Transcription quality stopped being the differentiator a while ago; the serious tools all transcribe well enough. The real questions are where the notes must land afterwards, what languages your meetings switch into, and whether everyone on the call knows they are being recorded.
The field
| Otter | Fireflies | Notion AI | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Center of gravity | The live transcript | Notes flowing into CRM and tasks | Notes inside your existing wiki |
| Entry price | Free; Pro about $8/month annual | Free; Pro about $10/month annual | About $10/member/month on Notion |
| Languages | English-centric | Broader multilingual support | Follows the meeting tool |
| Best buyer | Individuals, small teams | Sales and customer-facing teams | Notion-first companies |
Notes that stay notes: Otter
If the job is “I want to stop typing during meetings”, Otter is the shortest path: join, transcribe live, highlight the decisive moment, get a summary. The free tier is generous enough to test on real meetings. Its known limit is language: English work is dependable, multilingual meetings deserve a trial run before you promise anything to a team.
Notes that must travel: Fireflies
Fireflies assumes the transcript is raw material. Calls land in the CRM, action items flow to the task manager, the archive of every past call becomes searchable. For sales and support teams the integrations are the product. Two honest caveats: the bot joins as a visible participant, which some clients dislike, and the admin and privacy settings deserve a careful first pass before it attends anything sensitive.
Notes that join your wiki: Notion AI
If your company already lives in Notion, the AI add-on summarizing meetings into the same workspace where projects and docs live is a quiet win: no new tool, no new login, answers that draw on your whole wiki. It is pointless if you are not a Notion company; do not adopt Notion for this feature alone.
The consent paragraph (read it twice)
A notetaker records people. In Switzerland and the EU, record only with consent: announce the bot, configure the consent prompts, decide retention before rolling anything out to a team. Every tool here has the controls. None of them sets the controls for you, and “the AI recorded it” convinces no regulator and no client.
Our recommendation
- You, drowning in English-language meetings: Otter free today, Pro when the quota bites.
- A sales team with a CRM: Fireflies; wire the destinations before judging it.
- A Notion-first company: the Notion AI add-on before any new tool.
- Multilingual meetings: trial Fireflies on your real language mix this week; that result outranks every review, including this one.