Otter.ai is the most established name in AI meeting transcription — a mature, bot-based product with the largest install base in the category. CraftNote is a bot-free AI note taker built for capture beyond scheduled meetings: lectures, in-person conversations, phone calls, and uploads, not just calendar invites. Both produce transcripts with speaker labels and AI summaries. The real differences are capture method, free-plan structure, and platform reach. This page is written against both vendors' own published pricing pages as of 2026-08-25, not against assumptions.
Overview
CraftNote
CraftNote is a bot-free AI note taker available on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and the web. It records directly from your device — nothing joins your calls as a visible participant — and works equally for scheduled meetings, lectures, in-person conversations, phone calls, and uploaded audio/video/PDF/YouTube/podcast content. Free plan meters by weekly usage (2 hours of recording, 10 uploads) rather than by lifetime import count.
Otter.ai
Otter.ai is a bot-based meeting transcription tool (OtterPilot joins Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams calls) with a new bot-free desktop option on Mac and Windows, added in 2026 in response to the bot-free wave Granola popularized — though the bot agent remains Otter's default path. Real-time transcription, speaker identification, and AI chat across your meeting history are its strongest features. Live transcription now supports multiple languages, a recent change from its English-first history.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | CraftNote | Otter.ai | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capture method | Bot-free on every platform — records from your own device, no visible call participant. | Bot-based by default (OtterPilot joins the call); bot-free desktop recording added on Mac/Windows in 2026 as a secondary option. | ✓ |
| Free plan structure | 2 hours of recording + 10 uploads/imports per week, ongoing — no lifetime cap. | 300 minutes/month, capped at 30 minutes per conversation, and only 3 file imports for the lifetime of the account. | ✓ |
| Paid pricing | $9.99/month, or $8.33/month billed annually ($99.99/year) — one flat individual tier. | Pro $16.99/user/month ($8.33/month billed annually); Business $30/user/month ($19.99/month billed annually). | ― |
| Platform coverage | iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and web — full parity across all five. | iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, web — comparable platform reach. | ― |
| Beyond scheduled meetings | Built for lectures, in-person conversations, phone calls, and uploaded audio/video/PDF/YouTube/podcasts as first-class use cases. | Optimized primarily for scheduled video calls; non-meeting capture is not the core product design. | ✓ |
| Speaker identification | Speaker diarization with renameable labels ('Speaker 1' to a real name), persistent across recordings. | Robust automatic speaker identification, a mature feature refined over years of production use. | ― |
| Language support | 100+ languages for transcription and translation. | Multi-language live transcription added in 2026, a recent expansion from an English-first product. | ✓ |
| AI chat across history | Ask AI answers questions about any single note's content. | AI chat can query across your entire meeting history, a genuinely differentiated feature for heavy users. | ✓ |
| Team features | Team plan at $15/user/month ($12 annual) with shared notes and admin controls. | Channels for organizing meetings by team/project, automatic action-item assignment, CRM handoffs — more mature team tooling. | ✓ |
Who Should Pick Which?
Choose CraftNote if…
Anyone who wants a single bot-free tool across meetings, lectures, in-person conversations, and phone calls — without a visible bot joining every call, and without a lifetime cap on how much you can ever import.
Choose Otter.ai if…
Teams already standardized on scheduled video meetings who want Otter's mature CRM handoffs, cross-meeting AI chat, and channel organization — and who don't mind a bot joining the call by default.