Otter.ai vs Rev
Otter.ai and Rev answer different questions even though both turn audio into text. Otter.ai sells seats for automatic meeting notes, with a free plan of 300 minutes a month and paid tiers that scale to unlimited meeting minutes. Rev sells human transcription at $1.99 a minute with delivery in 12 hours or less, next to AI subscriptions that start with 45 free minutes. Both list United States addresses in their terms or country fields. For quick internal notes Otter.ai is the cheaper route, and for a transcript that must survive being quoted Rev is the one with a published human service.
Sebastiaan SmitsFounderVendors can pay for more visibility on this website, for example a higher place in a ranking or more room on a page. Commercial relationships can also affect which products we feature and how prominently. Every vendor link is marked the same, whatever the arrangement behind it. How that works.
Choose Otter.ai ifyou want every internal meeting recorded and summarised from a calendar link at a low seat price. Your audio is mostly English and you are happy to start on a free plan.
Choose Rev ifyou need a person to check the transcript because it will be quoted, filed or submitted. You also want published per-minute and per-page rates instead of a seat plan.
Otter.ai and Rev side by side
| Otter.ai | Rev | |
|---|---|---|
| Our transcription rank | #9 of 14 | #10 of 14 |
| Established in | United States | United States |
| List price, 6 November 2026 | Per user per month: Pro $16.99 ($8.33 annual view), Business $30 ($19.99 annual view); Basic is free | Human transcription at $1.99 a minute; AI seats Essentials $29.99 and Pro $59.99 monthly; 45 free AI minutes |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Self-hostable | — | — |
| Built for | English-speaking teams wanting cheap automatic notes from every internal meeting | Legal, academic and media work where a machine transcript is insufficient |
| Not for | Confidential or multilingual recordings in a regulated organisation | European recordings that may not leave the jurisdiction |
Both are reviewed in full in our transcription ranking: Otter.ai and Rev.
Where they differ
Otter.ai 3 · Rev 2 · open 1- 01
Three hundred minutes against forty-five
Otter.ai's Basic plan is free forever with 300 meeting minutes per user per month, 3 lifetime imported files and a 30-minute cap per conversation. Rev's subscription Free plan gives 45 AI transcription and caption minutes a month for one user, English only, with up to 5 files at a time. For a team that just wants to try automatic notes, Otter.ai's allowance is several times larger, and that decides this round.
Edge: Otter.ai
- 02
What a seat costs
Otter.ai Pro is $16.99 per user per month monthly or $8.33 on the annual view, with 1,200 minutes. Business is $30 monthly or $19.99 on the annual view, with unlimited meeting minutes. Rev Essentials is $29.99 monthly or $25.49 annual with 5,000 AI minutes, and Pro is $59.99 or $47.99 with 10,000 minutes. Otter.ai is cheaper per seat at each step we read, though Rev includes more AI minutes.
Edge: Otter.ai
- 03
A person reading the file
Rev's Human Transcription costs $1.99 per minute with 99%+ accuracy and delivery in 12 hours or less, and Human Captions start at the same rate. Legal Rough Draft is $2.25 per page and Legal Premium Transcript $2.50 per page. The pages we read for Otter.ai list no human-checked service at all, only its automatic transcripts and AI chat queries, so this round goes clearly to Rev.
Edge: Rev
- 04
Language coverage
Rev's Essentials plan covers English and Spanish, and Pro lists 37+ languages, while its Free plan is English only. Otter.ai's pricing page lists no languages per plan, and our own summary describes it as English first. Rev publishes the clearer list, so it wins on language, but we cannot confirm how either tool performs on non-English audio.
Edge: Rev
- 05
Where the recordings are kept
Otter.ai's terms say user content is hosted by Amazon Web Services and that transfers of EEA, Swiss and UK data rely on adequacy or approved safeguards, without naming a region. Rev calls itself SOC 2 Type II audited and GDPR compliant, and offers CJIS- and HIPAA-compliant environments on Unlimited plans. Rev's pages do not state headquarters or parent company. Neither shows an EU-only option, so European teams should ask before uploading.
Depends on the buyer
- 06
Higher tiers and large teams
Otter.ai's Business plan allows 4 hours per conversation, 3 concurrent meetings and 800 team vocabulary terms. Its Enterprise plan is priced via a demo request, with SSO and SCIM needing a 100-user minimum and HIPAA as an add-on. Rev's Unlimited plan has custom pricing with unlimited AI minutes and up to 500 files at once. Rev Essentials is capped at 3 users and Pro at 5, so Otter.ai scales to bigger teams more plainly.
Edge: Otter.ai
When neither fits
If your recordings must stay inside the EU, neither of these two shows a European processing option on the pages we read. Amberscript and Happy Scribe are the two to compare next.
Otter.ai or Rev: questions
3 answersCan Rev replace Otter.ai for daily team meetings?
Only in part. Rev's AI plans include 5,000 or 10,000 minutes per user, but they cost more per seat than Otter.ai's Pro and Business plans. Rev's strength is the human service, not calendar-driven meeting notes.
Is the $1.99 a minute figure the whole Rev bill?
It is the published rate for Human Transcription, and Human Captions start at $1.99 as well. Subscribers get 3% or 5% off human services monthly, and 10% or 15% off on annual billing. The pricing page shows '$' without a currency code.
Where does Otter.ai say my files are stored?
Its terms say content is hosted by Amazon Web Services. They do not name a specific region. Transfers of EEA, Swiss and UK data are said to rely on adequacy or approved safeguards.
Sources
Checked 6 November 2026- Otter.ai pricing page: free allowance, Pro and Business seat prices, conversation caps and Enterprise terms.
- Otter.ai terms: AWS hosting and EEA, Swiss and UK transfer wording.
- Rev pricing page: per-minute human rates, legal per-page rates, AI minute allowances, language lists and subscriber discounts.
- Rev home page: SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and CJIS/HIPAA statements in the FAQ.