Try it on your next lecture
Free for 14 days on iPhone and Android, with every feature.
Otter is a meeting transcription service with live captions and team plans. YostNotes is an AI note taker that turns lectures, meetings, videos and documents into notes you can ask questions of and study from.
Checked against Otter's public pricing page, October 2026.
| YostNotes | Otter.ai | |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 14-day trial with every feature. No free plan after it. | Basic, $0: 300 minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation, 3 file imports in total |
| Individual plan | Pro: $14.99 a month or $169.99 a year | Pro: $16.99 a month, or $8.33 a month billed yearly |
| Recording limits | 420 audio minutes a month, up to 3 hours per recording; 100-minute top-ups | Pro: 1,200 minutes a month, up to 90 minutes per conversation, 10 file imports a month |
| Asking AI about your notes | 50 questions a month | Pro: 50 AI chat queries a month |
| Text, YouTube, links, PDFs | Unlimited; never use audio minutes | Not supported |
US list prices, October 2026. Otter also offers student discounts and promotions. Check otter.ai/pricing for the current figures.
| Feature | YostNotes | Otter.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Record in person on a phone | ✓ Up to 3 hours, keeps recording offline | ✓ 30 or 90 minutes per conversation, by plan |
| Live transcript while recording | ✕ Transcript arrives after | ✓ Every plan |
| Assistant that joins video calls | ✕ No bot, by design | ✓ |
| YouTube, web links, PDFs, pasted text | ✓ | ✕ Audio and video only |
| Spoken language | ✓ Detected automatically, 99 languages | ◐ A few languages, picked by hand |
| Structured summary | ✓ Sections fit the content: lecture, meeting, document | ✓ |
| Speakers named automatically | ✓ From what's said, remembered per folder | ◐ Tag speakers yourself |
| Ask questions across your notes, with sources | ✓ | ✓ |
| Flashcards with spaced repetition | ✓ Plus Anki export | ✕ |
| Quizzes | ✓ 10 sourced questions, graded for meaning; misses become flashcards | ◐ By asking AI chat |
| Edit a note by chatting | ✓ "Fix the speaker names", "move decisions to the top" | ◐ |
| End-to-end encrypted sync | ✓ iPhone, Android and web | ✕ |
| Team workspace, integrations | ✕ Built for one person | ✓ |
| Platforms | iPhone, iPad, Android | Web, iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows, Chrome |
Otter caps a conversation at 30 minutes on Basic and 90 on Pro. YostNotes records up to 3 hours in one go, and a phone call in the middle can't cost you the recording.
Every YostNotes note comes with flashcards on a spaced-repetition schedule. Quizzes are a real feature: sourced questions, short answers graded for meaning, and missed questions turned into cards.
Share a YouTube video, a web article or a PDF and YostNotes gives you the same summary and study set, without using any audio minutes.
If you need to read along as someone speaks, Otter does that and YostNotes doesn't. YostNotes gives you the full transcript and summary once the recording ends.
Yes, if you want to study from your recordings. YostNotes records lectures up to 3 hours and turns each one into a summary, flashcards and a quiz. If you mainly need live captions in class, Otter is the better fit.
Up to 3 hours per recording in YostNotes. Otter allows 30 minutes per conversation on Basic and 90 minutes on Pro.
No. YostNotes records with your phone's microphone and never sends a bot into a meeting.
YostNotes detects the spoken language automatically, across 99 languages, and writes the summary and flashcards in that language.
There's a 14-day free trial with every feature. After that, Pro is $14.99 a month or $169.99 a year.
Free for 14 days on iPhone and Android, with every feature.