan: 300 transcription minutes per month with a 30-minute cap per conversation.
- Each recorded meeting is saved to your Otter account with playback audio, transcript, and an auto-generated summary.
- Otter is made by AISense Inc., founded in 2016 by Sam Liang and Yun Fu, based in Mountain View, California.
Live meeting transcription, notes, and summaries.
Affiliate link — we may earn a commission at no cost to you.▶ The 60-second explainer (script)
Does Otter AI record meetings? Yes. Otter records and transcribes your meetings in real time. For an in-person chat, you just tap record in the app. For a Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams call, Otter sends a little Notetaker bot that joins the meeting as a visible participant, straight from your linked calendar. It listens to the same audio everyone hears, writes down who said what, and saves the audio, a full transcript, and an automatic summary to your account. On the free Basic plan you get 300 minutes a month, with each single meeting capped at 30 minutes. Upgrade to Pro or Business for longer recordings and more monthly minutes. Because the bot shows up in the participant list, everyone can see it's there, so recording is out in the open, not hidden.
What authoritative sources say
People also ask
Does Otter save the audio or just the text?
Both. Each meeting is stored with the original audio for playback plus the synced text transcript, so you can click a word and jump to that moment in the recording.
Can Otter record a phone or in-person meeting without Zoom?
Yes. Open the Otter mobile app and tap record to capture any live conversation through your device microphone, no video platform needed.
Will other people know Otter is recording?
On Zoom, Meet, and Teams the Notetaker appears in the participant list, so attendees can see it joined. You are still responsible for getting consent where the law requires it.
How long can one recording be?
Free Basic caps a single conversation at 30 minutes; Pro raises it to 90 minutes and Business to 4 hours per meeting.