Microsoft-managed Teams recaps and Otter’s cross-platform meeting records, compared for capture, consent, follow-up, and plan limits. This guidance is based on company pages linked from the profiles below.
Scheduled meetings, mail, follow-up files, and permissions already live in your organization’s managed Microsoft 365 setup.
Look elsewhere if: You cannot confirm recap support for your exact meeting type and license—Microsoft’s pages conflict on ad-hoc versus instant meetings—or you need a standalone meeting archive.
You need searchable transcripts, summaries, and actions from regular calls or imported recordings.
Look elsewhere if: Recording or captured slides and shared screens are not acceptable, you cannot review Otter’s automatic-capture setting before sensitive calls, you need centrally locked capture defaults without Enterprise, or the main need is broad workspace search.
| Detail | Microsoft 365 CopilotMicrosoft | OtterOtter.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Made for | Work suite | Meeting assistant |
| US price | Paid add-on: first-year $18/user/mo annually + base plan (opens in a new tab) Full Microsoft 365 Copilot plan detailsCopilot Business is currently $18 per user monthly when paid yearly for the first year (regularly $21; offer ends September 30, 2026), or $25.20 with a monthly commitment. A qualifying Microsoft 365 Business plan is required. Microsoft says there is no trial for Microsoft 365 Copilot. As one US bundle, Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot is $23.50 per user monthly, paid yearly, and includes Teams. Eligible Microsoft 365 business and enterprise customers get web-grounded Copilot Chat and Copilot in Outlook at no additional cost. Some eligible accounts receive an M365 Copilot (Basic) label, which provides standard access in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote without the paid add-on; confirm the assigned label and admin settings. The paid add-on provides priority access, full work-data reasoning across meetings, email, chats, and files, and advanced agents. | Free; Pro from $8.33/user/mo annually (opens in a new tab) Full Otter plan detailsBasic is free. Pro is listed at $16.99 per user monthly or $8.33 per user monthly when billed annually. Business is $30 per user monthly or $19.99 per user monthly when billed annually. |
| Ways to use it | Web, Windows, iOS, Android, Microsoft 365 apps | Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Meeting integrations |
| Access | Managed Microsoft 365 service in Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other apps for eligible organizations and plans. | Web, desktop, and mobile apps with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet integrations. |
| Where it runs | Managed service inside eligible Microsoft 365 plans. | Online service from Otter.ai. |
| Profile evidence | Capabilities · Access · Limits · collected Aug 2, 2026 | Capabilities · Access · Limits · collected Aug 2, 2026 |
Start with Microsoft 365 Copilot when scheduled meetings run in Teams and recaps should stay with the transcript, shared files, notes, and follow-up tasks in Microsoft 365. Microsoft’s recap guidance says notifications, notes, and content are not currently available for ad-hoc events, while its Teams Premium licensing table lists intelligent meeting recap for instant meetings; Microsoft also describes instant meetings as impromptu. Confirm the exact meeting type and required license. By default, Teams organizers and co-organizers can download transcripts as DOCX or VTT, but only the organizer can download the recording; Microsoft identifies the recording as an MP4 file. Start with Otter when you want a separate searchable meeting record across Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, device recordings, or imported audio and video. Otter Basic exports transcripts only as TXT; paid plans add DOCX, PDF, and SRT, while audio exports as MP3. Bulk export requires Business or Enterprise.
Company sources: Recap in Microsoft Teams (opens in a new tab) · Microsoft Teams Premium licensing (opens in a new tab) · Start an instant meeting in Microsoft Teams (opens in a new tab) · Microsoft Teams live transcription (opens in a new tab) · Microsoft Teams meeting recording downloads (opens in a new tab) · Otter conversation exports (opens in a new tab) · Otter bulk exports (opens in a new tab)Microsoft's desktop and web recap guidance lists 25 languages and locales for intelligent recap, and says full AI features require both the spoken and transcript language to be supported. Its mobile guidance separately says AI notes require an English transcript. Otter supports English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese; German and Simplified Chinese are beta. Otter normally transcribes one selected language per conversation, except French and English can be combined when French is selected.
Company sources: Recap in Microsoft Teams (opens in a new tab) · Otter transcription languages (opens in a new tab)Teams recap is available after an event is recorded or transcribed. Microsoft says an organizer who sets Copilot to Off also turns off recording and transcription for that meeting. Teams admins can assign organizers a policy requiring explicit participant agreement for recording and transcription; it is off by default. When enabled, participants cannot unmute, turn on video, or share until they agree; declining leaves them view-only, and choices appear in attendance reports or audit logs. Confirm legal and organizational requirements separately. Otter can join as a named participant and send configurable pre-meeting email and in-meeting chat notices, but users remain responsible for required permission. Its affirmative Teams permission flow requires Otter for Outlook and what Otter calls a Microsoft Enterprise license, and a direct Teams link bypasses it.
Company sources: Manage Copilot in Teams meetings (opens in a new tab) · Teams participant agreement for recording and transcription (opens in a new tab) · Recording permissions with Otter (opens in a new tab) · Otter for Outlook recording permissions (opens in a new tab)Teams convenience recordings capture voice, video, screen sharing, and PowerPoint Live. Microsoft says they do not capture whiteboards or annotations, shared notes, content shared by apps, videos or animations embedded in PowerPoint Live, or multi-screen sharing. Otter Notetaker instead adds unique shared slides or screens from Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams as images in the conversation. Users can manage or turn off that automatic capture; Enterprise admins can set and optionally lock the workspace default. Otter's public pages do not state whether automatic capture is enabled by default. Choose based on the visual record you need, and test a representative demo or whiteboard because neither source establishes complete visual capture.
Company sources: Introduction to Teams recording (opens in a new tab) · Otter automated slide capture (opens in a new tab) · Otter Enterprise admin controls (opens in a new tab)Teams live transcripts include speaker names and timestamps. After the recording reaches OneDrive or SharePoint, the organizer can edit transcript text and grant edit access to others. The linked Microsoft pages do not document whether speaker assignments can be changed manually. Otter lets owners and collaborators correct transcript text and change speaker assignments after processing, not while a meeting is live.
Company sources: Microsoft Teams live transcription (opens in a new tab) · Edit a Microsoft Teams transcript (opens in a new tab) · Edit an Otter conversation (opens in a new tab)Teams recordings and transcripts are stored in OneDrive or SharePoint. Microsoft’s automatic-expiration policy defaults new recordings and transcripts to 120 days; an admin can change or disable it, and expired files move to the applicable recycle bin. Microsoft also documents Purview retention labels for deleting recordings and their accompanying transcripts, and says Copilot prompts, responses, and Graph data are not used to train foundation models. Otter’s custom automatic retention is an Enterprise admin control configured through an account manager. Otter’s privacy policy says it may train its proprietary AI on de-identified audio and transcriptions that may contain personal information; users can select “Don’t allow sharing” to revoke access to past conversations for training and prevent future conversations from being used for training. Otter says Enterprise workspaces are opted out of AI model training by default: recordings, transcripts, and notes are not used to improve its global models or third-party LLMs, and opting in is managed through an Otter account manager. Confirm Business service-agreement terms separately.
Company sources: Teams recording expiration policy (opens in a new tab) · Data, privacy, and security for Microsoft 365 Copilot (opens in a new tab) · Otter privacy policy (opens in a new tab) · Otter feedback and training permissions (opens in a new tab) · Otter Enterprise admin controls (opens in a new tab)Use the price row above for Microsoft 365 Copilot Business and Otter. Microsoft says intelligent recap is included with Microsoft 365 Copilot or Teams Premium. Teams Premium is $10/user/mo paid yearly; it requires an Office 365 or Microsoft 365 subscription, a Teams license, and the Teams Premium add-on. No-cost Copilot Chat can run inside Teams, but without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license its answers use only public web data. Copilot in Teams meetings is a separate feature and requires the Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Otter Basic includes 300 monthly minutes; Pro includes 1,200 minutes; Business and Enterprise list unlimited meeting and in-app transcription but 6,000 imported-file minutes per user monthly. Otter’s maximum transcription time per conversation is 30 minutes on Basic, 90 minutes on Pro, and four hours on Business and Enterprise. Otter caps Pro workspaces at five billed users and Business at 25; larger workspaces require Enterprise.
Company sources: Recap in Microsoft Teams (opens in a new tab) · Microsoft Teams Premium licensing (opens in a new tab) · Microsoft Teams Premium pricing (opens in a new tab) · Overview of AI in Microsoft Teams (opens in a new tab) · Otter pricing (opens in a new tab)