If you searched for an “Otter.ai alternative,” it is worth pausing on what you actually need. Otter and Dictato both turn speech into text, but they point in opposite directions. Otter captures other people talking and hands you a document to read later. Dictato replaces your keyboard so you can write by voice right now.
What Otter.ai is great at
Otter.ai is a strong cloud meeting notetaker. It joins your Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet calls, records them, and transcribes live. It tracks who said what, then gives you a searchable transcript plus a summary with action items you can scan afterward. It runs as a web app, on iOS and Android, and through a Chrome extension, so your meetings end up in one searchable place. If your problem is “I was in a call and need clean notes without typing them myself,” Otter is built for exactly that.
What Dictato does instead
Dictato is not a meeting tool. It is real-time dictation that types straight into whatever Mac app has focus: your email, Slack, notes, or your editor. You speak, and the words land where your cursor already is. You are the one talking, and you are writing as you go, not reading back someone else’s conversation later.
It also formats while you speak. Spoken numbers, dates, times, and currency are converted automatically with zero setup in English and French: “twelve thirty pm” becomes 12:30 pm, “may first” becomes May 1, and phone numbers and amounts come out clean every time, with no AI guesswork. Want punctuation, casing, and topic-grouped paragraphs polished too? You turn on Auto-correct or set up a per-app profile, and an on-device AI step handles it. That polish is opt-in, not on by default. Profiles can go further: proofread in one app, apply a tone in another, and even speak French while writing English in a third.
Privacy and pricing, side by side
Otter is cloud-based: your audio is uploaded to its servers, and you need an account. That is normal for a tool that has to sit in shared meetings. On pricing, Otter offers a free tier plus paid plans that start around $8 per user each month billed annually, with Business tiers costing more (prices are approximate).
Dictato is on-device: your voice and text never leave the Mac. Its only network touch is a one-time license check, so nothing you dictate is sent anywhere. There is no account and no sign-up, just a one-time license key, and you pay once for a lifetime license rather than a monthly fee.
Which one do you need?
Be honest about the job. If you need meetings captured, summarized, and searchable, use Otter. If you want to write by voice, privately, into the app already in front of you, use Dictato. Plenty of people genuinely want both: Otter listening in the background during calls, and Dictato handling the email, message, or doc you write the moment the call ends.