The open-source alternatives to Otter.ai are Meetily, OpenWhispr, Buzz and Vibe. Meetily and OpenWhispr capture a live call from your microphone and system audio and produce a transcript and a summary on your own machine. Buzz and Vibe transcribe recordings and files, with live microphone input in Buzz, and both export subtitles and documents. All four are MIT licensed and run Whisper or NVIDIA's Parakeet locally, so the audio stays on the device. A team switches when it cannot send call audio to a vendor, or wants no per-seat bill for a transcript.
4 of 4 carry an OSI licence. 4 of 4 run on your own machines. Figures read from GitHub on October 26, 2026.
One project per need, with the reason from its own README and the one thing to know before you choose it.
MIT. Records the microphone and system audio together, shows a live transcript from Whisper or Parakeet, and summarises with Ollama locally or a hosted model you choose.
Know firstSpeaker labels, exports to PDF and DOCX, and team features sit in the separate paid PRO edition.
MIT. Detects Zoom, Teams and FaceTime calls, labels speakers on device with voice fingerprints that carry across meetings, and reads Google, Microsoft or Apple calendars.
Know firstLive speaker identification is unavailable on Intel Macs, and team sharing runs through the maintainers' cloud.
MIT. Transcribes and translates files and links offline with Whisper, identifies speakers, and exports TXT, SRT and VTT, with a watch folder and a command line.
Know firstIt records from the microphone; the README does not describe capturing the far side of a call from system audio.
MIT. Files, system audio, the microphone and web links in, with speaker labels and SRT, VTT, TXT, HTML, PDF, JSON and DOCX out. Summaries through Ollama locally or the Claude API.
Know firstThe Claude summary path sends the transcript to Anthropic; the Ollama path keeps it local.
The facts that decide most choices. Each project's page carries the full panel.
| Project | Best for | Openness | Licence | Runs as | Own machines | Stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meetily | Live calls, entirely on your machine | OSI | MIT | Desktop app | Yes | 32,187 |
| OpenWhispr | Call detection and speaker labels | OSI | MIT | Desktop app | Yes | 10,041 |
| Buzz | Recordings, files and YouTube links | OSI | MIT | Desktop app, pip, CLI | Yes | 22,202 |
| Vibe | System audio and document exports | OSI | MIT | Desktop app, CLI, Server (HTTP API) | Yes | 7,912 |
Licence and star figures read from GitHub on October 26, 2026. Stars are shown as a dated fact and were not used to rank this page.
A meeting assistant under MIT that records your microphone and system audio together, transcribes live on your machine with Whisper or Parakeet, and summarises with a language model you choose.
MIT. Records the microphone and system audio together, shows a live transcript from Whisper or Parakeet, and summarises with Ollama locally or a hosted model you choose.
Know firstSpeaker labels, exports to PDF and DOCX, and team features sit in the separate paid PRO edition.
A dictation and meeting-notes app under MIT that runs Whisper or Parakeet locally or cloud models with your own key, detects Zoom, Teams and FaceTime calls, and labels speakers on device.
MIT. Detects Zoom, Teams and FaceTime calls, labels speakers on device with voice fingerprints that carry across meetings, and reads Google, Microsoft or Apple calendars.
Know firstLive speaker identification is unavailable on Intel Macs, and team sharing runs through the maintainers' cloud.
A desktop app under MIT that transcribes and translates audio and video files, YouTube links and a live microphone offline with Whisper, with speaker identification and SRT, VTT and TXT export.
MIT. Transcribes and translates files and links offline with Whisper, identifies speakers, and exports TXT, SRT and VTT, with a watch folder and a command line.
Know firstIt records from the microphone; the README does not describe capturing the far side of a call from system audio.
An offline transcription app under MIT that records system audio and the microphone, supports Whisper, Parakeet and Nemotron models, labels speakers, and exports SRT, VTT, TXT, HTML, PDF, JSON and DOCX.
MIT. Files, system audio, the microphone and web links in, with speaker labels and SRT, VTT, TXT, HTML, PDF, JSON and DOCX out. Summaries through Ollama locally or the Claude API.
Know firstThe Claude summary path sends the transcript to Anthropic; the Ollama path keeps it local.
The questions that settle it, in the order they usually come up.
Meetily records system audio with the microphone, Vibe records system audio, and OpenWhispr detects Zoom, Teams and FaceTime calls. Buzz records the microphone.
OpenWhispr labels speakers live on device. Buzz and Vibe label speakers on recordings. Meetily's community edition does not list it.
Meetily with Ollama, Buzz, and Vibe with Ollama. OpenWhispr when set to local models. Vibe's Claude summary path is a cloud call.
Otter.ai, in the vendor's own words, is a service that "transcribes every meeting, turning it into searchable knowledge that powers your workflow", by its own description. otter.ai. The cases below are where that still wins.
Stars, licence, last commit and last release are read from the GitHub API by a script every week and carry the date they were read. Nobody types them.
What each project does is written from its own README and LICENSE, read in full on the date shown, and phrased as the project's claim. The sources are listed at the end.
That a project is faster, better or cheaper than Otter.ai. A price for anyone. A user count. A roadmap. If a fact is not on this page, it was not in the source.
For live meetings on your own machine, Meetily (MIT) records microphone and system audio together, transcribes with Whisper or Parakeet, and summarises with a language model you choose, with Ollama recommended for local use. OpenWhispr (MIT) auto-detects Zoom, Teams and FaceTime calls and adds live speaker labels. For recordings and files, Buzz and Vibe (both MIT) transcribe, label speakers and export subtitles.
Meetily captures your microphone and your system audio at the same time, which is how it hears the other side of a Zoom or Teams call, and its README says all processing stays on your machine. OpenWhispr's README says it auto-detects Zoom, Teams and FaceTime calls. Vibe can record system audio too. Buzz records from the microphone.
OpenWhispr does on-device speaker labelling with voice fingerprints that carry across meetings, though not on Intel Macs. Buzz has speaker identification on transcribed media. Vibe lists speaker diarization, which is the term for labelling speakers. Meetily's community edition README does not list it; it appears in the PRO edition as coming soon.
Meetily generates summaries with Ollama locally or with Claude, Groq, OpenRouter, OpenAI or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Vibe summarises with the Claude API or locally with Ollama. Buzz has an AI summary plugin. OpenWhispr's notes feature includes summaries through the language model you configure.
All four are MIT licensed. Meetily, Buzz and Vibe transcribe entirely on your machine. OpenWhispr can run fully local or use cloud models with your key. Meetily also sells a PRO edition on a separate codebase, and OpenWhispr runs a hosted cloud for sync and team spaces; the open-source apps do not require either.
Buzz (Flatpak, Snap, AppImage or pip), Vibe, and OpenWhispr (.AppImage, .deb, .rpm). Meetily on Linux is built from source; its installers cover Windows and macOS.
Reveneau sets up the replacement on your own servers, connects it to your product, and builds the software around it.