Otter’s OtterPilot announces itself in your Zoom call. The transcript lives in Otter’s cloud. You pay $17/mo to ask its chatbot questions about your own meetings. Quietly does the meeting part on your Mac, hands you plain Markdown, and costs $49 once.
| Quietly | Otter | |
|---|---|---|
| How audio is captured | System audio + mic, on your Mac | OtterPilot bot joins the call |
| Where audio + transcript live | Your Mac. Audio deleted after transcription unless you keep it. | Otter cloud |
| Note format | Plain .md in your folder | Otter web app + .txt/.docx export |
| Works without internet | ✓ (after activation) | — |
| MCP / Claude / Cursor integration | ✓ Native | — |
| In-person meetings | ✓ Mic mode | Mobile app only |
| Pricing | $49 once · $199 team | $17/mo Pro · $30/user/mo Business |
| NDA / sensitive call friendly | ✓ No bot, no cloud copy | Bot in the call, cloud transcript |
Otter shows live captions during the call — useful for accessibility and live demos. Quietly transcribes after.
Otter has iOS / Android apps for in-person capture. Quietly is macOS-only today.
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. The only network call is a once-a-day license check. Air-gap after activation if you need to.
Otter Pro = $17/mo = $204/year. Quietly = $49 once. Three months in you’re ahead, and the version you bought is yours.
Quietly ships an MCP server. Claude Desktop and Cursor can ask “what did we decide about the Q3 launch?” — without paying Otter’s chatbot tier.
⌘R from the menu bar starts a mic-only recording. Drop any audio file onto the tray to transcribe. Otter assumes a meeting link.
Obsidian, VS Code, Atlas.ti, Cursor, your shell. Otter exports; Quietly never imports in the first place.
Export your Otter transcripts as .txt or .docx (Settings → Export). Convert to .md (a one-line shell script, or paste them into Obsidian as Markdown). Drop into the folder Quietly watches. Done.
$49 personal · $199 team. 7-day trial, no card. 30-day refund.