Notta vs Otter vs Scriptorium: Long Recordings
A fair comparison for two-hour recordings: per-file caps, monthly minutes, import limits, languages and price from each vendor's page, and where each wins.
The Scriptorium team ·
A long recording is where transcription tools stop looking alike. A ten-minute clip fits inside every free tier; a two-hour board meeting, a day-long workshop or a three-hour interview exposes the limits that the pricing page tucks into a footnote: how long one file may be, how many files you may import, and how many minutes you get in a month. This comparison looks only at those long-recording questions. We make Scriptorium, so we have tried to give the other two a fair reading and to say where they are the better fit.
The numbers, from each vendor's own page
| Notta | Otter | Scriptorium | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free: minutes per month | 120 | 300 | No-account preview: one file at a time, 3 tries a day; free account: None a month |
| Free: longest single recording | 3 minutes per conversation | 30 minutes per conversation | 15 minutes and 25 MB in the preview |
| Free: file imports | 50 a month | 3 for the lifetime of the account | 3 a day in the preview |
| Paid entry plan | Pro: $8.17 a month billed annually; 1,800 minutes a month; up to 5 hours per recording; 100 uploads a month | Pro: $8.33 a month billed annually; 1,200 minutes a month; 90 minutes per conversation; 10 imports a month | Pro: $9.99 a month; 600 minutes a month |
| Higher plan | Business: $16.67 a month billed annually; unlimited minutes; 5 hours per recording; 200 uploads a month | Business: $30 monthly or $19.99 billed annually; 4 hours per conversation; 6,000 imported-file minutes | Pro+: $19.99 a month; 2,500 minutes a month |
| Languages (per the vendor) | 58 listed in its help center, Arabic among them* | English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese | 33 plus automatic detection |
| Meeting bot | Offers a bot-free desktop recorder, per its pricing page | Joins Zoom, Teams and Meet to write and share notes | None. Upload a recording |
Notta and Otter figures are from Notta's pricing page and Otter's pricing page. *Notta's language count comes from its help center as shown in search results; its help pages blocked direct fetches. Scriptorium's own figures are read from the code that enforces them. Plan details: Scriptorium pricing.
Checked on 2026-10-21. Notta and Otter: each vendor's pricing page (language list for Notta: help center via search). Prices and limits change; confirm on the vendor's page before you buy.
What the table means for a two-hour recording
Notta
Notta's free plan caps a conversation at three minutes, so it is a way to try the interface, not to transcribe a long file. The paid picture is different and, on paper, the strongest of the three for this job: its Pro plan lists recordings up to five hours, 1,800 minutes a month and 100 uploads a month, at an annual-billing price close to Otter's own annual price. If you will regularly feed it long files and you want a polished meeting-centred workflow, Notta is a serious choice.
Otter
Otter's free plan is more generous per file (30 minutes) but allows three imports in total, which makes it a live-meeting product first. Pro raises the cap to 90 minutes per conversation, so a two-hour recording does not fit until Business (four hours). If your recordings are live meetings Otter attends, the cap rarely matters. If they are files you already have, the import limits will matter first. Otter's language list does not include Arabic.
Scriptorium
Scriptorium's no-account preview takes 15 minutes, so a two-hour file does not fit; you would split it, or use an account. Be realistic about our position: our paid plans are measured in monthly minutes (600 on Pro, 2,500 on Pro+), and Notta's listed per-recording ceiling and minute counts are, on paper, higher at a comparable price. Where we are different is not capacity: there is no bot and no calendar integration, the exports are TXT, timestamped TXT, SRT, VTT, Markdown, JSON and CSV, and the same software can be self-hosted if the recording cannot be uploaded to anyone's cloud.
A worked example: ten two-hour meetings a month
That is 1,200 minutes of audio. Using only the listed figures: Notta Pro (1,800 minutes, up to 5 hours per recording, 100 uploads) covers it with room to spare. Otter Pro lists 1,200 minutes, so it would use the entire allowance, and its 90-minute per-conversation cap means each meeting must be split in two or moved to Business (4 hours). Scriptorium Pro lists 600 minutes, enough for five such meetings; Pro+ lists 2,500 and covers all ten. Cost is therefore not the only variable: the per-file cap and the import count decide whether a plan fits at all.
Two things no pricing page tells you are accuracy and speaker separation on your own audio. Both depend on microphones, room noise, accents and crosstalk far more than on the brand. That is why the five-minute test below is worth more than any table.
A workable plan for a long file on any of them
- Trim first. Cut dead air, hold music and the pre-meeting chatter. Minutes are the unit everyone bills in.
- Test with five minutes. Upload a short slice from the noisiest part of the recording and read it before committing a month's allowance to the rest. Accuracy tips explain what to look for.
- Prefer fewer, longer files over many short ones when a tool counts imports; prefer the opposite when it caps recording length. Know which limit your plan has.
- Keep the original audio. Transcripts are a working copy; if a quote matters, check it against the recording.
- Export in a plain format (SRT or TXT) so you are not dependent on the tool to read your own notes later.
For the splitting step in detail, see how to transcribe a long recording; for turning the result into minutes, meeting minutes from a recording.
Which one should you choose?
- Notta if long files are routine, you want the highest listed per-recording ceiling in this group, and a cloud meeting workflow suits you.
- Otter if you want an assistant that joins your calls and your language is on its list.
- Scriptorium if you want to try a file with no account first, need Arabic or one of the other supported languages without a bot, want plain exports, or may need to self-host.
If you are not sure, the cheapest test is to upload a file without an account and compare the first ten minutes with what the others give you on the same slice.