Head to head · Audio · updated Oct 26, 2026
Whisper vs Otter.ai
Whisper scores 84 to Otter.ai's 27 on public evidence for speech-to-text transcription, and they rank #1 and #3 there. Both are free to start. Numbers below are the same public signals the ranking uses, recomputed nightly — nothing here is sponsored.
Whisper
OpenAI's open-source speech-recognition model that transcribes and translates audio in dozens of languages, locally or via API.
+ Free, runs fully offline, and remains the accuracy benchmark that most commercial transcription services are measured against.
− No speaker diarization out of the box, it hallucinates text during silence, and large models are slow without a GPU.
Otter.ai
A meeting transcriber that joins Zoom, Meet and Teams calls, records live transcripts and writes summaries and action items.
+ Live transcript you can read during the call, with a generous free tier for individuals.
− The OtterPilot bot auto-joins meetings and emails attendees unless you turn it off, which annoys other participants.
Side by side
public evidence| Whisper | Otter.ai | |
|---|---|---|
| Evidence score / 100 | 84 | 27 |
| GitHub stars | 111,342 | closed source |
| Hacker News stories, 30d | 12 | 0 |
| Release-feed mentions, 30d | 4 | 0 |
| Last activity | 1 days ago | – |
| Pricing | Open source · Free (MIT); hosted API $0.006/min | Free tier · Pro from $8.33/mo billed annually |
| Platforms | cli, api, mac, windows, linux | web, ios, android, chrome-extension |
| Maker | OpenAI | Otter.ai |
Which one?
Pick Whisper if
- you want the stronger public evidence (84 vs 27)
- you want open source — self-host it, read it, fork it
- you need it on api, cli, linux
- a bigger GitHub community matters (111,342 vs 0 stars)
Best for free local transcription.
Pick Otter.ai if
- you need it on android, chrome-extension, ios
Best for live transcripts during calls.