Comparison
txscribe vs Otter, for recordings you already have
Otter is built for meetings: it joins your calls and writes them down as they happen. If that is what you need, stay with Otter — we don't do it.
This page is for the other job: you have recordings — interviews, lectures, fieldwork, a podcast — and you need a transcript you can quote from. That is where the two differ most, and mostly in the limits on uploading.
Otter's details checked on its own pages on ; each links to its source. Plans and prices change — if something here is out of date, tell us at support@txscribe.ai.
Uploading files
txscribe
No limit on the number of files, on any plan. The only thing that runs out is minutes.
Otter
Basic (free): 3 file imports, lifetime. Pro: 10 a month. Business: unlimited, within 6,000 minutes a month. Source
Longest recording
txscribe
Up to 8 hours per file on Pro. Without an account, the first 10 minutes of one recording.
Otter
30 minutes per conversation on Basic, 90 minutes on Pro, 4 hours on Business. Source
Time included
txscribe
Pro: 30 hours a month. Without an account: one recording, up to 10 minutes.
Otter
Basic: 300 minutes a month. Pro: 1,200 a month, one pool shared by meetings and imports. Business: 6,000 minutes of imports a month. Source
Price
txscribe
Pro: $24.99 a month, billed monthly. One plan, no seats.
Otter
Pro: $16.99 per user a month, or $8.33 a month billed annually. Business: $30 per user a month, or $19.99 billed annually. Source
Languages
txscribe
82 languages (110 regional variants in the picker). Speaker labels offered in all of them — in 96, only on recordings of up to 2 hours, and not where that pass fails.
Speaker names
txscribe
Speakers come back numbered. Rename one once and every line follows; names you have used before are offered again.
Otter
Automatic speaker identification that learns names from voices you have tagged before. Source
Exports
txscribe
TXT, DOCX, PDF, SRT, VTT, Final Cut Pro captions, Premiere Pro markers, transcripts for NVivo, MAXQDA and ATLAS.ti, and JSON, on every plan, including Free. Up to 100 transcripts at once as one ZIP, and the audio or video file you uploaded can be downloaded again.
Otter
Basic: MP3 audio and TXT. Paid plans: MP3, TXT, PDF, DOCX and SRT. Source
Translation
txscribe
A translated copy of the whole transcript, on every plan.
Custom word list
txscribe
Up to 1,000 names and terms, on every plan.
Checking against the audio
txscribe
Words come back with timestamps: click any line to jump to that moment in the recording. A line you correct keeps its paragraph's timing rather than per-word timing. Answers to questions about a transcript link to the moments they came from.
Otter
Words highlight in time with playback on every plan; variable playback speed on paid plans. Source
Training on your recordings
txscribe
We do not use your recordings or transcripts to train models.
Otter
Otter's privacy policy says it trains its own AI on de-identified audio recordings and on transcripts, which it notes may contain personal information. Source
Where Otter is the better choice
- Meetings. A notetaker that joins Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls on every plan and transcribes them live. Sources 1, 2 txscribe has no meeting bot: it works on recordings you upload or record yourself.
- Recurring speakers. Otter learns voices you have named before. We give you numbers and make renaming fast, which is not the same thing.
- Teams. Otter is built around shared workspaces and per-seat plans. txscribe has shared workspaces on every plan — invite people as admins, editors or viewers, and comment on transcripts together — but no team billing: there are no seats or pooled minutes, each member transcribes on their own plan, and there is no single sign-on.
- Price, if you pay yearly. Otter Pro billed annually is less a month than txscribe Pro, which is billed monthly only — if its imports and file lengths fit your work.
What txscribe doesn't do well
- Speaker labels stop at 2 hours in 96 of our 110 language variants: there a separate pass labels the speakers, and a longer recording — or one whose pass fails — comes back without labels and says so, with no speakers to rename.
- A recording that switches language partway may come back translated rather than transcribed — or not at all — and nothing marks it as missing. Name the main language instead of leaving it on automatic.
- Summaries do not point back to the moment each line came from. Answers to questions do.
Try it on one of your recordings.
Up to 10 minutes, no account and no card. A table can tell you the limits; only your own audio tells you whether the transcript holds.
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