Otter.ai

What it is

Otter has been doing meeting transcripts since before LLMs were good. Now upgraded with AI summaries and chat-with-meeting, but feels older than Granola and Read.ai on UX.

Notes from using it

Otter is the established incumbent in the meeting-transcription space, with the longest brand trust and the deepest enterprise procurement footprint. For organizations that need a known vendor with audit trails, retention controls, and enterprise SSO, Otter is often the only acceptable answer at procurement.

The UX has aged. Granola and Read.ai feel modern in ways Otter doesn't, and the post-meeting summary quality trails dedicated AI notepads. Power users typically migrate off Otter once they discover Granola; enterprise users stay on Otter because procurement won't approve a switch.

The real-time transcription is genuinely best-in-class. For accessibility use cases (live captioning, hearing-impaired participants) Otter remains the default recommendation. For the broader "AI took notes for me" workflow, the newer entrants beat Otter on quality. Pick based on use case, not on brand recognition.

Where it shines

• Most established brand — trust from large enterprises.
• Strong real-time transcription.

Where it falls down

• UX feels generation behind Granola.
• Bot-in-the-room model is increasingly out of fashion.

Best fit for

If you're trying to put AI behind any of these functions, Otter.ai is worth a look:

• AI for Meeting Notes — Capturing, summarizing, and routing meeting outputs to the right systems.