Is there a truly free Otter alternative?

Yes, if free means no minute meter and no card on file. JustWrite is free with no account and no monthly cap, because the transcription runs in your browser instead of on a server, so each one costs nothing to provide. The honest trade is that you don't get Otter's speaker labels or AI summaries; you get every word, exactly as spoken.

Does Otter store my recordings?

Otter processes and stores your audio and transcripts in its cloud so you can play them back and search them later. That's useful, but it also means your recording lives on their servers under their retention and data-handling policies. If you'd rather nothing be stored off your machine, you need a tool that transcribes on-device.

What's the Otter free plan limit?

Otter's free tier caps how many minutes you can transcribe per month and how long a single conversation can run, and those numbers change over time. Check Otter's current pricing page for exact figures. The point is that there's a meter. An on-device tool has no meter to hit because there's no server counting your minutes.

Does the alternative work offline like a local app?

Yes. After your browser downloads the model the first time, transcription keeps working with your Wi-Fi off. Load the page once, go airplane mode, and it still turns speech into text. The one part that needs a connection is the optional Polish cleanup step; the transcription itself doesn't.

Does it label who said what, the way Otter does?

No. JustWrite gives you a single verbatim transcript, not a speaker-by-speaker breakdown. If separating voices is the whole job, Otter does that and we don't. If you just need every word in clean text, without uploading anything, that's exactly what we do.

A Free Otter.ai Alternative That Does Not Upload Your Audio

Otter.ai is a good product, but two things push people to look for an alternative: its free plan meters your minutes, and it keeps your recordings in its cloud. If you want to turn speech into text for free with no monthly cap, and you'd rather your audio never leave your device, here's a tool that does exactly that, plus an honest look at what you trade away.

Does Otter store your recordings?

Yes. Otter uploads your audio, transcribes it on its servers, and stores both the recording and the transcript in your account so you can search and replay them later. That storage is the feature for a lot of people. It's also the thing to think twice about if the recording is a client call, a therapy session, a legal matter, or anything you wouldn't want sitting on a company's infrastructure. A privacy policy is a promise about what a company will do with your data. It isn't the same as your data never being there in the first place.

What Otter's free plan actually limits

Otter's free tier gives you a set number of transcription minutes per month and caps how long any single conversation can be. The exact numbers shift, so check their pricing page for today's figures, but the shape doesn't change: there's a meter, and when you hit it you either wait for the reset or pay. That's normal for a cloud service. Running big models on someone else's servers costs money every time, so they have to count.

The free alternative: transcribe on your own device

JustWrite takes the opposite approach. It runs a speech model called Whisper directly in your browser, on your own machine. Your audio is transcribed locally and never uploaded anywhere. Because there's no server doing the work, there's nothing for us to meter, so there's no minute cap, no per-conversation limit, and no account to create. You open the page and talk.

That's also why it's free with no catch. Each transcription costs us nothing to provide, so there's no wall to put around it.

How to switch from Otter

The flow is short:

Open JustWrite in your browser. No download, no sign-up, no email.
Record straight into the page, or import an audio file you already have, like a voice memo or a meeting recording.
The model runs on your device and returns a word-for-word transcript.
Copy the text and paste it wherever you keep your notes.

The first time you use it, your browser downloads the model, which takes a moment. After that it's instant, and it works offline. If you want to prove the audio isn't going anywhere, disconnect your Wi-Fi after the model loads and watch it keep transcribing.

What you give up (the honest part)

This isn't a clone of Otter, and pretending it is would waste your time. Otter does a few things JustWrite deliberately doesn't:

Speaker labels. Otter tries to tag who said what. JustWrite gives you one clean transcript, not a speaker-by-speaker split.
AI summaries and notes. Otter can hand back a tidy summary. JustWrite gives you the verbatim words, every one of them, not a condensed version.
Cloud storage and search. Otter keeps a searchable library of your past recordings. JustWrite keeps nothing; you copy your text out and it's yours.

If any of those is the reason you use Otter, stay with Otter. It's the right tool for that job.

What you gain

If what you actually need is the words, JustWrite has a few real advantages:

No minute meter. Transcribe a two-minute voice note or an hour-long recording. There's no monthly cap to run into.
Nothing uploaded. The audio is processed where it already lives, on your device. There's no server copy to leak, get subpoenaed, or be repurposed later.
No account. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to cancel, no card on file.
Verbatim output. You get exactly what was said, which matters when you need the precise quote or the specific detail, not a paraphrase of it.

Which one should you pick?

Reach for Otter when the job is a multi-person meeting and you want it split by speaker with a summary on top, and you're fine with the recording living in their cloud and the free minutes running out. Reach for a free on-device alternative when you want every word, no cap, and no upload, and you're happy to copy the text out yourself.

That last case is the whole reason JustWrite exists: talk it out, get a clean word-for-word copy, free and private, because the transcription runs on your own device and the audio never leaves it.