European Alternatives to Otter.ai
Looking for a European alternative to Otter.ai? Otter.ai, Inc. is a Delaware company in Mountain View, California, whose terms are governed by California law with the courts of Santa Clara County, and most disputes go to binding individual arbitration unless you opt out within 30 days.
Eleven European tools cover the same job of turning meetings and interviews into text and notes: file-based transcription services, a research transcription tool, and meeting notetakers, from companies in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, France, Finland, Romania and Switzerland.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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1
European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA or Switzerland, and processes customer data in Europe. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
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2
Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
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3
Compliance and pricing check
GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.
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Position on this page
Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a vendor. Paid placement can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. Editorial policy
11 European Alternatives to Otter.ai
Amberscript
Amsterdam transcription service with machine and human-made options, public euro prices and files stored in Europe
Good Tape
Copenhagen transcription for interviews and recordings, processed in the EU, with a free trial and no training on your files
Jamie
German meeting notes with no bot in the call, EU data centres, a free plan and prices in euros
f4 (audiotranskription)
Marburg software for transcribing and coding research interviews, with automatic transcription on servers in Germany
tl;dv
Aachen meeting recorder and notetaker for Zoom, Meet and Teams, with a free forever plan
Wudpecker
Finnish notetaker with a free plan, AWS storage in Frankfurt and Stockholm, and an OpenAI-written summary
MeetGeek
Meeting notes with a separate EU instance run by a Romanian company; pick the EU one when you sign up
Leexi
Brussels AI notetaker with more than 100 detected languages, hosted in Europe and ISO 27001 certified by its own account
Recapro
French meeting reports processed on servers in France or on your own, with no third-party AI engine and 300 free minutes
Meeting Metrics
St. Gallen notetaker hosted in Switzerland, from CHF 29 a user a month, with text sent to US model providers
Noota
Toulouse notetaker with a free start and recruitment-interview features, whose hosting region we could not confirm
Key takeaways
- Otter.ai, Inc. is a Delaware company in Mountain View, with California law, Santa Clara County courts and individual arbitration by default, with a 30-day opt-out.
- Amberscript (Amsterdam) is the broadest answer for transcripts: machine-made plans at €19, €29 and €49 a month and a human-made option, with files stored in Europe.
- Good Tape (Copenhagen) processes uploads in the EU, deletes files after processing unless you choose to keep them, and says it never trains on your files.
- Jamie (Rösrath, Germany) is the closest to Otter for meetings: a free plan, euro prices and no bot in the call, with production data in EU data centres.
- f4 (Marburg, Germany) is the odd one out, built for researchers who transcribe and code interviews, with automatic transcription on servers in Germany.
- Several notetakers send the transcript to a US language model for the summary, so ask about the AI step as well as about storage.
Why people leave Otter.ai
Otter.ai is the transcription and meeting-notes service many people meet first. A bot or the app records a Zoom, Teams or Google Meet call, or you upload an interview, and you get a searchable transcript with speaker labels, a summary and action items. Its Basic plan is free, with 300 transcription minutes a month and up to 30 minutes per conversation, and paid Pro, Business and Enterprise plans lift those limits.
It is run by Otter.ai, Inc., a Delaware company with its office in Mountain View, California. Its terms are governed by California law, with disputes in the courts of Santa Clara County, and section 19 sends most disputes to binding individual arbitration run by the American Arbitration Association, with a class-action waiver. You can opt out of the arbitration clause by writing to the company within 30 days.
This page covers tools for turning meetings and interviews into text and notes. Some are notetakers that join a call, two work without a bot, and three are file or research transcription tools that suit interviews better than a live meeting. All eleven are run by a company in the EU or Switzerland, but they differ a lot in where the data goes next, so the comparisons below say what each vendor states about hosting and about the AI step.
- The contract and the courts are American Otter.ai, Inc. contracts under California law with Santa Clara County courts, and the default for disputes is individual arbitration under AAA rules. For a business that records customer calls or candidate interviews, a European contracting party under European law is a simpler fact to put in a data protection file.
- Your recordings may train its models Otter's privacy policy lists, among the reasons it processes data, training its proprietary AI technology on de-identified audio recordings and on transcriptions, which it says may contain personal information. It is described as a reason for processing, not as something you switch on. Good Tape, Jamie and Amberscript each state in their own policies that they do not train on customer content, which is a check you can make before you choose.
- Storage sits with a US cloud provider The policy names Amazon Web Services, based in the United States, as the cloud provider for compute and storage, and Otter relies on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses for transfers. Those are lawful routes, but the data goes to the US. This list includes tools that state storage in Germany, France or Switzerland.
- Transcription is limited to six languages Otter's pricing page lists automatic transcription in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese. Several tools below publish a wider range: Good Tape says 100 languages, Leexi detects more than 100, Jamie lists 99+, and Amberscript sells both machine and human-made transcripts.
What you have to replace, not just match
Start by sorting what you record. A weekly team meeting wants a notetaker with a calendar link, speaker names and action items. A one-hour customer or research interview wants an accurate transcript you can edit and quote, and f4, Good Tape or Amberscript are built for that. Pick the first two or three on that basis and try each on a real recording before you decide.
Check three things on each tool before you import anything: which company you contract with, where the audio and transcript are stored, and which model providers see the text. Then ask everyone on the call for consent in the way your own law requires, which no tool settles for you. Export what you need from Otter first, since transcripts in a closed account are easy to lose.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Amberscript | Amsterdam, Netherlands | Machine transcription from €19/month (5 hrs) up to €49/month (25 hrs); pay-as-you-go from €6-€10/hr; human transcription from €1.85/min, subtitles from €4.40/min | EU (Netherlands) |
| #3 | Jamie | Rösrath, Germany | Free €0 (10 AI notes a month, 30-minute meetings) / Plus €21, Team €33, Pro €39 per month billed annually, Enterprise on request | EU (Germany) |
| #5 | tl;dv | Aachen, Germany | Free forever plan with unlimited recordings and transcripts / paid plan prices not readable on the vendor pages | EU (Germany) |
| #6 | Wudpecker | Helsinki, Finland | Free $0 (10 bot meetings a month) / Plus $19, Pro $32 per month, 20% off yearly | EU (Finland) |
| #7 | MeetGeek | Buzău, Romania | Free (3 hours a month) / Pro $15.99, Business $27 per user per month, Enterprise on request, 30% off for startups, non-profits and education | EU (Romania) |
| #8 | Leexi | Brussels, Belgium | Starter $12, AI-Meeting $23, Business $39 per month (struck-through list prices $15, $29, $49), Enterprise on request; add-ons Governance $5, Coach $16, Scaleway storage $5 | EU (Belgium) |
| #9 | Recapro | Essarts-en-Bocage, France | Cloud Starter free (300 minutes in total) / Solo €24.90, Team €22.90 per user (5+ users), Tailored €32.90 per user (3+ users) per month / Fortress €4,990 to €19,990 hardware plus €19.90 per seat per month | EU (France) |
| #10 | Meeting Metrics | St. Gallen, Switzerland | Basic CHF 29, Pro CHF 49 per month billed annually (the terms list CHF 59 and CHF 99 on monthly billing), Enterprise on request | Switzerland (St. Gallen) |
| #11 | Noota | Toulouse, France | EU (France) |
How each alternative compares to Otter.ai
- Which law reaches it. EU (Netherlands). Otter.ai, Inc. is incorporated in Delaware, USA, and run from Mountain View, California, USA, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Europe (vendor states files are stored in Europe).
- Source code. Closed source, as Otter.ai is.
- Independently checked. ISO 27001, ISO 9001, GDPR.
Best for: Teams that need accurate transcripts of recordings, with a machine or human-made option
Amberscript is run by Amberscript Global B.V. in Amsterdam (Herengracht 477), and its privacy policy also names Amberscript GmbH in Berlin. The policy says the data is never stored in locations outside Europe, and that audio and transcripts are not used to train the language models it uses. The company states ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certification.
Machine-made transcription is listed at €19 a month for 5 hours, €29 for 10 hours and €49 for 25 hours, with yearly prices of €190, €290 and €490. It describes machine accuracy as 90% or more and human-made transcripts as 99% or more, delivered by language experts.
It is built around files, not live meetings. The menu points to a separate notetaker called Amber Notes for meetings, which we could not review on its own pages.
What Amberscript does better than Otter.ai
- Public euro prices for every machine-made plan
- A human-made option when accuracy matters more than speed
- States storage in Europe and no training on your audio
- Dutch company, with its contract under Dutch jurisdiction
Where Amberscript is a step down from Otter.ai
- Aimed at files, with the meeting notetaker as a separate product
- Machine-made transcripts are described as 90%+ accurate, so they need a read-through
- Human-made transcripts mean people read your recording
- No free plan was listed on the pages we read
Standout against Otter.ai. It is the only one here that sells both machine and human-made transcripts at published prices.
Good Tape
a Danish transcription tool for interviews, processed in the EU
Best for: Journalists, researchers and consultants who transcribe recorded interviews
Good Tape is run by Good Tape ApS in Copenhagen (CVR 43724509, registered 2022). Its terms are under Danish law with arbitration in Copenhagen. The privacy policy says uploaded files go to servers in the European Union, that all collected information is stored and processed in the EU, and that files are deleted right after processing unless you choose to store them.
It says it never uses your data to train AI, and it lists its subprocessors on a separate page. The home page claims 100 languages, speaker labels, subtitle export, a recorder app for iOS and Android, a connector for AI assistants and an optional Explore add-on that is free during its launch and then €10 a month, or €8 on yearly billing.
The pricing page we read showed only the Explore add-on, so the prices of the transcription plans are not quoted here. The pages describe uploads and a recorder app, not a bot that joins your calls.
What Good Tape does better than Otter.ai
- Files processed in the EU and deleted after processing by default
- A free trial and a stated policy of no AI training
- Wider language claim than Otter's six transcription languages
- Built for interviews, with cases for journalism, academia and legal work
Where Good Tape is a step down from Otter.ai
- Plan prices could not be read on the pages we opened
- No bot that joins Zoom, Teams or Meet shown on its pages
- Built for transcripts, with no meeting workflow features described on the pages we read
- Its 100 languages and 3M users are its own claims
Standout against Otter.ai. Uploaded files are deleted straight after processing unless you ask it to keep them.
Jamie
the nearest to Otter for meetings, with no bot and a free plan
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Otter.ai, Inc. is incorporated in Delaware, USA, and run from Mountain View, California, USA, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. European Union: the privacy policy states production data is stored in data centres in the European Union, on Google Cloud Platform, with PlanetScale, Cloudflare, Modal Labs and OneSignal as further subprocessors.
- Source code. Closed source, as Otter.ai is.
- Independently checked. No certification published; encrypted in transit and at rest, no training on customer data.
Best for: Professionals who want meeting notes without a bot in the call, billed in euros
Jamie is run by wespond UG (haftungsbeschränkt) in Rösrath near Cologne (HRB 100335, Amtsgericht Köln). Its privacy policy states that production data is stored in data centres in the European Union, with standard contractual clauses or the Data Privacy Framework applying where a provider outside the EEA has access, and that meeting content is not used to train models.
The free plan includes 10 AI notes a month for meetings up to 30 minutes. Plus is €21, Team €33 and Pro €39 a month on annual billing, and the plans cover in-person meetings, 99+ languages, speaker recognition and task detection.
The home page says no bot joins your call. A UG is a limited liability company with a very small minimum share capital, so look at the customer references rather than the legal form.
What Jamie does better than Otter.ai
- No bot in the call, and in-person meetings are covered too
- Free plan and published euro prices
- Production data in the EU and no training on meeting content
- 99+ languages against Otter's six transcription languages
Where Jamie is a step down from Otter.ai
- Free plan caps meetings at 30 minutes and 10 notes a month
- Advanced integrations only on the Pro, Team and Enterprise plans
- The model providers behind the summaries are not named in what we read
- Free and Plus plans have fewer templates and no team workspace
Standout against Otter.ai. It is the only meeting notetaker here whose home page promises that no bot joins the call and that data stays in the EU.
f4 (audiotranskription)
research software for transcribing and coding interviews
Best for: Academics and market researchers who transcribe, correct and analyse interviews
f4 is sold by dr. dresing & pehl GmbH in Marburg (HRB 5141, Amtsgericht Marburg). Its pages say the automatic transcription is AI-based on servers in Germany and GDPR-compliant, with a free 15-minute test. The program also supports manual transcription with a USB foot switch and has tools for coding and memos.
Prices are listed in euros including VAT. Software licences run from €25 for three months for students to €149 for six months, €299 for two years and €449 for five years, and automatic transcription is bought in hours, from €25 for 2 hours to €440 for 50 hours and €1,599 for 200 hours. The shop is in German, and the English pages are a translation.
It is not a meeting notetaker: there is no bot, calendar link or action-item summary in the pages we read.
What f4 (audiotranskription) does better than Otter.ai
- Qualitative analysis and manual correction in the same program
- Automatic transcription on servers in Germany, with a free test
- Fully published prices, including student licences
- Pay for hours when you need them, with no monthly plan
Where f4 (audiotranskription) is a step down from Otter.ai
- Not built for live meetings, with no bot or calendar integration
- Software licence plus transcription hours is more to understand than a subscription
- The shop and parts of the site are in German
- No summaries or action items in what we read
Standout against Otter.ai. It combines automatic transcription, manual correction with a foot switch and qualitative coding in one research tool.
tl;dv
a free forever recorder for Zoom, Meet and Teams from Aachen
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Otter.ai, Inc. is incorporated in Delaware, USA, and run from Mountain View, California, USA, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EEA: Google Cloud and Wasabi in Germany, Hetzner in Germany and Finland; AI features may process transcripts in the US if the user selects that hosting preference.
- Source code. Closed source, as Otter.ai is.
- Independently checked. SOC 2 and ISO 27001 stated on the homepage; customer content never used for model training.
Best for: Teams that want recordings with transcripts and summaries at no cost to start
tl;dv is run by tldx Solutions GmbH in Aachen (Kaiser-Friedrich-Allee 51, HRB 23730, Amtsgericht Aachen). Its home page offers a free forever plan, transcripts, translation and summaries in 30+ languages, and mentions GDPR and SOC 2.
We could not read its privacy policy or its pricing page, which returned an error message when we opened them, so its storage location, its AI providers and the price of paid plans are not stated here.
It is built around meeting recordings with video, which is wider than a transcript-only tool and which means more personal data is kept.
What tl;dv does better than Otter.ai
- A free forever plan on the home page
- German company with an imprint naming the commercial register entry
- 30+ languages for transcription and translation
- Records and stores video, not only text
Where tl;dv is a step down from Otter.ai
- Hosting location and AI subprocessors could not be verified
- Paid prices could not be read
- SOC 2 and GDPR on the home page are its own claims
- More data kept per meeting, because video is stored
Standout against Otter.ai. A free forever plan from a German company that records the meeting itself, not only the text.
Wudpecker
a Finnish notetaker with a free plan and AWS in Frankfurt and Stockholm
- Which law reaches it. EU (Finland). Otter.ai, Inc. is incorporated in Delaware, USA, and run from Mountain View, California, USA, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Germany and Sweden: the privacy policy names AWS regions eu-central-1 (Frankfurt) and eu-north-1 (Stockholm); the OpenAI API is used for summaries.
- Source code. Closed source, as Otter.ai is.
Best for: Small teams that want a free notetaker bot and are fine with an OpenAI-written summary
Wudpecker is run by Wudpecker Oy, a Finnish limited company in the national register (business ID 3246674-5, registered in 2021). Its privacy policy says information is stored on AWS in the EU regions of Frankfurt (eu-central-1) and Stockholm (eu-north-1).
The same policy says it uses OpenAI's API to summarise meeting transcripts, so the text goes to a US provider for that step. The free plan includes 10 meetings a month with its notetaker bot, and there is a two-week premium trial that needs no credit card.
We read the policy and pricing page, but not an imprint with a street address.
What Wudpecker does better than Otter.ai
- States its AWS regions, which is more than several competitors do
- Free plan and a premium trial with no credit card
- Finnish company in the EU, checked in the national register
- Names the model provider it uses for summaries
Where Wudpecker is a step down from Otter.ai
- Summaries go through OpenAI's API, a US provider
- The free plan allows 10 bot meetings a month
- Uses a bot that joins the call
- A young, small company
Standout against Otter.ai. It is the one here that names both its EU storage regions and its US model provider in the same policy.
MeetGeek
an EU instance under a Romanian company, if you choose it at sign-up
- Which law reaches it. EU (Romania). Otter.ai, Inc. is incorporated in Delaware, USA, and run from Mountain View, California, USA, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU or US by instance: the EU instance stores data in the EU under Romanian law; the US instance is contracted with MeetGeek US Infra, Inc. (Delaware).
- Source code. Closed source, as Otter.ai is.
- Independently checked. SOC 2, GDPR and HIPAA stated on the pricing page.
Best for: Teams that want an Otter-style notetaker and can pick the EU instance
MeetGeek runs two separate instances. On the EU instance the contracting company is AIVISION PRODUCTS SRL in Buzău, Romania (CUI 43674804), customer content is stored in the EU and Romanian law applies. On the US instance it is MeetGeek US Infra, Inc. in Delaware, and Delaware law applies. The instance you sign up for decides which one you have.
Its pricing page lists Pro at $15.99 and Business at $27 per user a month, a choice of data storage region (EU or US), SOC 2, GDPR and HIPAA, and says your data is not used to train external models. Prices are in dollars even on the EU instance.
The risk is a wrong choice: a user who signs up without noticing which instance they are on may end up contracting with a US company.
What MeetGeek does better than Otter.ai
- A real EU instance with a Romanian company and Romanian law
- API and connectors, including MCP, on its pricing page
- A free start, and a no-training statement
- More integrations than the smaller European tools
Where MeetGeek is a step down from Otter.ai
- Two entities in one product, so you have to choose carefully
- Prices are in US dollars
- The US sister company is a US contract if you pick the wrong instance
- SOC 2 and HIPAA are claims on its pricing page
Standout against Otter.ai. Its terms name two companies and two governing laws, and you choose between them at sign-up.
Leexi
a Brussels AI suite that detects more than 100 languages
- Which law reaches it. EU (Belgium). Otter.ai, Inc. is incorporated in Delaware, USA, and run from Mountain View, California, USA, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Europe: the privacy policy states data is hosted on AWS servers located in Europe, with no country named; a Scaleway storage add-on is sold separately.
- Source code. Closed source, as Otter.ai is.
- Independently checked. No certification found on the pages that were read.
Best for: Multilingual teams in Belgium and France that want notes, search and coaching in one suite
Leexi is a Belgian company, whose legal notice gives LEEXI at 2 Avenue Herrmann Debroux, 1160 Brussels, with VAT number BE 0782 527 110. Its home page says the data is hosted in Europe and that the service is GDPR-compliant and ISO 27001 certified, and claims more than 100 languages detected automatically.
The product is a suite of 13 tools around a notetaker, including search across meetings, coaching and a knowledge base, with a free trial. We did not find readable prices on its pricing page.
'Hosted in Europe' does not name a country or a cloud provider on the page we read.
What Leexi does better than Otter.ai
- Belgian company with a legal notice and VAT number
- More than 100 languages detected automatically
- Search, coaching and knowledge base around the notetaker
- A free trial and a stated ISO 27001 certificate
Where Leexi is a step down from Otter.ai
- Prices could not be read on the pricing page
- Hosting is 'Europe', with no country or provider named
- A larger suite than a simple transcription need
- ISO 27001 and the 100-language claim are its own statements
Standout against Otter.ai. It is a Belgian company that surrounds its notetaker with search, coaching and a knowledge base.
Recapro
no bot, France or your own server, and no third-party AI engine
- Which law reaches it. EU (France). Otter.ai, Inc. is incorporated in Delaware, USA, and run from Mountain View, California, USA, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. France: French data centres in Vendée and Paris, or an air-gapped server on the customer's premises.
- Source code. Closed source, as Otter.ai is.
- Independently checked. No certification published; TLS 1.3 in transit, AES-256 at rest, no data used for training.
Best for: Organisations where meeting content must not reach a US model provider
Recapro is run by NOBULLSHIT CONSEIL SAS in Essarts-en-Bocage (SIREN 989 598 727, RCS La Roche-sur-Yon), with a share capital of €1,000 stated in its legal notice. Its home page says transcription and summarisation run on its servers in France, or on yours, that no third-party AI engine reads your meetings, and that no bot joins your calls.
It advertises 300 free minutes with no credit card, apps for iOS, Android, Mac and Windows and a web app, and an on-premise offer. Its paid and on-premise prices are not taken from the page we read.
The company is small and young, so ask about continuity and support before you commit a team to it.
What Recapro does better than Otter.ai
- Names no third-party AI engine and keeps processing in France or on your server
- No bot, and apps for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android
- 300 free minutes without a credit card
- The only tool here with a physical on-premise option
Where Recapro is a step down from Otter.ai
- A very small company, with €1,000 of share capital in its legal notice
- Free minutes are a total, not a monthly allowance
- Paid prices were not on the page we read
- Fewer integrations than Otter
Standout against Otter.ai. It is the one tool here that says the AI step runs on its own servers in France, or on yours.
Meeting Metrics
Swiss hosting and Swiss law, with the text sent to US model providers
- Which law reaches it. Switzerland (St. Gallen). Otter.ai, Inc. is incorporated in Delaware, USA, and run from Mountain View, California, USA, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Switzerland: servers in St. Gallen hosted by HostTech; audio and video stay there, text goes to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI unless the Enterprise plan runs the AI locally.
- Source code. Closed source, as Otter.ai is.
- Independently checked. No certification published; GDPR and the revised Swiss Data Protection Act stated.
Best for: Swiss and DACH teams that want audio and files to stay in Switzerland
Meeting Metrics is run by Meeting Metrics GmbH in St. Gallen (Lerchenfeldstrasse 3, CHE-355.175.403). Its terms apply Swiss law with St. Gallen as the venue. Its privacy page says the website and the application are hosted by HostTech on servers in Switzerland.
The same page says it uses language model services from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI to analyse text, unless an Enterprise plan restricts processing to its Swiss servers. Basic is CHF 29 and Pro CHF 49 per user a month on annual billing (CHF 348 and CHF 588 a year), with Basic covering 30 meetings a month of up to 2 hours and 57 languages.
It is a Swiss company, which is not an EU or EEA member state, and the site is mostly in German.
What Meeting Metrics does better than Otter.ai
- Hosting in Switzerland and Swiss law with a Swiss court
- Prices published in francs for both plans
- Local AI option on the Enterprise plan
- States compliance with the revised Swiss data protection act and the GDPR
Where Meeting Metrics is a step down from Otter.ai
- Outside the EU and the EEA
- Text goes to four US model providers on the standard plans
- No free plan, only a free trial
- Site and legal texts are mainly in German
Standout against Otter.ai. Audio stays in St. Gallen, but the text goes to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI unless you buy the Enterprise plan.
Noota
a Toulouse notetaker with a free start, whose hosting we could not confirm
- Which law reaches it. EU (France). Otter.ai, Inc. is incorporated in Delaware, USA, and run from Mountain View, California, USA, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. France, Belgium and the Netherlands: the security page states Google Cloud Platform data centres exclusively in Europe.
- Source code. Closed source, as Otter.ai is.
- Independently checked. Security page: SOC 2 Type II audit ongoing, ISO 27001 in preparation, GDPR; homepage lists ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II as held.
Best for: French-speaking teams that want a notetaker with interview and recruitment features
Noota is run by NOOTA, registered in Toulouse (SIREN 888965951, 13 rue Sainte Ursule), as confirmed in the French company register. Its home page offers a free start and an AI notetaker with recruitment-interview features.
The home page says SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, calls its architecture SecNumCloud-enabled and says it is AI Act and GDPR compliant. Its own legal and security pages returned errors when we opened them, so where it stores data, whom it uses for the AI step and what a paid plan costs are not stated here.
Treat the certificates as claims until you have asked for the documents.
What Noota does better than Otter.ai
- French company confirmed in the national register
- A free start, with interview and recruitment features
- States SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 on its home page
- Multilingual interface in six languages
Where Noota is a step down from Otter.ai
- Hosting, subprocessors and prices could not be verified
- Certificates are claims on a home page we could not back up
- No legal notice could be read on its own site
- Less documentation than the other French tool, Recapro
Standout against Otter.ai. A French notetaker whose only verified fact here is the company register entry.
What actually breaks when you switch
The transcripts are easy to export, but the surroundings are not. Speaker names, templates, shared folders and integrations are set up per tool, and none of these will import an Otter workspace. Export the transcripts and audio you still need, name the files clearly and keep them in your own storage.
A European company does not guarantee that the whole chain stays in Europe. Several notetakers pass the transcript to a US model provider, and MeetGeek has a US instance under a different company. Ask three questions of every vendor: who is my contracting party, where are audio and text stored, and which providers see the text.
Prices are hard to compare. Amberscript and f4 sell hours, Jamie, Meeting Metrics and Wudpecker sell seats, and Good Tape, tl;dv, Leexi and Noota did not show readable plan prices on the pages we opened. Run your real monthly volume through each pricing model before you choose.
Which of these is the closest to Otter.ai?
For meetings, Jamie, tl;dv, Wudpecker and MeetGeek are the nearest in shape: they record or capture a meeting, write a transcript and a summary, and have a free plan or a free start. Jamie works without a bot joining the call, while tl;dv and Wudpecker describe a notetaker that joins Zoom, Meet or Teams.
For recordings and interviews, Amberscript and Good Tape cover the upload-and-transcribe side that Otter also offers, and neither is built around a bot at all.
Which tools are better for interviews than for meetings?
f4, Good Tape and Amberscript. f4 is built for researchers: it transcribes automatically or by hand, with a foot switch option, and has qualitative analysis tools in the same program. Good Tape lists journalism, academia and legal as its cases, and Amberscript sells a human-made transcript for work that has to be accurate.
A meeting notetaker is optimised for summaries and action items, not for a verbatim transcript you will quote in a report.
Does a European company mean the AI step stays in Europe?
No, and it is the question most worth asking. Wudpecker names the OpenAI API for summaries, and Meeting Metrics sends text to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI while keeping audio in Switzerland, unless the Enterprise plan runs the AI locally. Recapro says transcription and summarising run on its servers in France or on yours, and that no third-party AI engine reads your meetings.
For the others, the pages we could open say where files are stored but not always which model writes the summary, so ask the vendor before you record sensitive calls.
Is there a way to keep recordings on my own server?
Recapro is the only tool here that sells an on-premise server, through its On-Premise offer, and its pages say processing can run on your own servers. f4 is installed software on your own computer, but its automatic transcription is a service on servers in Germany. Every other tool is a cloud service.
If a physical server is a requirement, Recapro is the one to talk to, and its price is not on the page we read.
Does Switzerland count as European here?
Meeting Metrics is a Swiss company, so it is in Europe but outside the EU and the EEA. It states hosting at a Swiss provider and Swiss law. If you need the EU or EEA specifically, the other ten tools here are in EU member states.
Which one to pick
If you mainly want meeting notes, start with Jamie, which has a free plan, euro prices, no bot in the call and production data in EU data centres. Add tl;dv, Wudpecker or MeetGeek (on its EU instance) if you want a notetaker that joins the call, and Recapro if the AI step must stay in France or on your own server.
If you mainly transcribe recordings and interviews, use Amberscript for published prices and a human-made option, Good Tape for a quick EU-processed transcript, and f4 if you are a researcher who will correct and code the text.
Be realistic about the gap. Otter is a mature, well-integrated product, with live transcription in a call and a large user base, and several of these tools are younger and smaller. Several of the eleven did not give us readable prices or a verifiable hosting statement, and we have said which. Switch if a contracting party under European law and clear statements about storage and the AI step matter to you, and keep Otter if you need its integrations.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends on the job. For meeting notes, Jamie is the closest: a German company with a free plan, euro prices, no bot in the call and production data in EU data centres. For transcripts of recordings and interviews, Amberscript and Good Tape are the better fit. For academic interviews that you will also code and analyse, f4 is the specialist.
No. Otter.ai, Inc. is a Delaware company with its address in Mountain View, California. Its terms are governed by California law and, with an opt-out within 30 days, disputes go to individual arbitration. It also says that it relies on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework for transfers of personal data.
Its privacy policy lists training its proprietary AI technology on de-identified audio recordings and on transcriptions, which it says may contain personal information, as one of the purposes of processing. It does not describe this as a setting you control. Check the current policy and your own agreement before you record sensitive material.
Its Basic plan is free, with 300 transcription minutes a month and up to 30 minutes per conversation. Paid Pro, Business and Enterprise plans raise those limits. The pricing page shows more than one set of amounts, including an offer tied to an Indian credit card, so no price is quoted here. Check the figure for your country before you buy.
Amberscript lists machine-made transcription at €19 a month for 5 hours, €29 for 10 hours and €49 for 25 hours, or €190, €290 and €490 a year. f4 sells automatic transcription as hours, from €25 for 2 hours to €1,599 for 200 hours including VAT, plus software licences from €149 for six months to €449 for five years. Meeting Metrics lists CHF 29 and CHF 49 per user a month on annual billing.
Jamie has a free plan with 10 AI notes a month and meetings up to 30 minutes, and paid plans at €21 (Plus), €33 (Team) and €39 (Pro) a month billed annually. Recapro advertises 300 free minutes with no credit card and has paid and on-premise plans whose prices we did not take from its page.
Jamie, tl;dv ("free forever"), Wudpecker, Leexi, Noota and MeetGeek all offer a free start on their own pages, and Recapro gives 300 free minutes. Good Tape has a free trial, and f4 offers a 15-minute test of its automatic transcription. Amberscript and Meeting Metrics sell paid plans, and Meeting Metrics also offers a free trial.
MeetGeek runs two separate instances, one under a Romanian company with EU storage and one under a US company with US storage, and you choose when you sign up. Recapro offers France or your own server. Most others state one region or say only that data stays in Europe.
It can be. Its terms describe two instances. On the EU instance the contracting company is AIVISION PRODUCTS SRL in Buzău, Romania, customer content is stored in the EU and Romanian law applies. On the US instance the company is MeetGeek US Infra, Inc. in Delaware. Only the EU instance counts, so choose it when you sign up.
Otter lists export on its paid plans, so check what your plan allows, but none of these tools imports an Otter workspace. The practical route is to export transcripts and audio you still need, then keep them as files and start recording new meetings in the new tool.
No tool answers that for you. Recording rules differ by country, and many require everyone on a call to know it is being recorded. That applies equally to Otter and to every tool on this page, so build the announcement into your meeting routine.
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