Otter.ai

What it is

Otter.ai is a real-time transcription assistant. It joins your Zoom/Meet/Teams call (or records in the room), produces a live speaker-labeled transcript, and generates an automated summary and action items. Think of it as the capture layer that feeds whatever you use for synthesis.

Our verdict

The reliable workhorse for getting a clean, speaker-attributed transcript with near-zero effort — it just shows up to the call and does its job. For a PM running user interviews, that transcript is the raw material everything else depends on, and Otter’s is consistently usable. Pairs perfectly with an LLM: capture in Otter, synthesize in Claude/ChatGPT.

Where it falls short: it captures, it doesn’t really analyze — the auto-summaries are serviceable but shallow, so you’ll still do the thinking elsewhere. The free tier’s 300 minutes/month disappears fast if you do real research, and accuracy dips with heavy accents, crosstalk, or jargon. Always spot-check quotes against the audio before you cite them.

Get value in 10 minutes

1. Connect Otter to your calendar so it auto-joins your next interview call.
2. After the call, open the transcript and use Otter’s summary only as a table of contents — jump to the moments that matter.
3. Export the full transcript and paste it into your LLM with: “Here’s a user interview transcript. Pull the top 5 pain points, each with a verbatim supporting quote and the approximate timestamp.” Capture + synthesis, split across the two tools each does best.