Fellow vs Otter: Which AI Meeting Assistant Wins in 2026?

Choosing between Fellow and Otter comes down to one question: Are you an individual taking notes for yourself, or a team that needs meetings to drive accountability? Fellow is the clear winner for teams and organizations. With 95%+ transcription accuracy across 92 languages, enterprise-grade security certifications, and action items that actually sync to project management tools, Fellow transforms meetings into searchable organizational intelligence. Otter has been around longer, but independent reviewers consistently flag accuracy issues that make it better suited for individuals on a budget than teams who can't afford to miss critical details.

Companies rely on Fellow to capture every conversation that matters. Here's why.

Fellow vs Otter AI: Feature comparison at a glance

Transcription accuracy: The foundation of every AI meeting assistant

Nothing else matters if your AI meeting assistant can't accurately capture what's said. This is where Fellow and Otter diverge most dramatically, according to online reviews.

Fellow delivers 95%+ transcription accuracy across 92 languages. Whether team members speak with accents, use technical terminology, or switch between languages mid-meeting, Fellow captures it correctly. This consistency exists because Fellow built its transcription engine specifically for professional conversations where precision matters.

Otter takes a different approach. As Aron Kantor from The Business Dive noted in a tool review after 2+ years of testing more than 20 AI note-takers:

"Otter struggles with accents and technical jargon."

For individuals jotting down personal meeting notes, occasional errors might be acceptable. For teams making decisions based on those transcripts, inaccuracy creates risk.

A side-by-side comparison by Toolfinder found similar results, noting that Otter's transcription quality varied significantly depending on speaker clarity and audio conditions.

Fellow maintained consistent accuracy across the same test scenarios.

→ Start a free 14-day trial of Fellow and test the accuracy difference for yourself.

Recording flexibility: Bot, bot-free, and IT governance

Modern teams require flexibility, but IT teams also need control. Some clients refuse to meet with recording bots present. Some internal conversations require discretion. And some meetings should never be recorded at all.

Fellow offers both bot and botless recording with enterprise-grade governance that IT teams can actually enforce. Administrators set organization-wide rules like "don't record meetings with DNR (do not record) in the title" or block recording for specific calendar types, external domains, or sensitive meeting categories.

These policies apply consistently whether employees choose bot or botless mode.

Otter also provides bot and bot-free recording options through its desktop app, but Fellow's governance depth gives IT teams finer control over what gets recorded and what doesn't.

According to a product comparison by Clickguide, this administrative layer matters for organizations where recording policies vary by meeting context, client sensitivity, or compliance requirements.

Fellow supports Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack huddles, and in-person meetings via mobile, all with the same accuracy, security standards, and governance controls, regardless of recording mode.

Cross-meeting intelligence: Ask Fellow vs basic search

Individual meeting transcripts have limited value. The real power emerges when your AI meeting note taker can act like an AI Chief of Staff who surfaces patterns, commitments, and context across all organizational conversations.

Ask Fellow functions as an organization-wide intelligence layer. Teams can query across every meeting they have access to with questions like "Where are projects getting blocked?" or "What commitments are at risk this quarter?" Fellow generates outputs and triggers workflows based on accumulated meeting intelligence.

Otter provides basic search across stored transcripts. Users can find specific meetings or keywords, but the tool lacks the cross-meeting analysis and workflow integration that transforms transcripts into actionable organizational knowledge.

This difference becomes critical as meeting volume scales. Organizations running hundreds of meetings weekly need intelligence synthesis, not just searchable archives.

Integrations: Where meeting notetakers become action takers

Meeting value diminishes when insights remain trapped in a note-taking tool. Fellow and Otter take fundamentally different approaches to turning conversations into action.

Fellow offers 50+ native integrations plus API access and MCP Server connectivity to Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor. Action items sync directly to project management tools like Asana, Jira, Monday.com, and Linear, not as copied text, but as trackable tasks with ownership and deadlines. Zapier and n8n connections extend reach to 8,000+ additional apps.

Otter's integration depth focuses on calendar connections and basic exports. Action items exist as text within transcripts rather than synced tasks. Teams using Otter typically copy and paste action items into their actual work management systems, creating manual overhead and broken accountability chains.

The Business Dive's long-term testing highlighted this gap:

"Otter's action items don't sync to project management tools, which means someone still has to manually transfer every commitment into the systems where work actually gets tracked."

→ Try Fellow free to see how seamless integration eliminates manual handoff work.

Enterprise security and compliance

For organizations handling sensitive conversations, security isn't optional. Both Fellow and Otter offer SOC 2 Type II certification, but their broader security postures differ.

Fellow maintains SOC 2 Type II certification, GDPR compliance, and HIPAA compliance across all plan tiers that require it. Critically, Fellow never trains AI models on customer data. Permission-based access aligns to organizational roles, ensuring meeting intelligence stays appropriately controlled.

Otter provides SOC 2 Type II certification and limits HIPAA compliance to Enterprise plans. Their data training policies are less explicit, which creates uncertainty for organizations bound by strict data governance requirements.

Vyro Tutorials' security-focused review noted that Fellow's explicit "no training on customer data" commitment provides clearer legal ground for compliance-sensitive industries like healthcare, finance, and legal services.

→ Visit Fellow's Security and Trust Centre

Video recording and visual context

Some meetings require visual documentation. Product demos, whiteboard sessions, and presentation reviews lose critical context in audio-only transcripts.

Fellow includes video recording across supported platforms (Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet). Teams using Fellow can capture the full meeting experience when visual elements matter.

Otter focuses exclusively on audio transcription with no video recording capability.

According to Phil Pallen's comprehensive comparison, this limitation forces teams to use separate tools for visual documentation, fragmenting their meeting records.

Fellow and Otter: Pricing comparison

Fellow's value becomes clear when comparing actual team costs and included features:

At the team tier, Fellow costs less per user while offering more languages, better accuracy, and action item sync capabilities that Otter lacks entirely.

Who should choose Fellow

Fellow is the right choice for teams and organizations that need meetings to drive accountability and decisions. Specifically:

• Teams of any size requiring consistent transcription accuracy across accents, technical terminology, and multiple languages

• Security-conscious organizations in healthcare, finance, legal, or any industry with data governance requirements

• Companies using project management tools who need action items to sync automatically rather than requiring manual transfer

• Organizations wanting cross-meeting intelligence through Ask Fellow's ability to query across all conversations

• Teams needing recording flexibility with both bot and botless options under consistent governance

Who should choose Otter

Otter makes sense for a narrower use case:

• Individuals who primarily need basic transcription for personal reference

• Solo users not requiring team collaboration, action item sync, or cross-meeting intelligence

• English-primary environments where Otter's accuracy limitations with accents and technical jargon matter less

The verdict

For teams and organizations, Fellow wins. The combination of 95%+ accuracy across 92 languages, bot and botless recording options, enterprise security certifications, action items that sync to real project management tools, and cross-meeting intelligence through Ask Fellow creates a meeting assistant built for how organizations actually work.

Otter offers an affordable option for individuals, but independent reviewers consistently identify accuracy limitations and missing features that matter for team use. When meetings drive decisions and accountability, those gaps create real organizational cost.

→ Try Fellow free and experience the difference enterprise-grade meeting intelligence makes.