Otter.ai pricing in 2026: the free plan’s limits, Pro, Business, and how a colleague becomes a paid seat
By Tudor Bungardean. Published 13 October 2026. Every outside fact read on 13 October 2026.
Otter.ai is free for 300 minutes of transcription a month at thirty minutes a conversation, and its paid plans cost $8.33 or $19.99 a user a month billed annually, $16.99 or $30 billed monthly, as read on otter.ai on 13 October 2026. Otter is an AI notetaker: its bot joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, or the app records in the room, and a transcript, a summary and a chat over the transcript follow. The free plan’s limit is the minutes. The paid plans differ on minutes per conversation, file imports and admin controls. And the thing to know before you invite a colleague is that Otter’s workspace turns colleagues into trial members who convert to paid seats on a date you have to look up in the settings.
Otter plans and prices
| Plan | Billed annually | Billed monthly | Otter’s own line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | Free | Free | “For those who want to give it a try” |
| Pro | $8.33 | $16.99 | “For individuals and small teams” |
| Business | $19.99 | $30, shown as $24 for the first three months for first-time subscribers | “For medium-sized teams”, marked best value |
| Enterprise | Schedule a demo | Schedule a demo | “For large teams and companies”; no price on the page |
Two prices sit outside the table. Students and teachers with a .edu address get 20% off Pro, $6.67 a month billed $79.99 a year or $13.59 monthly, and a half-price annual Pro ran until the end of September 2026. Single sign-on and SCIM provisioning on Enterprise need a hundred-user licence at minimum. No plan on the page has a minimum seat count; Basic and Pro cap a workspace at five members, Business at twenty-five.
The limits, plan by plan
| Basic | Pro | Business | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transcription a month | 300 minutes, one shared pool for meetings and imports | 1,200 minutes, one shared pool | Unlimited meetings and in-app recordings; imported files 6,000 minutes | As Business |
| Longest conversation | 30 minutes | 90 minutes | 4 hours | 4 hours |
| Audio and video imports | 3 in the life of the account | 10 a month | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| AI chat questions a month | 20, three per conversation | 50 | 200 | 200 |
| Meetings the bot can join at once | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| Conversation history | The 25 most recent; older ones archived | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Export formats | mp3, txt | mp3, txt, pdf, docx, srt | The same, plus bulk export | The same, plus bulk export |
| Notes synced to Salesforce or HubSpot | No | 1 user | 5 users | Unlimited |
| Custom vocabulary | 5 terms | 100 names and 100 terms | 800 names and 800 terms | As Business |
| Admin | None | Billing and user management | Usage analytics and activity logs | SSO, SCIM, domain capture, custom retention, HIPAA as an add-on |
The free plan is five hours a month, and a sixty-minute call on it gives you thirty minutes of transcript: the help centre says the recording does not stop at the limit, you simply cannot read past it. Deleted conversations still count against the month. Minutes do not roll over, and Otter does not sell more of them; its answer to “do you have more minutes I can purchase” is “we recommend upgrading plans”. Pro’s 1,200 minutes are twenty hours shared between meetings and imports, enough for a call a day. Business is the first plan where the meetings themselves are unlimited; the 6,000-minute cap there applies to imported files only.
What changed on the pricing page in the last year
Otter has published no announcement of a price change in 2025 or 2026; the dates below are bounded by archived copies of the pricing page. Business billed annually went from $20 to $19.99 between September and December 2025. The $24 introductory price on monthly Business appeared between December 2025 and May 2026. Pro has been $16.99 and $8.33 since at least April 2025. Enterprise’s AI chat allowance fell from 500 questions a month to 200 between July and September 2025, while the other plans’ 20, 50 and 200 did not move. The Pro card said “unlimited meetings” in September 2025 and says “1,200 in-app recording minutes” now, with meetings and imports drawn from one pool. The transcription languages went from English, French and Spanish to six by July 2026, and the Basic plan gained an MCP server, so an AI assistant can read your Otter notes.
How a colleague becomes a paid seat
This is the part of Otter’s pricing that is not on the pricing page, and the help centre is explicit about it. Any member of a workspace can invite anyone, and the invite link does not expire. A person invited by an admin is charged the moment they accept. A person invited by an ordinary member joins as a trial member. Colleagues on the same email domain can join a workspace on their own as trial members when they sign up, because “join instantly as free trial members” is on by default for company domains. Sharing a conversation with someone can invite them as a trial member too, behind a toggle. Every trial member converts to a paid seat on a date shown in Workspace Settings, unless an admin cancels them first; a person is never trialled twice; and cancelling a trial and re-inviting the person charges at once.
The Business trial itself wants a card up front and, when it ends, charges the monthly rate for “the current number of seats in your Workspace”, which by then includes everyone who wandered in. Seats added mid-cycle are prorated; seats removed produce credits with “no currency or exchange value”. None of this is hidden, and none of it is on the price card. If you run Otter for a team, switch invitations to admin approval on day one and read the Workspace Settings page before the first renewal.
Cancelling, refunds and what happens to the recordings
- No refunds: “All fees are in U.S. Dollars and are non-refundable” in the terms, repeated in the help centre. Cancel at least 24 hours before the renewal date; paid features last to the end of the period; a subscription can be paused once.
- The recordings stay. Cancelling, upgrading or downgrading leaves every conversation in the account; only you, or an admin, delete them. A deleted conversation sits in the trash for 30 days and is then gone from Otter’s servers.
- Where they are: Amazon Web Services in the US West region, encrypted at rest. Otter’s pages offer no other region.
- Training: the privacy policy in force since 16 June 2026 lists “training our proprietary AI technology on de-identified audio recordings and on transcriptions” among the purposes. The switch is in Account Settings under Meetings, labelled Help improve Otter; Enterprise workspaces are opted out by default, and Otter says its third-party AI providers do not train on customer data.
What Otter costs a team, per seat
| People on calls | Pro, annual | Business, annual | Business, monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | $17 a month | $40 a month | $60 a month |
| 4 | $33 a month | $80 a month | $120 a month |
| 8 | $67 a month | $160 a month | $240 a month |
How Castan prices the same calls
Castan is an AI that builds and runs a company with its owner, who owns everything it makes; its meeting assistant is one part of that. The price is per workspace, whoever is in it: the free plan captures one hour of calls a month, Founding is $29 a month with five hours for everyone in the workspace, and the plans above it include ten, forty and a hundred hours, with a pack of ten more for $39 that never expires. The bot joins Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams, every attendee receives the recap with a share page, the record of the call is kept beside the company’s mail, invoices and promises so that “what did we tell them about the deadline” is answered with the citation, and from Founding up the language of the call is detected rather than chosen. Nobody becomes a seat by being invited to a call. The comparison with Otter is about the shape of the bill: Otter is priced for each person who transcribes, Castan for the company whose calls they are.
Prices, limits and policies change. Every figure on this page carries the day it was read and links to the page it came from; if one has moved since, write to hello@castan.ai and it will be corrected with the date of the change.
Questions people ask
Is Otter.ai free?
The Basic plan is free for 300 minutes of transcription a month, 30 minutes a conversation, three file imports in the life of the account, 20 AI chat questions a month and the 25 most recent conversations, as read on 13 October 2026. The recording does not stop at the limit; the transcript past it is not shown.
How much is Otter Pro?
$8.33 a user a month billed annually or $16.99 monthly, for 1,200 minutes a month shared between meetings and imports, 90 minutes a conversation, ten imports a month and 50 AI chat questions. Students and teachers with a .edu address pay 20% less.
How much is Otter Business?
$19.99 a user a month billed annually, $30 monthly, shown as $24 for the first three months for first-time subscribers. Meetings and in-app recordings are unlimited, imported files are capped at 6,000 minutes a month, a conversation can run four hours, and the bot joins three meetings at once.
Does Otter charge for people I invite?
A person an admin invites is charged when they accept. A person a member invites, a colleague who joins from the same email domain, or someone a conversation is shared with, joins as a trial member and converts to a paid seat on the date in Workspace Settings unless an admin cancels them first. Seats are prorated mid-cycle.
Does Otter train its AI on my recordings?
Its privacy policy, effective 16 June 2026, lists training its own models on de-identified recordings and transcriptions. The setting is Help improve Otter under Account Settings and Meetings; Enterprise workspaces are opted out by default. Otter says the third-party AI providers it uses do not train on customer data.
Can I get a refund from Otter?
No. The terms say all fees are non-refundable and the help centre repeats it. Cancel at least 24 hours before the renewal; the paid features last until the end of the period you paid for, and the recordings stay in the account.
Sources
- Otter pricing, plans, prices, the comparison table, the student and introductory offers
- Help centre: limits on the Basic plan, 300 minutes, 30 a conversation, three imports, the transcript past the limit not shown
- Help centre: when monthly minutes reset, no rollover; more minutes means upgrading
- Help centre: export conversations, Basic exports txt only
- Help centre: bulk export, Business and Enterprise
- Help centre: invite members to your workspace, anyone can invite; prorated charges
- Help centre: how members can join your workspace, admin invites charged, member invites on trial, same-domain join on by default
- Help centre: invites through sharing a conversation
- Help centre: billing for trial members, the conversion date in Workspace Settings; the three card attempts
- Help centre: managing trial members, never trialled twice; re-inviting charges at once
- Help centre: the Business free trial, card required; charged for the current number of seats
- Help centre: how seats work, prorated additions; credits with no exchange value
- Help centre: cancel a subscription, no refunds; 24 hours before renewal; pause once
- Help centre: conversations after cancelling, they remain in the account
- Help centre: delete a conversation, 30 days in the trash
- Help centre: data security and privacy, AWS, US West, AES-256
- Help centre: feedback and training permissions, the Help improve Otter setting
- Help centre: Enterprise admin controls, Enterprise opted out of model training by default
- Otter privacy policy, effective 16 June 2026, training on de-identified recordings and transcriptions
- Otter privacy and security, third-party AI providers do not train on customer data
- Otter terms of service, fees non-refundable; renewal
- Otter pricing as archived on 6 September 2025, Business $20 annual; the Pro card’s “unlimited meetings”
- Otter pricing as archived on 7 December 2025, Business $19.99 annual; three languages
- Otter pricing as archived on 8 May 2026, the $24 introductory price
- Otter: half-price Pro for students, 26 August 2026
- Castan pricing
Prices and terms at other companies change over time. Every figure on this page carries the day it was read, and the page it was read on is linked above. If one has moved since, write to hello@castan.ai and the page is corrected.