The best Otter.ai alternative for Mac depends on which part of Otter you want gone. For no bot and no cloud, pick a local app such as Quietly, MacWhisper, Meetily, or Anarlog. Granola and Krisp skip the bot but transcribe in the cloud. tl;dv and Fireflies work like Otter, with a bot in the call by default.
The Notetaker is in the call. By default it joins meetings that have a video link, and Otter's help center says the “Notetaker cannot join a meeting anonymously or without appearing to other participants.”
Botless still means uploaded. Otter for Mac can record from your mic and system audio with no Notetaker, but the desktop app sends that audio to Otter's servers to transcribe.
$16.99 a month for Pro. Paying a year up front brings it to $8.33 a month, and Business costs $30 per user a month (Otter pricing).
The free plan runs out. Basic caps you at 300 transcription minutes a month and 30 minutes per conversation, and exports only TXT and MP3.
The first six record with no bot. tl;dv and Fireflies keep Otter’s bot-first model.
A Mac app that records Zoom, Meet, Teams, and in-person meetings from system audio and your mic, with no bot in the call. Whisper large-v3 and an on-device LLM turn the audio into a clean transcript on your Mac, and the note lands as plain Markdown in a folder you pick. It has no Windows version, no live captions, and no shared team workspace. See the full Quietly vs Otter comparison.
Granola records from your Mac with no bot and writes a summary from the transcript and your own notes. It runs on Windows, iPhone, and Android too. Your audio goes to its transcription providers in the cloud and your notes live on its servers, and the free plan keeps 30 days of history. Before an NDA call, read is Granola safe for confidential meetings? or the Quietly vs Granola comparison.
Krisp began as a noise canceller, and that part runs on your Mac. Its Meeting Assistant records calls with no bot by default, then transcribes in Krisp's cloud; on-device transcription is an Enterprise option. There is no free plan, only a 7-day trial. See the Quietly vs Krisp comparison.
An MIT-licensed recorder for Mac and Windows. It captures your mic and system audio with no bot and transcribes in real time on your machine with Parakeet or Whisper, and it bundles a local model for summaries. The Mac build needs Apple Silicon. Meeting auto-detection and PDF or DOCX export come with Pro, at $10 per user a month billed yearly.
The open-source notetaker that used to be called Hyprnote. It records your mic and system audio without joining the call and can start on calendar meetings. It needs macOS 15 or later, and on-device transcription needs Apple Silicon. Local summaries run through Ollama, LM Studio, or Apple Intelligence, and Pro adds cloud transcription and sync for $15 a month.
Jordi Bruin's Whisper app, built first for transcribing audio files. Pro adds meeting recording: it detects Zoom, Teams, Slack, and browser calls, records them with no bot, and transcribes on your Mac. Pro also brings Markdown and DOCX export, plus summaries through your own API key or Ollama and LM Studio. The free version handles files and mic recordings.
tl;dv records calls as video, then cuts clips and highlights you can share with your team. Its bot asks to join each call by default, and the desktop app has an audio-only mode that records without it. Recordings upload to tl;dv's cloud in Europe. See the Quietly vs tl;dv comparison.
A cloud notetaker for teams. Its bot, Fireflies.ai Notetaker, joins every meeting with a video link unless you turn auto-join off, and the Mac app can record system audio without it, with generic speaker labels. Fireflies stores and processes calls in US cloud infrastructure, and Pro adds Markdown, PDF, and DOCX exports. See the Quietly vs Fireflies comparison.
All eight have a Mac app. Otter is the last row, as the baseline.
| Tool | In the call | Audio transcribed | Notes you get | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quietly | No bot | On your Mac | Markdown files | $49 once · 2 Macs |
| Granola | No bot | Cloud | In-app · CSV export | Free · $14/user·mo |
| Krisp | No bot | Cloud (on-device on Enterprise) | In-app · TXT export | $16/user·mo |
| Meetily | No bot | On your Mac | In-app · exports on Pro | Free · Pro $120/user·yr |
| Anarlog (formerly Hyprnote) | No bot | On your Mac (Apple Silicon) | Markdown, PDF, text | Free · Pro $15/mo |
| MacWhisper | No bot | On your Mac (cloud optional) | TXT, SRT · Markdown on Pro | Free · Pro €64 once |
| tl;dv | Bot by default | Cloud (EU) | Video, clips, in-app | Free · Pro $29/seat·mo |
| Fireflies | Bot by default | Cloud (US) | In-app · Markdown on Pro | Free · Pro $18/seat·mo |
| Otter | Bot by default | Cloud | In-app · DOCX, PDF on Pro | Free · Pro $16.99/mo |
Subscriptions at monthly billing where offered. Prices from each vendor’s own site, checked on 2026-09-25: Otter · Granola · Krisp · Meetily · Anarlog · MacWhisper · tl;dv · Fireflies.
If the bot bothers you, every tool here can record from your Mac without one (MacWhisper needs Pro for that), and so can Otter’s desktop app. In tl;dv you lose video on that path, and in Fireflies you lose speaker names. If the audio can’t leave your Mac, you need local transcription: Quietly, MacWhisper Pro, Meetily, or Anarlog on Apple Silicon. We compare those in more depth in the best local meeting note takers for Mac. If you want to stop paying monthly, Quietly ($49) and MacWhisper Pro (€64) cost once, and Meetily and Anarlog are free without their Pro plans. If your team works from shared notes, Granola, Fireflies, and tl;dv keep them in a cloud workspace. For how botless capture works, read AI note takers that don’t join your meetings.
Quietly records without a bot, transcribes on your Mac, and saves Markdown you own. $49 once, no subscription.