AI meeting notes: which minutes does your subscription cover?

Summary: For meeting notes, compare the minutes allowed for your recording method and the length of one meeting before comparing the monthly price. Otter Pro and Notta Pro have monthly transcription allowances. HappyScribe separates meeting recordings from AI credits for uploaded files, so dividing all three plans by a single minute allowance would compare different jobs.

Transcription turns speech into text; a summary is a separate, shorter output. A tool that records meetings may also transcribe files you upload, with different limits. Decide which of those routes you will use, and whether the result is an internal note, subtitles or a transcript for a client.

What the annual plans cover

Sources: the three linked official pricing pages, checked 10 October 2026. The table uses USD annual offers, not a currency conversion of Japanese prices. Monthly-equivalent rates do not mean monthly payments. HappyScribe’s calculated annual amounts are $19 × 12 = $228 and $59 × 12 = $708. Otter’s rounded $8.33 display is about $100 per user for twelve months; check the annual invoice rather than treating $99.96 as the exact charge.

A monthly quota can run out in one busy month

Twenty one-hour meetings total 1,200 minutes (20 × 60). That uses Otter Pro’s displayed meeting/recording allowance for one user. Notta Pro’s 1,800 minutes correspond to thirty one-hour meetings if you use all of the allowance for them. Neither calculation leaves room for other recordings, and a ninety-minute Otter meeting can reach the per-conversation limit while the monthly balance still has minutes left.

For uploaded interviews or videos, count files as well as minutes. Otter Pro’s ten monthly imports may matter before its minute allowance does. At HappyScribe, the annual uploaded-file pool can be useful for uneven production schedules, but it is a different allowance from live meeting recording. A plan’s theoretical cost per minute also assumes you use the full quota; unused capacity is still paid for.

Test the words you actually need to recognize

Notta lists custom vocabulary for English and Japanese, and Otter lists Japanese among its transcription languages. Those features are useful reasons to test both with your own names and terminology; they are not evidence that one will be more accurate on your audio. For subtitles or translated deliverables, check HappyScribe’s editing and export workflow as well as the transcription.

Use a short representative excerpt that you are allowed to upload. Notta Free has 120 monthly minutes but a three-minute conversation limit. Otter Basic has 300 monthly minutes and a thirty-minute conversation limit. HappyScribe Free allows meeting recordings up to 45 minutes each, while its uploaded-file AI allowance is a ten-minute trial. These caps mean a free test may not cover your longest meeting in full.

Seats and extra minutes change the bill

Otter’s prices are per user; Notta Business also has a seat selector. HappyScribe includes three seats on Pro and five on Business, but those seats do not multiply the uploaded-file pool. Write down how many people need access before comparing the workspace total.

HappyScribe lists extra uploaded-file AI credits at $0.20 per minute. Two hundred additional minutes cost $40 (200 × $0.20), the difference between the Pro and Business annual monthly equivalents ($59 − $19). That is a useful point to reprice a recurring upload workload, provided you compare the same billing period. Human proofreading is a separate service, not included in those AI credits.

Pay for the workflow you will use

For recurring meeting notes, shortlist Otter and Notta against the language, length and recording route you need. For subtitle production or a mix of meetings and uploaded media, compare HappyScribe’s separate allowances and editing tools. If a free plan’s limits cover your actual work, there is no reason to buy an annual plan solely to test it. If they do not, verify a short sample first and choose a paid term only when the workflow fits.

Sources

Otter pricing, Notta English pricing and HappyScribe pricing: prices, seats, recording/upload allowances, free-plan limits and extra AI credits. Checked 10 October 2026.

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