Otter’s bot joins your call, the transcript lives in Otter’s cloud, and you pay $17/mo forever. Quietly captures the same meetings on your Mac — a transcript just as clean, as plain Markdown, nothing uploaded — for $49 once.
Plain .md. Front-matter has attendees, calendar, duration. Body is clean, LLM-polished Whisper output.
OtterPilot announces itself. “Otter has joined the meeting” — in front of every customer, every candidate, every legal call.
Audio + transcripts in Otter's cloud. One breach, one TOS change, one acquisition away from being a problem you have to explain.
$17/mo, forever. $204/year just to ask Otter's chatbot questions about meetings you already attended.
Locked behind their UI. Your transcripts open in Otter, and only Otter. Cursor, Codex, Claude — all blocked.
| Quietly | Otter | |
|---|---|---|
| How audio is captured | System audio + mic, on your Mac | OtterPilot bot joins |
| Where transcript lives | Your Mac, Markdown | Otter cloud |
| Note format | Plain .md | Web app + .txt/.docx |
| Works offline (after activation) | ||
| MCP for Claude / Cursor / Codex | Shipping next | |
| In-person meetings | Mic mode | Mobile app only |
| NDA / sensitive call friendly | No bot, no cloud copy | Bot in call |
| Pricing | $49 once | $17/mo · $30/seat Business |
We're not pretending these don't exist. If any of these are dealbreakers, stay on Otter.
Otter shows captions as people speak — useful for accessibility and live demos. Quietly transcribes after.
Otter has full mobile recording. Quietly is macOS-only today; a phone port is on the roadmap.
Otter Business pushes notes into your CRM. Quietly's path is Markdown → your folder → whatever scripts you write.
Half of Otter's churn is “the bot embarrassed me on a sensitive call.” Quietly captures system audio with no third party in the room.
Audio + transcript stay on your Mac. Outbound traffic is limited to model downloads, update checks, and (if you opt in) Google Calendar polling — never audio or transcripts.
Otter Pro = $204/year. Quietly = $49 once. The version you bought is yours forever.
An MCP server for Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Codex CLI is shipping next; today the notes are plain Markdown your editor's file readers already pick up. No Otter chatbot tier required.
Open Quietly and hit ⌘R for a mic-only recording. Pick Transcribe a file… to convert any audio file. Otter assumes a meeting link.
VS Code, Atlas.ti, Cursor, Codex CLI, your shell. Otter exports; Quietly never imports in the first place.
Export your Otter transcripts. Settings → Export → choose .txt or .docx.
Convert to Markdown. A one-line shell script (pandoc *.docx -o *.md), or paste into any Markdown editor.
Drop into your Quietly folder. Done. Cursor, Codex, and Claude pick them up immediately.
Stuck? Email support@meetquietly.com. We help.
Free 7-day trial · No account, no card. 7-day refund. $49 once, no subscription.