Best for
Best for developers building real-time speech-to-text, text-to-speech and voice agents through an API.
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
AI Voice & Speech Comparison
Deepgram vs. Otter.ai
At a glance
At a glance
Best for
Best for teams who need every meeting written up, summarised and pushed into the tools where the follow-up actually happens.
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
Full Comparison
| Criterion | Deepgram | Otter.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Usage-based, pay-as-you-go No minimums and no expiry. Speech-to-text from $0.0048 / minute on Nova-3 monolingual streaming, text-to-speech from $0.0150 / 1,000 characters on Aura-1, and the Voice Agent API from $0.056 / minute. | Free tier, then from $8.33 / user / month The $8.33 Pro rate is billed annually; paid monthly it is $16.99. Business is $19.99 / user / month billed annually or $30 monthly. The free Basic plan carries 300 transcription minutes a month and 3 lifetime file imports. |
| Free trial | $200 in free credits to start, no credit card required | Free Basic plan with 300 monthly transcription minutes |
| Commercial use | Yes, usage-based | Not stated |
| Output | Speech-to-text, text-to-speech and voice agents | Live transcripts, meeting summaries and action items |
| API | Yes | On Enterprise |
| Hosting | Cloud, or self-hosted for in-region and in-house data control | Cloud, with desktop apps for Mac and Windows, mobile apps and a Chrome extension |
| Voice cloning | No, the catalogue is fixed: 40+ prebuilt Aura-2 voices across English, Spanish, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Japanese, with no cloning or custom-voice product on the price list | No, Otter transcribes and summarises speech and does not synthesise or clone voices |
| Real-time use | Yes, real-time streaming speech-to-text and text-to-speech, plus batch processing | Yes, live transcription and captions during the meeting, either with Otter joining the call or recording from the desktop app without a bot |
| Languages | 45+ languages for speech-to-text, with automatic language detection | One language per conversation, selected in settings; the supported set includes English (US and UK), Spanish, French and Japanese |
| Speech-to-speech and dubbing | No dubbing or translation product. Speech-to-speech runs as a pipeline through the Voice Agent API, which handles listening, thinking and speaking with configurable speech-to-text models, LLM providers and voices, plus function calling mid-conversation | No dubbing or speech-to-speech translation |
| Editing and controls | Voice selection, plus encoding, bit rate, container and sample rate on the output, streamed audio and callbacks. Aura-2 is built to read naturally without SSML markup, and speed and style can be changed mid-conversation without restarting the session | Speaker identification, meeting summaries with decisions and action items, AI Chat across past meetings and connected apps, workflow agents for sales and recruiting, and playback speeds from 0.5x to 3x with skip-silence on paid plans |
| Consent and trust | SOC 2 Type 1 and 2, HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA and PCI compliant; self-hosting for in-house data control | Enterprise adds SSO and SCIM, admin controls over access policies and sharing, audit logging, and an opt-out from AI model training arranged through an account manager |
| MCP-ready | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment | more entries Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based, On-premise | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based |
| Support | Community forum | Not stated |
| Onboarding | Documentation and knowledge base | Documentation and knowledge base |
| Company size | Small and mid-sized, Enterprise | more entries Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise |
| Integrations | Not stated | Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, RingCentral, HubSpot, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesloft, Outreach, Slack, Notion, Asana, ClickUp, Jira, monday.com, Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, SharePoint, Amazon S3, Snowflake, Zapier |
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The short version
Key Differences
- Starting price Deepgram Usage-based, pay-as-you-go Otter.ai Free tier, then from $8.33 / user / month
- Free trial Deepgram $200 in free credits to start, no credit card required Otter.ai Free Basic plan with 300 monthly transcription minutes
- Deployment Deepgram Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based, On-premise Otter.ai Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based
- Company size Deepgram Small and mid-sized, Enterprise Otter.ai Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
- Hosting Deepgram Cloud, or self-hosted for in-region and in-house data control Otter.ai Cloud, with desktop apps for Mac and Windows, mobile apps and a Chrome extension
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Strengths and Limitations
Deepgram
Strengths
- Unified speech-to-text, text-to-speech and voice-agent APIs
- Real-time streaming with low latency for live applications
- Usage-based with $200 free credit and no card required
- Runs self-hosted for data control and compliance
Limitations
- Developer platform, not a consumer voice studio
- Several headline per-minute rates are promotional and sit below the list price, so the long-run cost depends on which rate applies
Otter.ai
Strengths
- Records without a bot in the call from the desktop app
- Summaries and action items sync into CRM, chat and project tools
- MCP server exposes meeting data to Claude and ChatGPT
- Free plan with 300 transcription minutes a month
Limitations
- Transcription only, no text-to-speech or voice cloning
- A small number of languages, and only one per conversation
- Per-meeting length caps on the lower plans: 30 minutes on Basic and 90 on Pro
- API access is reserved for Enterprise
Plans
Pricing
Deepgram
- Pay As You Go $0.0048 Per minute of Nova-3 monolingual streaming speech-to-text at the current promotional rate, $0.0077 at list. Nova-3 multilingual $0.0058, Flux English $0.0065. Text-to-speech $0.0150 / 1,000 characters on Aura-1 and $0.030 on Aura-2. Voice Agent API from $0.056 / minute. Add-ons are priced separately: redaction and diarization $0.0020 / minute each, entity detection $0.0017, keyterm prompting $0.0013. No minimums, no expiry, $200 in credits to start without a card.
- Growth From $4,000 Per year in prepaid credits, redeemed against usage at lower rates: Nova-3 monolingual streaming $0.0042 / minute, Aura-1 $0.0135 and Aura-2 $0.027 / 1,000 characters.
- Enterprise Not stated Custom pricing, volume commitments, self-hosting and dedicated support.
Otter.ai
- Basic Free 300 transcription minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation, 3 lifetime audio or video file imports, and the 25 most recent conversations retained.
- Pro $8.33 Per user per month billed annually, or $16.99 billed monthly. 1,200 in-app recording minutes a month, 10 file imports a month, up to 90 minutes per meeting, unlimited storage and playback speeds from 0.5x to 3x.
- Business $19.99 Per user per month billed annually, or $30 billed monthly. Unlimited meetings and in-app recordings, unlimited file imports, up to 4 hours per meeting, three concurrent meetings and admin features.
- Enterprise Not stated Custom pricing arranged through a demo. Adds SSO and SCIM, audit logging, admin controls, API access, video replay, unlimited custom AI workflows and a HIPAA compliance add-on.
What users say
Review Scores · opens after launch
Deepgram
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Otter.ai
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Where this comes from
Where this comes from
Deepgram https://deepgram.com · checked against the official source on 2026-09-01
Otter.ai https://otter.ai · checked against the official source on 2026-09-04
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.