Compare
Descript, Otter, Fireflies and Notta alternatives
Four transcription tools, what each is actually built for, and when you should stay where you are. Every number below was read from the vendor pricing page on 13 August 2026.
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MP3 路 MP4 路 WAV 路 M4A 路 OGG 路 WEBM 路 FLAC 聽路聽 Max 25MB 聽路聽 Max 30 min
Side by side
Free tiers only, unless the row says otherwise. Read it as a fit guide, not a ranking.
| Mictoo | Descript | Otter | Fireflies | Notta | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 25 MB per file, no account | 60 min / month | 300 min / month | Unlimited, 400 min storage | 120 min / month |
| Free per-item cap | 25 MB anon, 180 MB signed in | n/a | 30 min | n/a | 3 min |
| Free files per day | 3 anon, 7 signed in | n/a, monthly pool | n/a, monthly pool | Unlimited | n/a, monthly pool |
| Signup to try | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Cheapest paid | None yet | $16/mo | $16.99/user/mo | $10/seat/mo | $8.17/mo |
| Meeting bot | No, by choice | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Speaker labels | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| AI summary free | Yes | No | Limited | Yes | 10 / month |
| Edits the audio | No | Yes | No | No | No |
Looking for TurboScribe? It runs the same Whisper engine we do, so it gets its own comparison.
One by one
Descript
A full video and podcast editor that happens to transcribe. Editing the transcript edits the audio.
- Free tier
- 60 minutes of media per month
- Paid, per month
- Hobbyist $16/mo, Creator $24/mo, Business $50/mo
- Choose it when
- You are editing the recording, not just reading it. Removing filler words by deleting text is genuinely faster than a waveform editor.
- Skip it when
- You only want the text. Descript is a desktop app in the hundreds of megabytes, and one hour a month runs out fast.
Figures from the Descript pricing page, read on 13 August 2026.
Otter.ai
A meeting assistant. A bot joins the call, records it, and posts notes to the workspace.
- Free tier
- 300 minutes per month, 30 minutes per conversation
- Paid, per month
- Pro $16.99/user/mo, Business $30/user/mo
- Choose it when
- You want recurring meetings captured automatically without anyone remembering to hit record, and your team lives in the shared workspace.
- Skip it when
- The bot is a problem. It shows up as a visible attendee, needs calendar access, and external clients or candidates often say no.
Figures from the Otter.ai pricing page, read on 13 August 2026.
Fireflies.ai
A meeting bot with CRM plumbing attached. Built around per-seat team analytics.
- Free tier
- Unlimited transcription, 400 minutes of storage per team, 20 AI credits
- Paid, per month
- Pro $10/seat/mo, Business $19/seat/mo, Enterprise $39/seat/mo (annual)
- Choose it when
- You need call transcripts landing in Salesforce or HubSpot, and conversation analytics across a sales team.
- Skip it when
- You are one person with a recording. The per-seat pricing and the integration surface are the product, and you would be paying for neither.
Figures from the Fireflies.ai pricing page, read on 13 August 2026.
Notta
A mobile-first recorder with transcription, strongest on the phone rather than the desktop.
- Free tier
- 120 minutes per month, 3 minutes per conversation
- Paid, per month
- Pro $8.17/mo, Business $16.67/mo (billed annually)
- Choose it when
- You record on a phone and want the recorder and the transcriber to be the same app.
- Skip it when
- You already have the file. The 3-minute cap on the free tier means almost nothing real fits through it.
Figures from the Notta pricing page, read on 13 August 2026.
Where Mictoo loses
Worth saying plainly, because a comparison page that only flatters itself is not worth reading.
- No speaker labels
- Every other tool here separates speakers. We return continuous timestamped text. Diarisation is planned, not shipped.
- No meeting bot
- Deliberate, but it does mean you have to record the call yourself and upload the file.
- No team workspace
- No shared library, no permissions, no analytics. One person, one file, one transcript.
- No paid tier yet
- If you outgrow the free limits there is nothing to upgrade to. The tools above all have somewhere to go.