These are two different kinds of tool. Otter sends Otter Notetaker into your meeting as a participant and keeps the recording in the cloud. Amlin is a notepad on your own Mac: no bot in the call, no audio stored, and dictation and to-dos in the same app.
Facts checked September 2026 against Otter's public pricing and documentation. Spot something outdated? Tell us.
Otter is a cloud transcription service you reach through the web, mobile apps, a Mac/Windows desktop app, and a bot that joins your calls. Plans meter transcription by the minute, with a per-conversation cap on every tier.
Amlin is a native Mac app that captures the call from your own machine, never stores audio, never cuts a meeting off mid-conversation, and includes system-wide dictation and a cross-meeting to-do list.
On price: monthly billing favors Amlin ($10 vs $16.99). Annual billing favors Otter Pro slightly (about $8.33 a month).
| What matters | Amlin | Otter.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Bot joins your call? | Never. System-level audio capture on your Mac; the participant list shows only people. | Otter Notetaker joins as a visible participant by default. Otter's desktop app now offers a botless recording option for supported meetings. |
| Meeting audio | Never stored. Transcribed live, discarded on the spot. Only text remains. | Recordings are kept in your account for playback. |
| Per-meeting limits | None. A meeting in progress always finishes; plans meter monthly hours only. | Conversations cap at 30 minutes on the free plan and 90 minutes on Pro. |
| Works with | Anything that makes sound on your Mac, including phone calls and webinar tools. | Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams via the bot, plus in-app recording. |
| Voice dictation | System-wide. Hold a key in any app, speak, get clean text. Runs on-device. | None. |
| To-do list | One list across every meeting, with owners and due dates. | My Action Items collects tasks across all your meetings, with reassignment and a weekly digest email. |
| Price | $10 / month, or $108 / year | Pro: $16.99 / month, or about $8.33 / month billed annually. Business from $19.99 / user / month. |
| Free plan | 4 meeting-hours per month, full note history, dictation included. | 300 minutes per month, 30-minute conversation cap, 3 lifetime file imports. |
| Platforms | macOS 13+ (Apple silicon) | Web, iOS, Android, Chrome extension, Mac/Windows desktop app |
| Team features | Single-user today. | Shared workspaces, admin controls on Business plans. |
Highlighted rows are where Amlin pulls ahead: no bot, no stored audio, no mid-meeting cutoffs, and more of your workday covered. Otter's pricing and features change; treat their official site as the source of truth. We update this page when we notice a change.
If you work on a Mac and don't want a bot in your meetings, yes. Amlin captures system audio from your own machine, so nothing joins the call, audio is never stored, and meetings are never cut off by a per-conversation cap. Otter is the better fit if you need Windows, Android, or web access, or your team lives in Otter's shared workspace.
No. By default, Otter Notetaker joins your meeting as a visible participant that other attendees see and sometimes have to admit; Otter's desktop app now offers a botless recording option for supported meetings, but the bot remains the default path. Amlin never uses a bot: it captures your Mac's audio at the operating-system level, so the participant list always shows only people, and nobody else installs or approves anything.
Otter keeps audio recordings in your account so you can play them back; that's a real feature, and it requires storing the audio. Amlin makes the opposite trade: sound is transcribed live and discarded on the spot, so there's no recording to leak, subpoena, or worry about. Only your notes and the transcript text remain. The full picture is in our privacy policy.
Otter's free plan includes 300 transcription minutes a month, but each conversation caps at 30 minutes, so a normal meeting gets cut off mid-sentence. Amlin's free plan includes 4 meeting-hours a month, a meeting in progress always finishes, your full note history is kept, and dictation is included and never metered.
Download Amlin and run your next meeting with nobody extra in the room.
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