Five free meeting-transcription tiers verified Sep 2026: Otter 300 min/mo (30-min conversation cap, 3 lifetime imports), Feishu Minutes 300 min/mo (best Chinese), Notta 120 min/mo (58 languages), Fireflies unlimited transcript count (400-min team storage cap, 20 AI credits), Tactiq 10 sessions/mo (best for short meetings). Paid from $8.17-16.49/mo.

Free AI Meeting Transcription Tools Compared (2026): Otter vs Fireflies vs Notta vs Tactiq vs Feishu Minutes

After every meeting someone has to write the notes, and the fastest version of that workflow is letting an AI model turn the recording into text. In September 2026 I went through the official pricing pages of the five tools that dominate this category and only wrote down numbers I could verify: Otter Basic gives 300 transcription minutes per month, Feishu Minutes gives Feishu users 300 free minutes per month, Notta gives 120 minutes of full transcription per month, Fireflies Free labels its transcript count "unlimited" but caps team storage at 400 minutes, limits AI summaries and hands out 20 AI credits monthly, and Tactiq gives 10 transcriptions plus 5 AI credits per month. Paid plans start between $8.17 and $16.49 per month. Below is the full breakdown of quotas, hidden limits and who each tool actually fits.

The five free tiers at a glance

Tool	Free transcription quota	Key free-plan limits	Languages	Paid from
Otter (Basic)	300 min/month (shared pool)	30-min max per conversation; 3 lifetime file imports; history keeps only the 25 most recent; 5 custom-vocabulary terms; 20 AI Chat queries/month; 1 concurrent meeting; export is mp3/txt only	EN/ES/FR/DE/JA/ZH	$16.49/mo ($8.17 annual, 1,200 min/mo)
Fireflies (Free)	Transcript count "unlimited" (*shared pool)	400-min team storage cap; limited AI summaries; 20 AI credits/month; 2-hour recording cap; 720p video; 3 public channels	100+	$10/seat/mo annual ($18 monthly)
Notta (Free)	120 min/month of full transcription	Free minutes are monthly; when they run out, transcription stops for the month	58	Pro from ~$8.17/mo (annual billing)
Tactiq (Free)	10 transcriptions/month + 5 AI credits	Chrome extension for Google Meet/Zoom/Teams; quota resets monthly, cancel anytime, no card	Multilingual	Pro JPY 1,249/user/mo annual (~$8.5, unlimited transcripts)
Feishu Minutes	300 min/month for Feishu users	Requires a Feishu account; no watermark, free commercial use (verified 2026-08-27)	Chinese-first, multilingual	Enterprise from ~CNY 300/person/yr (~$42/yr)

On the surface, Otter and Feishu Minutes tie at 300 free minutes each. Fireflies looks the most generous ("unlimited" transcripts) but the 400-minute team storage cap means the whole team can only keep 400 minutes of transcribed text per month, and anything older has to be deleted to make room. Notta has the smallest quota, 120 minutes, but the widest language coverage at 58. Tactiq bills by session instead of minutes, which makes it the best fit for teams with many short meetings and very few long ones: a 10-minute standup and a 50-minute design review each cost exactly 1 of the 10 free sessions.

Otter: 300 free minutes, six hidden caps

Otter's Basic plan is free forever and needs no credit card. The headline number is 300 transcription minutes per month, drawn from a single shared pool that covers live meeting transcription and file uploads alike; when it is gone, it is gone, and it does not roll over. The fine print is where the real limits live:

30-minute maximum per conversation on the free tier. Anything longer is cut off (Pro raises this to 90 minutes; Business and Enterprise to 4 hours).
3 lifetime audio/video file imports. For podcasts, interviews or stored recordings this is effectively one-time capacity.
Conversation history keeps only the 25 most recent items; older transcripts disappear on the free tier.
Custom vocabulary is limited to 5 terms (team plans jump to 100 names plus 100 terms).
AI Chat (question-answering over your transcripts) allows 20 queries per month, 3 per conversation.
Exports are mp3 and txt only. PDF, DOCX, SRT and bulk export all require Pro.

The free tier covers AI transcription in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese, with speaker identification by name. Chinese meetings work, but Otter has always been strongest in English-centric workflows. For more capacity, Pro at $8.17/month on annual billing (list price $16.49 monthly) raises the quota to 1,200 minutes per month and 90-minute conversations, with unlimited storage.

Fireflies: unlimited transcripts, but storage and AI credits are the real ceiling

Fireflies Free is the most generous-looking offer in this list: transcription count marked "unlimited" (with the site's asterisk meaning all transcription types share one pool), 100+ language transcription, and capture on the Chrome extension, desktop app or mobile. Single recordings cap at 2 hours, and video replay is 720p. Three numbers define what the free tier actually delivers:

400 minutes of team storage (Pro starts at 8,000 minutes per seat; Business removes the cap entirely). The 400 minutes are shared across the whole team: a 30-minute weekly x4 plus one 90-minute review and the storage is full for the month.
Limited AI summaries. The free plan ships 20 AI credits per month, which cover summaries, AskFred questions and the daily brief; when the credits run out, you get raw transcripts only for the rest of the cycle.
Exports are fully formatted (mp3, txt, pdf, docx, srt), but collaboration is capped at 3 public channels.

No credit card is required and the free plan is permanent. Pro at $10/seat/month on annual billing (list $18 monthly) unlocks unlimited AI summaries, 8,000 storage minutes per seat and full integrations; $19/seat/month Business adds unlimited storage.

Notta: 120 free minutes, but 58 languages is the best coverage here

Notta's free tier gives 120 minutes of full transcription per month, not just summaries, and the vendor advertises 58 supported languages with 10M+ registered users. At 120 minutes it is the smallest free quota in this comparison, which makes it the pick when your total meeting load is light but includes non-English sessions: low-resource languages on the free tier are Notta's home turf. The quota resets monthly and transcription stops when it is exhausted. Pro starts around $8.17/month on annual billing and removes the transcript-count cap. Notta also ships a macOS/Windows desktop app and an MCP/CLI, which lets you feed meeting context into your own AI agents instead of relying on the vendor's cloud.

Tactiq: billed by session, the best free option for short meetings

Tactiq's free tier is 10 transcriptions per month plus 5 AI credits, counted by session rather than minutes, so a 10-minute standup and a 50-minute review each consume exactly 1 of your 10 sessions. No credit card, no time limit; the Chrome extension transcribes live inside Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams, and the transcript is visible only to you by default. The official FAQ confirms the quota resets at the start of the next month (or when you upgrade), and your existing transcripts stay accessible. Pro at JPY 1,249 per user per month on annual billing (roughly $8.5; the pricing page is region-localized) unlocks unlimited transcripts and 10 AI credits, and Team plans raise AI credits to unlimited. If you hold ten or fewer meetings a month and none runs long, Tactiq Free covers you at zero cost.

Feishu Minutes: the Chinese-meeting ceiling at 300 free minutes per month

Feishu users get 300 free transcription minutes every month, an entry in our tools database verified on 2026-08-27: no watermark, commercial use allowed on the free tier, no card required. Its advantages are entirely in the Chinese ecosystem: automatic transcription plus smart summaries and keyword extraction, with results landing directly in Feishu Docs and deep linkage to Feishu calendar and meetings. Among the five tools here it has the most reliable Chinese accuracy. The catch is that you have to use Feishu at all; the 300 minutes are unreachable from outside that account system. Enterprise plans start around CNY 300 per person per year (~$42).

Four rules that apply to all five

Free minutes never roll over. Otter's own page says "no rollover" for every transcription type, and Tactiq's FAQ confirms a monthly reset. None of the five lets you bank unused minutes.
"Transcription" and "summary" are two separate quotas. Fireflies Free transcribes without a stated count limit but budgets only 20 AI credits for summaries; Otter gives 300 minutes of transcription but only 20 AI Chat queries. If you only want the written recap, count credits first, minutes second.
Storage is the silent cap. Fireflies caps team storage at 400 minutes and Otter keeps only the 25 most recent conversations, so heavy usage without a paid plan means deleting your own history. For sustained volume, compare paid storage numbers: 8,000 minutes per seat (Fireflies Pro) or unlimited (Business).
Stacking accounts is a legitimate free ceiling. The five tools use independent accounts: 300 (Otter) + 300 (Feishu Minutes) + 120 (Notta) + 10 sessions (Tactiq) + unlimited transcript count (Fireflies) gives one person 720+ free transcription minutes per month plus 20+ AI credits. Before paying anyone, fill all the free tiers first.

Which one to pick, by scenario

Chinese-first meetings on Feishu: Feishu Minutes 300 minutes; add Tactiq for the sessions it cannot capture.
English-first meetings on Zoom/Google Meet: Otter 300 minutes, with the 30-minute per-conversation cap in mind for long sessions.
High meeting volume, "unlimited" transcript count: Fireflies Free, accepting the 400-minute team storage and 20-credit summary reality.
Ten or fewer meetings a month, none long: Tactiq Free's 10 sessions cover you at zero cost.
Many or low-resource languages: Notta (58 languages on the free tier) or Fireflies (100+).
Refuse to send meetings to a third party: run an open-weights speech model locally via Ollama (see the free Ollama deployment guide), or on the developer route use Deepgram's $200 free API credit for speech-to-text.

FAQ

Does any of the five free tiers require a credit card?

No. Otter Basic, Notta and Tactiq all state "no credit card" on their pricing pages, Fireflies Free works after signup, and Feishu Minutes only needs a Feishu account. Cards enter the picture only at the paid tiers.

Do unused free minutes roll over to next month?

None of the five allows rollover. Otter's pricing page marks the entire transcription pool as "no rollover", and Tactiq's FAQ states the quota resets at the start of the next month. All quotas are monthly.

Which free tier handles Chinese meetings best?

Feishu Minutes: the best Chinese accuracy of the five, with automatic summaries and keyword extraction flowing into Feishu Docs, 300 minutes free per month. Otter's free tier lists Chinese among its six supported languages, and Notta (58) and Fireflies (100+) also support it, but none matches Feishu Minutes for Chinese depth.

What if 300 minutes is not enough?

Two routes. First, stack free tiers across vendors: 300 (Otter) + 300 (Feishu Minutes) + 120 (Notta) + 10 sessions (Tactiq) + Fireflies' unlimited transcript count, all at $0. Second, the cheapest paid steps: Notta Pro from ~$8.17/mo annual, Tactiq Pro ~$8.5/mo annual with unlimited transcripts, Otter Pro $8.17/mo annual with 1,200 minutes.

Is there a watermark on free exports, and can I use them commercially?

Transcription is text, so "watermark" does not really apply; the practical differences are export formats and retention. Otter Free exports only mp3 and txt (pdf/docx/srt and bulk export require Pro); Fireflies Free allows all formats but the team is capped at 400 storage minutes. Feishu Minutes is verified watermark-free with commercial use permitted on the free tier.

For more free AI productivity quotas, see the free AI productivity tools comparison.