Otter AI Pricing 2026: Plans, Yearly Costs & Hidden Limits
Otter AI pricing starts at free: Basic costs nothing, Pro is $16.99 a month or $8.33 a month billed annually, and Business is $30 per user a month or $19.99 billed annually (as of October 2026). Enterprise has no public price. We checked Otter's pricing page and help centre on 18 October 2026, so below you'll find what each plan works out at per year, what a team pays, and the limits that usually decide which plan you end up on.
Otter AI pricing at a glance (October 2026)
The whole answer, straight from Otter's pricing page:
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed annually (per month) | Transcription minutes | Max per conversation | File imports | Max users |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | Free | Free | 300 per user per month | 30 min | 3, lifetime | 5 |
| Pro | $16.99 | $8.33 | 1,200 per user per month (one shared pool) | 90 min | 10 per user per month | 5 billed users |
| Business | $30 | $19.99 | Unlimited meetings; imported files up to 6,000 min per user per month | 4 hours | No limit on number | 25 billed users |
| Enterprise | Quote only | Quote only | Unlimited meetings; imports as Business | 4 hours | No limit on number | Unlimited |
Prices are per user, in US dollars. The per-month figures are Otter's own; the yearly totals further down are our arithmetic.
You may also see a Business promo on the pricing page ($24 a month, "20% off for 3 months", first-time subscribers only) and an offer limited to India-issued cards. Neither is the standard price.
What each Otter plan actually gets you
Basic: free, with tight limits
Basic is free and gives you 300 transcription minutes a month, which is 5 hours. Each conversation is capped at 30 minutes. Otter keeps recording past that point, but you only see the first 30 minutes of transcript until you upgrade, according to Otter's help centre.
File imports are listed as "3 lifetime per user". That's three, ever, not three a month. Otter also keeps only your 25 most recent conversations; older ones are archived. You get 20 AI Chat queries a month and export to mp3 or txt.
Basic still joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, with live transcription and speaker ID, so it's a fair trial of the product. It just won't cover a normal 45-60 minute meeting: you'll only see the first 30 minutes of transcript unless you upgrade.
Verdict: fine for trying Otter or the odd short call.
Pro: $16.99 a month, or $8.33 billed annually
Pro gives each user 1,200 minutes a month in one shared pool, covering meetings, recordings and imports alike. Conversations can run to 90 minutes. You also get 10 file imports a month, drawn from the same pool.
Add up to 5 billed users, 50 AI Chat queries a month, pdf, docx and srt export, and unlimited conversation history.
Verdict: this is the plan most individuals need. Billed annually it costs roughly half the monthly price, which Otter advertises as "save 51%".
Business: $30 per user a month, or $19.99 billed annually
Business removes the cap on meeting and in-app recording minutes. Imported files get up to 6,000 minutes per user per month, with no limit on how many files. Conversations can run to 4 hours, and a workspace holds up to 25 billed users.
You also get 200 AI Chat queries a month, admin analytics, centralised billing and CRM sync for 5 users. There's a Business free trial. It needs a card, and it rolls into Business monthly for your seats unless you cancel.
Enterprise: quote only
Enterprise adds unlimited members, SSO and SCIM (which need a 100-user minimum licence), HIPAA as an add-on, and API and webhooks. There's no public price; the button says "Schedule a demo".
Monthly vs annual: what Otter costs per year
Otter AI pricing is quoted per month, but you'll feel it per year.
Per user
| Plan | Billed monthly, per year | Billed annually, per year | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pro | $203.88 | $99.96 | $103.92 (51%) |
| Business | $360 | $239.88 | $120.12 (33%) |
Annual is the better deal once you're sure you'll use Otter for a year. Be sure first. Subscriptions are non-refundable, and switching from annual to monthly may remove the discount.
What a team pays
- Five people on Pro, which is Pro's maximum, works out at $499.80 a year billed annually, or $1,019.40 billed monthly.
- Ten people on Business come to $2,398.80 a year on annual billing and $3,600 on monthly.
- Business is sold by seat count. Extra users added mid-term are charged pro rata, and the plan renews at your initial seat commitment.
Moving from Pro to Business costs 2.4 times as much per seat on annual billing ($8.33 to $19.99), and about 1.8 times on monthly ($16.99 to $30). That's a big step, so check whether Pro's limits actually bite before you take it.
Student, teacher and nonprofit discounts
With a .edu email, students and teachers get 20% off Pro: $79.99 a year (about $6.67 a month) or $13.59 billed monthly. That's about $20 a year less than the standard annual price. It's individual Pro only, with no Workspace features.
Nonprofits can get a discount on Business through TechSoup. Otter doesn't say how much.
The limits that cost more than the price
Minutes, translated into meetings
Basic's 300 minutes is 5 hours a month. Pro's 1,200 is 20 hours, roughly an hour per working day. That sounds generous until you count your calendar.
Four one-hour meetings a week comes to about 1,040 minutes a month and fits inside Pro. Five a week is about 1,300, and doesn't. One extra weekly call is the whole difference.
If you use every minute, Pro works out at about $0.007 a minute billed annually (about 42 cents an hour), or about $0.014 billed monthly (about 85 cents an hour). Unused minutes are lost, though, so anyone who doesn't use every minute pays more per hour than that. Our guide on how to transcribe meetings covers the options.
Caps per conversation and per import
The per-conversation cap is 30 minutes on Basic, 90 on Pro and 4 hours on Business. A half-day workshop runs well past Pro's 90-minute cap.
Imports have their own catch on Pro: the 10 a month draw down the same 1,200 minutes as your meetings, so a one-hour lecture recording uses an hour of the same allowance as your meetings. Files can be up to 5 GB.
Billing rules to know before you pay
- Minutes reset on your billing date. Nothing rolls over.
- There are no top-ups. Otter's help centre says: "If you require more monthly minutes, we recommend upgrading plans."
- Hit 300 minutes on Basic and you can't record or import anything until the next cycle starts. Deleted conversations still count toward the 300, so clearing out old recordings won't buy you time.
- No refunds.
- Cancel at least 24 hours before the next billing date. Paid features last until the period ends, then the account drops to Basic; your conversations stay, but anything beyond the 25 most recent is archived.
Which Otter plan should you pick?
Stay on Basic if:
- your calls are short, under 30 minutes
- you record less than 5 hours a month
- you don't need file imports (3, ever, won't go far)
Pick Pro, billed annually, if:
- most meetings run 30 to 90 minutes, and there are up to about four hour-long ones a week
- you'll import more than 3 files in total
- your team is 5 people or fewer. Students should use the .edu price.
Pick Business if:
- you're in more than about four hour-long meetings a week, or calls run past 90 minutes
- you import a lot of recordings
- there are more than 5 of you, or you need admin controls and one bill
Talk to Otter's sales team if you need SSO/SCIM, HIPAA or the API.
If what you actually want is to talk instead of type, rather than record meetings, none of these plans is quite the right shape.
Is Otter worth the money?
For meetings, yes. Otter is built for them. If you're in recorded meetings most days and want transcripts, speaker labels and summaries without taking notes, about $100 a year on Pro annual for 20 hours a month is reasonable.
It's weaker value in three cases. Paying monthly costs about twice the annual rate ($16.99 against $8.33), and if you only use a fraction of the 1,200 minutes, much of that pays for time you don't use. Regularly hitting the 90-minute cap pushes you towards Business at 2.4 times the annual price. And if what you really want is your own voice turned into text, you're paying for meeting features you won't touch.
Otter AI pricing is fair for meetings and the wrong shape for dictation. Our Otter.ai review covers the product itself, and there's a round-up of Otter.ai alternatives if it isn't for you.
If you mostly want to dictate on a Mac
Some people pay for Otter mainly to talk instead of type: emails, Slack replies, notes, prompts to an AI tool. Otter's minutes and seats are priced around meetings, and a monthly allowance is an odd fit for something you do in short bursts all day.
This is ours, so weigh that accordingly. Blazing Transcribe is a Mac dictation app: hold fn, speak, let go, and your words are typed into whatever app your cursor is in. It's free right now, with no account and no card. Speech recognition runs on the machine itself, so your voice never leaves your Mac and it works offline. It's open source, and there's no minute allowance to run out of.
The limits, plainly. It's Mac only: Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) and macOS 15 or later. It does not record or transcribe meetings, label speakers, write summaries or transcribe audio files. If you need meeting notes, stay on Otter.
Our Otter vs Wispr Flow comparison explains the difference between a meeting tool and a dictation tool. If you're on a Mac and mostly want to dictate, Blazing Transcribe is free to try.
FAQ
How much does Otter.ai cost per month?
Otter.ai costs $16.99 a month for Pro billed monthly, or $8.33 a month billed annually, as of October 2026. Business is $30 per user a month, or $19.99 billed annually, and Basic is free.
Is Otter.ai free?
Yes, Otter.ai's Basic plan is free. It gives you 300 minutes a month, a 30-minute cap per conversation and 3 file imports for the life of the account.
What happens when you run out of Otter minutes?
When you run out of Otter minutes on Basic, you can't record or import until your monthly minutes reset. Minutes don't roll over, and Otter doesn't sell top-ups; it suggests upgrading instead.
Can you get a refund from Otter?
No, you can't get a refund from Otter, because its subscriptions are non-refundable. Cancel at least 24 hours before your next billing date to avoid the next charge.
Does Otter AI pricing include a free trial?
Only on Business, as far as Otter's help centre says. The Business trial needs a card and becomes a paid monthly plan for your seats unless you cancel. Otter doesn't document a trial for Pro, but Basic is free.