Otter vs Fireflies vs Notta: Free AI Meeting Notes Compared

The short answer

Otter, Fireflies, and Notta all offer free AI-assisted meeting notes, but their limits measure different things. Otter provides a straightforward monthly transcription allowance. Fireflies advertises unlimited transcription while separately limiting retained meeting storage. Notta supplies a monthly pool that looks useful until its much smaller per-conversation ceiling is considered. Those differences make the largest headline number a poor way to choose.

For most people evaluating these services without paying, the practical shortlist is simple. Choose Otter when you want predictable allowances for short recurring calls. Consider Fireflies when you have many live online meetings and can actively manage stored recordings. Treat Notta’s free plan primarily as a brief workflow demonstration because each conversation is capped at three minutes, even though the account includes 120 transcription minutes per month. These are recommendations inferred from current published limits, not from direct accuracy testing.

Free-plan limits at a glance

The maximum duration per recording exposes the sharpest difference. The chart uses a four-hour reference axis, rather than stretching the 180-minute leader into an automatically full bar.

Otter: the clearest allowance for short meetings

Otter’s pricing page lists 300 monthly transcription minutes on Basic, a 30-minute maximum per conversation, three lifetime audio or video file imports, and 20 monthly Otter AI Chat queries. That combination is relatively easy to model: ten 30-minute meetings would consume the monthly transcription pool, while a single hour-long meeting exceeds the per-conversation ceiling.

Otter therefore makes the most sense when calls are predictably short and the monthly total matters more than importing an archive. A student recording compact study sessions or a solo professional documenting brief interviews can estimate whether 300 minutes will cover the month. Someone routinely attending hour-long team meetings should not assume that unused monthly minutes remove the 30-minute conversation cap.

The three-import allowance is lifetime rather than monthly. That distinction matters if the plan will be used to transcribe existing audio. Saving those imports for representative files is more sensible than consuming them during casual experimentation.

Fireflies: generous capture with a storage catch

The current Fireflies pricing page describes the free plan as including unlimited transcription and summaries, 400 minutes of storage per team, 20 AI credits, and a three-hour recording limit. Unlimited transcription is therefore not the same as unlimited retained history. Once stored recordings fill the allowance, users may have to remove older material or upgrade.

Fireflies is the strongest candidate here for frequent live meetings when keeping every recording indefinitely is not required. It is less straightforward for anyone who wants a durable, searchable archive without maintenance. The free-plan feature page also says downloading transcripts requires a paid plan, so a team should verify its export and retention workflow before relying on the service as its only meeting record.

There is a documentation inconsistency worth knowing about. Fireflies’ live pricing page and its newer storage-and-rate-limits article show 400 minutes, although the separate free-plan guide still says 800 minutes per seat. The newer storage article also describes 400 minutes per user, while the pricing page says per team. Because the scope differs, plan around the more conservative 400-minute team allowance until the signed-in account or Fireflies support confirms otherwise. This comparison does not silently resolve that conflict in the vendor’s favor.

Independent context also supports keeping expectations modest. TechRadar’s 2026 AI-tools guide says Fireflies summaries can need edits when meetings contain crosstalk or poor audio and describes its mobile experience as more limited than desktop. That does not establish relative accuracy against Otter or Notta, but it is a useful reminder that an unlimited quota does not guarantee a clean transcript.

Notta: a monthly pool constrained by three-minute conversations

Notta’s pricing page lists 120 transcription minutes per month, 50 file uploads per month, ten AI summaries per month, and a three-minute maximum per conversation on Free. The last number dominates the other allowances. A typical 30- or 60-minute meeting cannot fit into one free conversation, regardless of how much of the monthly pool remains.

That makes Notta Free more useful for checking interface flow, speaker identification, or a very short recording than for covering ordinary meetings. The 50-upload figure should not be read as 50 complete meetings: uploads still consume the applicable transcription allowance and remain subject to the plan’s other controls. Users who like Notta’s workflow should compare the current paid plan only after confirming that the free trial demonstrated the features they actually need.

A five-minute selection method

First, write down the duration of a normal meeting and the number held each month. Eliminate any plan whose per-meeting ceiling is too short before considering its monthly quota. This immediately excludes Notta Free for most standard meetings and excludes Otter Basic for uninterrupted sessions longer than 30 minutes.

Second, decide whether transcripts must remain available indefinitely. Fireflies’ model can suit high meeting volume when old material can be deleted, but its storage limit and documentation discrepancy deserve verification. If records must be exported or retained under an organizational policy, confirm the exact workflow inside the current account before adoption.

Third, separate transcription from AI extras. Otter queries, Fireflies credits, and Notta summaries are not equivalent units. Count how often you actually need follow-up questions, generated summaries, or automated actions instead of treating the largest AI number as inherently better.

Finally, run a non-sensitive pilot using one representative meeting. This article does not claim that one vendor is more accurate because no retained comparative test record supports that conclusion. Review names, jargon, speaker changes, action items, export behavior, and deletion controls yourself. Obtain any consent required by your organization and jurisdiction before recording other people, and never place confidential material into a trial account without an approved data-handling review.

Which free plan should you choose?

Otter is the most predictable choice for short meetings because both its monthly pool and conversation ceiling are explicit. Fireflies offers the broadest free capture allowance, but it shifts the constraint to stored minutes and paid-only capabilities such as transcript downloads. Notta exposes a useful product sample, yet its three-minute conversation ceiling prevents the free tier from serving as a general meeting recorder.

Start with the limit most likely to interrupt your real workflow: meeting duration, monthly volume, retained storage, imports, or AI follow-up usage. Recheck the linked pricing pages immediately before committing, because free-plan packaging can change without making older comparisons disappear from search results.