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Otter is the legacy brand in meeting transcription, but its free plan is tightly metered — 300 minutes a month, a 30-minute cap per conversation, and 3 lifetime file imports — it captures with a bot, stores everything in its cloud, and offers no live help during the call. Raven has no minute cap, captures locally with no bot, keeps recordings on your machine, adds real-time assist, and is open source.

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At a glance

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Price

Otter’s free tier is really a trial: 300 transcription minutes/month, 30 minutes max per conversation, and 3 lifetime imports. Pro ($8.33/user/mo annual, $16.99 monthly) raises that to 1,200 minutes; unlimited transcription only arrives on Business ($19.99/user/mo annual, $30 monthly). Raven doesn’t meter minutes at all. You pay your own transcription/AI provider for usage — typically a few dollars a month — with no per-seat fee.

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Where your meetings live

Otter records with a bot that joins your call, and stores transcripts in its cloud. Raven captures locally (macOS ScreenCaptureKit + CoreAudio, Windows WASAPI), splits You and Them on-device, and writes everything to a local SQLite database. No bot shows up in the meeting; audio only goes to the providers you chose with your own keys. Open source means the data path is auditable.

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What Otter does better (honestly)

  • A big, mature brand with polished iOS/Android apps.
  • Deep integrations and meeting-wide search across a large archive.
  • OtterPilot and team/admin features for larger orgs.
If you need mature mobile apps and a big cloud archive with team admin, Otter is established.

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When Raven wins

  • You keep hitting the 300-minute or 30-minute-per-call free limits.
  • You don’t want a bot in the meeting or your transcripts in a cloud.
  • You want live help during the call, not just a transcript after.
  • You’d rather pay your AI provider cents than a per-seat subscription — and audit the tool.

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Switching from Otter

  1. Export any transcripts you want to keep from Otter.
  2. Download Raven, add your keys, enable meeting auto-start.
  3. Run both for a week; cancel Otter once Raven covers your transcription + notes habit. (Importers are on the roadmap.)

Download Raven

Free, open source, Mac + Windows. Bring your own keys.

Recording & transcription

Dual-stream local capture, You/Them, your own STT key.
Otter pricing and free-tier limits verified August 2026 (otter.ai/pricing). Vendors change pricing often — confirm before relying on a figure.