Callbox vs Otter.ai

Yes. Callbox records the call that plays in your Chrome tab, with your microphone, so no one new joins the call. It works in Google Meet, in Zoom and Microsoft Teams on the web, and on any other site. It sends nothing to the other people in the call: no chat message, no email, no recap. You still need to tell them you are recording, as with any recorder.

Otter.ai's meeting bot, Otter Notetaker, joins Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams as a participant named "[Your Name]'s Notetaker (Otter.ai)". Otter's help center says it cannot join a meeting anonymously or without appearing to other participants. Once you connect a Google or Microsoft calendar, it can join every event with a Zoom, Meet or Teams link on its own. Google Meet may now list it under "With potential risks", and the host or another authorized participant has to approve it before it enters.^[2][3][4]

The other people in the call can hear from Otter as well. Notetaker can post links to the live summary and transcript in the meeting chat, which you can turn off. With auto-share on, Otter emails the meeting summary to you and every calendar guest within about two hours.^[5][6]

Otter can record without the bot too. Its desktop app for Mac and Windows records without Notetaker, and it can record the Zoom and Teams desktop apps, Slack huddles, Webex, phone dialers, WhatsApp and FaceTime. Its Chrome extension can send Notetaker to Zoom and Meet calls. Its "Record on my device instead" option appears only in Google Meet, and in Zoom you start a browser recording by hand. Callbox records only calls in a Chrome tab, so it can't record the Zoom or Teams desktop apps.^[7][8]

Not by itself. Otter stores your conversations on Amazon Web Services in the US West region, and sending one to Google Drive is a manual export by default, one conversation at a time. The export lands as a Google Doc or a text file, with the audio if you ask for it, in a folder named "Otter.ai Conversations". Later edits reach Drive only when you click Update again. For automatic export, Enterprise admins contact their Otter account manager.^[11][12]

Callbox saves every recording to your own Google Drive: the audio file and a Google Doc transcript, in a folder per project. It uses Google's drive.file permission, so it sees only the files it creates. The files stay in your Drive if you downgrade, cancel or delete your Callbox account.

What you can take out of Otter depends on your plan. The free Basic plan shows only your 25 most recent conversations and archives the older ones until you upgrade, though you can still export them. Basic exports mp3 audio and txt transcripts, Pro adds pdf, docx and srt, and Business adds bulk export.^[14][13][1]

Otter's privacy policy lets it train its own AI on de-identified audio recordings and transcriptions. Its security page says this training is automatic, so no person reviews the recordings or transcripts for it. Callbox's privacy policy says it uses your data only to provide its features to you, and that it does not sell it or use it for advertising.^[15][16]

Otter.ai writes the summary for you, and its MCP server lets your AI agent search and read your meetings. The summary gives an overview, action items and an outline. AI Chat answers questions about one meeting or many, with 20 questions a user a month on Basic, 50 on Pro and 200 on Business.^[6][17][1]

Callbox writes no summaries itself. Its MCP server gives Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, Cursor or any other MCP client every tool in the app, to list, search and read transcripts, move and rename calls, write notes and manage projects. Your agent writes the summary with the model you choose and saves it as a note on the call.

Both offer an MCP server on the free plan. Otter's help center lists three tools: search, fetch and get user info. Otter's MCP server signs your agent in with OAuth only and takes no API key. Its separate Enterprise REST API uses API keys. Callbox signs your agent in with OAuth, with a switch for each permission, or with an API key.^[17][1]

For your own scripts, Otter's public API and workspace webhooks are for Enterprise workspaces, which have no public price. Callbox includes API keys and webhooks with Pro.^[18][19][1]

Otter transcribes six languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese (Simplified), with German and Chinese still in beta. Its help center answers "No" for Portuguese. You pick one language per conversation before you record, and the only mix it handles is French switching to English. Otter can't reprocess a call recorded in the wrong language, so you export the audio and import it as a new file.^[20][21]

Callbox's own engine covers 25 European languages, among them Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Swedish and Ukrainian. With your own key on a Whisper large-v3 service, such as OpenAI or Groq, it covers 99 languages with no hour limit. Otter's engine handles Japanese and Chinese, and Callbox's own engine does not.^[20]

Otter learns voices from the paragraphs you tag and shares speaker profiles across your workspace. Callbox labels you and the other side on every recording from the extension, and reads each speaker's name from the call's tile in Meet and Teams. Otter shows a live transcript on every plan, the free one included, and Callbox has live transcription on paid plans.^[22][1]

Otter's free Basic plan transcribes up to 300 minutes a month and stops each transcript at 30 minutes. A longer call keeps recording, but you see only its first 30 minutes until you upgrade. You get 3 imports in total, and deleted conversations still count toward your minutes.^[23]

The paid plans cap each meeting too, at 90 minutes on Pro and 4 hours on Business. Pro allows 10 imports a month. Business transcribes meetings with no monthly cap, but imports stop at 6,000 minutes a user a month.^[1]

Callbox records up to 6 hours per call on every plan, with no limit on the number of recordings. Free transcribes 5 hours a month, subject to availability, Pro 100 hours and Business 500 hours. Your own speech-to-text key removes the limit on any plan.

Otter bills each member of a team. When someone you invite joins your workspace, Otter charges you the prorated price of their seat, and a workspace holds at most 5 billed users on Pro and 25 on Business. A Callbox team has no member limit, and its members pay nothing, because the owner's Pro or Business plan covers them and they share its hours.^[24][1]