Otter.ai vs. ClerkMinutes: Which AI Meeting Tool is Right for Government Clerks?

If you work in local government, you've almost certainly heard of Otter.ai. It's one of the most popular transcription tools on the market with over 25 million users worldwide, more than 1 billion meetings processed, and recently crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Everyone from venture capitalists to motivational speakers swears by it.

But here's the question most local Clerks and government employees don't ask until it's too late: Was this tool actually built for you?

Otter.ai is a powerful AI meeting assistant designed for general business use. This means sales teams, startups, enterprises, and individual professionals who need transcripts and summaries. It excels at real-time transcription, searchable archives, and team collaboration.

But when it comes to producing official meeting minutes that comply with municipal standards, parliamentary procedure, and public records laws, Otter.ai wasn't built with government Clerks in mind.

That's where ClerkMinutes comes in given its a purpose-built solution for local Clerks who need to turn meeting recordings into compliant, ADA-friendly, agenda-aligned minutes without spending hours editing, formatting, or fact-checking.

Quick Comparison

What is Otter.ai?

Otter.ai is an AI-powered note-taking and meeting assistant platform designed to automatically transcribe conversations, generate summaries, and facilitate collaboration in real time. Launched in 2018, it has evolved from a pure transcription tool into a comprehensive meeting productivity solution.

The platform employs advanced speech recognition (up to ~95% accuracy under good conditions) to turn spoken dialogue into searchable text on the fly. Otter's cloud-based service works across web browsers, desktop apps, and mobile devices, allowing users to capture meetings anywhere and build a centralized knowledge base of meeting content.

Otter.ai now serves 25+ million users worldwide, ranging from individual professionals and small teams to departments at Fortune 500 enterprises. The platform acts as an AI "meeting agent" that joins your meetings (or records in-person conversations) and produces live notes, summaries, and actionable insights without manual effort.

Otter.ai Key Features

Here are the most popular features that customers use Otter.ai for.

• Real-Time Transcription: Otter provides live transcription during meetings on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and more. Users can follow along or search notes even before a call ends. The transcription quality is consistently high. Users report around 90–95% accuracy under clear audio conditions. Unlike some competitors that require a 15-minute post-meeting delay, Otter's transcription is truly real-time.

• Automated Summaries & Key Points: After each meeting, Otter generates an AI-powered meeting summary that condenses lengthy discussions into a concise recap of key points, decisions, and action items. These summaries are ready as soon as the meeting ends. Otter's system identifies highlights such as tasks or important questions, and it can assign action items to participants automatically.

• Meeting Templates: You can define structured note templates for common meeting types (sales calls, lectures, project kickoffs, etc.), and Otter will organize the notes and summary according to that structure. This gives summaries a consistent format tailored to the meeting's purpose.

• OtterPilot AI Meeting Agent: The Otter Meeting Agent can be scheduled to automatically join virtual meetings on your calendar, where it acts like a virtual assistant: recording the audio, transcribing in real time, and even participating when invoked. Users can say "Hey Otter" during a meeting to ask a question, and the agent will answer based on the meeting's context.

• AI Chat: Otter's built-in AI Chat lets you query your transcripts after the meeting. You can ask questions in natural language (e.g., "What did we decide about the budget?") and get an instant answer drawn from the transcript and notes. It can even work across a collection of meetings to surface patterns or recall when a topic was discussed.

• Collaboration Tools: Transcripts are shareable. Multiple people can highlight text, add comments, and even edit the transcript collaboratively in real time. You can tag teammates in notes to call their attention to a particular quote or task.

• Integrations: Otter connects with calendar apps (Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook), offers native integrations with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, and connects with CRM systems like Salesforce and HubSpot. It can also send meeting transcripts to Slack, sync notes to Google Docs, and create tasks in Asana or Jira.

• Security: Otter supports single sign-on (SSO) and SCIM provisioning. All plans use encryption (AES-256). HIPAA compliance is available on enterprise tiers. However, it's important to note that Otter is not currently FedRAMP-authorized for US government cloud use.

Otter.ai Pricing

Like most all-purpose AI notetakers, Otter.ai has a limited free tier.

• Free: 300 minutes/month, 30 minutes per conversation, core AI features including summaries and chat

• Pro: ~$8.33/user/month (annual) – 1,200 minutes/month, 90-minute meetings, advanced search

• Business: $20/user/month (annual) – 6,000 minutes/user, admin controls, advanced collaboration

• Enterprise: Custom pricing including SSO, usage analytics, custom data retention

What Otter.ai Does Well

Otter.ai has strong ratings (around 4.4/5 on G2) with generally positive feedback for business use.

Otter has earned its popularity for good reasons. For general business meetings, it delivers real value:

• Real-time transcription: Unlike competitors that make you wait 15+ minutes after a call, Otter produces live transcription during meetings. You can search and reference notes before the meeting even ends.

• Accuracy: Users consistently report 90-95% accuracy for clear English audio with good speaker identification. Custom vocabulary training improves results over time.

• Time savings: According to Otter's internal research, enterprise customers save the equivalent of 1 full-time employee for every 20 users by eliminating manual note-taking and follow-ups.

• Collaboration: Real-time collaborative editing of transcripts. Multiple users can highlight, comment, and edit simultaneously. This "Google Docs for meeting notes" experience is something many competitors lack.

• Integration depth: Calendar auto-join, CRM sync, Slack notifications, and connections to productivity tools mean meeting insights flow into existing workflows automatically.

• Generous free tier: 300 minutes/month with core AI features included means more functionality at the free level than most competitors offer.

Government Use of Otter.ai

Some government agencies have experimented with Otter.ai for the following purposes:

• Accessibility: The U.S. Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) evaluated Otter.ai as a tool for "Reasonable Accommodation purposes,” providing live transcription for employees with hearing difficulties as a cost-effective alternative to human CART stenographers.

• Meeting minutes drafts: Clearfield City in Utah publicly noted using Otter.ai and ChatGPT to draft city council meeting minutes. The workflow involved Otter providing a transcript, then using that to create an initial summary that the City Clerk reviewed and edited for accuracy.

• Transparency initiatives: In Cambridge, MA, a city Clerk used Otter (at about $100/year) to produce full transcripts of council meetings, making councilor debates fully accessible to the public.

However, all of these cases highlight an important limitation. Human oversight is still heavily required. Clerks must verify AI-generated content for errors and ensure compliance with formal minute standards. The tools produce transcripts and drafts, not finished, compliant minutes.

Where Otter.ai Falls Short for Government Clerks

Despite its strengths, Otter.ai was not designed with government meeting requirements in mind. Here's where it creates problems for Clerks:

1. No Understanding of Municipal Meeting Structure

Otter transcribes everything in chronological order, but it doesn't know where one agenda item ends and another begins. It doesn't understand how government meetings are structured.

You'll need to manually organize the transcript into sections that match your agenda. That means copying, pasting, and essentially rebuilding the structure yourself. You're starting from a transcript instead of a blank page, but you're still doing significant manual work.

2. No Recognition of Parliamentary Procedure

Parliamentary procedure is the backbone of local government meetings. Motions must be captured verbatim. Seconds must be recorded. Votes must be tallied accurately. Amendments and substitute motions must be tracked.

Otter transcribes motions as part of the general discussion, but it doesn't recognize them as distinct elements. You'll need to search the transcript, identify each motion manually, and format it yourself. There's no flagging when a motion was made but not seconded. No automatic vote tallying. No procedural tracking.

For Clerks who handle multiple meetings per month, this manual identification and formatting work adds hours to every meeting.

3. Inconsistent Speaker Identification

Otter attempts speaker identification, but user reviews consistently note problems. G2 reviewers mention "accuracy issues… difficulties in correct attribution and inaccuracies in transcripts." If a meeting has many people speaking or crosstalk, Otter might label speakers incorrectly, requiring manual correction.

In government settings where multiple council members or commissioners may sound similar or speak infrequently, you'll often see generic labels like "Speaker 1" and "Speaker 2" instead of actual names.

For Clerks who need to attribute every comment, motion, and vote to the correct person, this creates extra work and compliance risk.

4. Produces Summaries, Not Minutes

This is the fundamental mismatch. Otter generates summaries and action items. Those are helpful for internal reference, but they're not meeting minutes.

They're not formatted for publication. They're not organized by agenda item. They're not compliant with public records laws.

Otter's summaries are designed for business follow-ups. That’s quick recaps of decisions and next steps. Government minutes require a different structure: formal documentation of proceedings organized by agenda item, with motions, votes, and outcomes recorded according to municipal standards.

You still have to turn that summary into a formal document that meets your municipality's requirements.

5. AI Accuracy Issues in Official Records

While Otter is generally accurate, user reviews note that "accuracy can falter with heavy background noise, multiple people speaking simultaneously, or strong accents." Some reviews mention the tool "sometimes misattributes speakers or requires editing."

For corporate meetings, occasional errors are acceptable. You review and move on. For public records that may be subject to legal scrutiny or FOIA requests, every error is a potential problem. Clerks need tools that flag uncertainty, not tools that guess.

6. Limited Audit Trail for Public Records

Otter provides a transcript with timestamps, but it doesn't offer the kind of audit trail government records require. There's no version history linked to specific agenda items, no source references showing which timestamp corresponds to each line in the finished minutes.

When a resident challenges the minutes or a council member disputes what was said, you need documentation that shows exactly where each statement came from. Otter's basic transcript doesn't provide that level of accountability.

7. Not Built for Government Compliance

Otter is not FedRAMP-authorized for US government cloud use. While it offers HIPAA compliance on enterprise tiers, it wasn't designed with public records laws, ADA accessibility requirements for published minutes, or open meetings compliance in mind.

The platform warns it "can't guarantee 100% security of data transmitted online," which may not be acceptable for all government use cases involving sensitive discussions.

What is ClerkMinutes?

ClerkMinutes is purpose-built specifically for local government Clerks who need to produce accurate, compliant, publish-ready meeting minutes. It's not a generic transcription tool adapted for government use. It's a municipal workflow designed from the ground up to handle the unique demands of public meetings.

ClerkMinutes Key Capabilities

Here are the most popular use cases and features.

• Automatic Agenda Following: Upload your agenda and recording. ClerkMinutes reads the agenda structure, identifies each item in the recording, and organizes minutes accordingly. Discussion, motions, and votes are placed under correct headings automatically. No manual reorganization required.

• Parliamentary Procedure Recognition: Detects every motion, captures who made it and who seconded it, records amendments and substitute motions, tracks withdrawn motions, and formats votes correctly with outcomes attached to the right agenda item. Motions are treated as first-class citizens because that's what they are in government meetings.

• Reliable Speaker Identification: Assign speakers once at the start. Names stay consistent throughout the entire meeting. If there's uncertainty, it flags for review instead of guessing. No more "Speaker 1" labels or mid-meeting mislabeling.

• Custom Formatting Templates: Your municipality's specific formatting requirements—heading structure, indentation rules, level of detail, standard layouts—are learned once and applied automatically to every meeting. No reformatting drafts or writing the same instructions repeatedly.

• No Hallucinations: If something is unclear or missing, ClerkMinutes flags it and prompts you to verify. It doesn't guess at names, votes, outcomes, or motion language. This single difference is why hundreds of Clerks trust it for anything that needs to be correct.

• Complete Audit Trail: Every line in your minutes is linked to the source recording with timestamps, version history, and references. If someone challenges the minutes, you can show exactly when a statement happened and who said it. Essential for compliance and accountability.

How ClerkMinutes Works

• Step 1: Upload Your Agenda Drag and drop your agenda. ClerkMinutes reads it automatically and uses it to create the outline of your minutes. No pasting, no explaining the structure, no manual formatting.
  
  

• Step 2: Upload Your Meeting Recording. Upload audio or video from Zoom, YouTube, or local file. Already have a transcript? Upload that too. No need to break files into chunks or label speakers manually.
  
  

• Step 3: Assign Speakers. ClerkMinutes identifies speakers for you. Confirm who's who with a single click. Names stay consistent through the entire meeting.
  
  

• Step 4: Generate and Review. Minutes are drafted aligned to your agenda, separated into correct sections, and formatted to municipal standards. Review in one screen, approve sections, adjust text, and download as Word or PDF.

That's it. No manual reorganization or hours spent fact checking and reformatting.

Detailed Feature Comparison

When to Use Otter.ai vs. ClerkMinutes

Use Otter.ai When:

• You need a quick transcript for internal reference.

• You're running informal team meetings, lectures, or interviews.

• You want real-time transcription you can search during the meeting.

• You need collaborative note-taking with your team.

• You're in a corporate, sales, or startup environment.

• You want CRM integration for sales call logging.

• You don't need formal, compliant meeting minutes.

• You're working primarily in English.

Use ClerkMinutes When:

• When you are a municipal Clerk or Recorder who needs to publish accurate and compliant municipal's meeting minutes

• You want the agenda structure followed automatically.

• You need motions and votes captured correctly the first time.

• You want to avoid hallucinations or invented details in official records.

• You don't want to manually label and verify speakers.

• You want custom instructions functionality.

• You need predictable formatting that matches your municipality's standards.

• You need an audit trail linked to your minutes for compliance.

• You have multiple meetings per month and need a repeatable, reliable workflow.

• Your minutes are public records subject to legal scrutiny.

Final Verdict

Otter.ai is an excellent meeting assistant for general business use. With 25+ million users, real-time transcription, and strong collaboration features, it has proven its value for sales teams, enterprises, and individual professionals who need transcripts and summaries. Its real-time capabilities and collaborative editing are genuinely best-in-class.

Some government agencies have successfully used Otter to improve accessibility and create draft transcripts. Cities like Clearfield, Utah and Cambridge, MA have experimented with it for meeting documentation.

But local government meetings are not general business meetings.

Government Clerks need minutes, not summaries that can serve as an authoritative record. They need motions, seconds, and vote tallies captured with parliamentary precision.

Using Otter.ai for government minutes means:

• Manually reorganizing chronological transcripts to match your agenda structure

• Hunting through transcripts to identify and format motions

• Correcting speaker labels when attribution fails

• Reformatting everything to meet your municipality's standards

• Accepting that AI-generated content might contain errors in official public records

• Building your own audit trail for compliance

ClerkMinutes eliminates all of that. It handles the entire workflow from recording to publication, captures motions and votes correctly, follows your agenda automatically, applies your formatting conventions, flags uncertainty instead of guessing, and provides an audit trail for every line.

Otter.ai is a capable transcription tool that works well for general meeting notes. But when it comes to producing official government minutes, it requires significant manual work to get from transcript to compliant, publishable document.

If you're a municipal Clerk who handles multiple meetings per month and needs accurate, compliant minutes every time, ClerkMinutes is the professional choice.

Ready to see the difference? Try ClerkMinutes for free and experience what it's like to work with a tool that actually understands what government Clerks need.