Best Free AI Meeting Summarizer Better Than Otter (Tested)

If you've been using Otter.ai's free tier and keep bumping into the 300-minute monthly cap or missing the ability to actually summarize without upgrading, you're probably looking for a better free alternative. I was in the same boat—my team runs four to six calls a week, and cutting that down to actionable notes without paying for another subscription felt impossible. That's when I started testing Meetly, specifically its free meeting summarizer.

What makes a free AI meeting summarizer better than Otter?

Before diving into specifics, here's my short checklist after two weeks of using Meetly alongside Otter's free plan. These are the things I actually cared about, not the marketing bullet points.

• Does it actually summarize, not just transcribe? Otter's free plan gives you raw transcripts. Meetly's free version generates a clean summary with key points, action items, and follow-ups. That alone saves at least 10 minutes per call.
• How long does each meeting get recorded? On the free plan, Otter caps you at 300 minutes/month. Meetly offers 500 minutes—enough for about six to eight hour-long calls. Not unlimited, but noticeably more breathing room.
• Can you edit the notes after? Yes. I ran a weekly standup through Meetly and the AI initially missed one action item ("check the staging deployment"). I edited it right in the browser. Otter's free tier doesn't let you edit summaries since it only has transcripts.
• Do integrations matter for you? Meetly works with Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams. It also connects to Slack if you want notes auto-posted. Otter's free tier doesn't offer Slack integration unless you pay.
• Is it reliable for client calls? I used Meetly on a 45-minute client discovery call. The summary included the main talking points and a list of next steps. I'd still manually review before sharing externally, but the structure was solid.

Where Meetly falls a bit short (real tradeoff)

The audio transcription accuracy is good—not perfect. On one call with heavy background noise, a few sentences were garbled. Otter handled that same noisy recording slightly better. Also, Meetly doesn't yet support speaker labeling as consistently as Otter does. In a meeting with five people, it sometimes merged two speakers into one. That matters if you're tracking who said what.

I also noticed the AI summary tends to emphasize the first half of the conversation. Action items from the second half were sometimes missed. Quick fix: scan the full transcript after the summary. Not a dealbreaker, but worth noting.

Who should try this for free?

If your team has 10 or fewer recurring meetings each month and you want something that writes the notes for you, Meetly is a strong candidate. The 500-minute free tier lets you test it without pressure. I'm still running it in parallel with Otter's free plan—I want to see how it handles longer calls and different accents before fully switching. So far, it's the best free AI meeting summarizer better than Otter for my use case, especially because it actually saves me time editing summaries.

If you rely heavily on verbatim transcripts or need perfect speaker identification, stick with Otter or try both free tiers. But if your goal is to get clean meeting notes and action items without paying, Meetly earns a real look.