How to Automatically Transcribe and Summarize Zoom Meetings for Free

If you’re tired of manually taking meeting notes while trying to participate in the conversation, Otter.ai can transcribe your meetings in real time and generate automated summaries — here’s exactly how to set it up.

Step 1: Create Your Otter.ai Account

Go to otter.ai and sign up for a free account. The free plan includes 300 minutes of transcription per month, which is enough for most individual users. For higher volume, the Pro plan at $16.99/month offers 1,200 minutes.

Step 2: Connect Otter to Your Calendar

In the Otter dashboard, go to Settings > Calendar and connect your Google Calendar or Outlook. This allows Otter to see your upcoming meetings and auto-join them. Once connected, you’ll see your scheduled meetings appear in the Otter dashboard.

Step 3: Enable OtterPilot Auto-Join

In Settings, enable “OtterPilot” — this is Otter’s feature that automatically joins your scheduled Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams meetings. Configure it to join all meetings, or only meetings you manually select. When OtterPilot joins a meeting, it appears as a participant named “Otter.ai” and begins transcribing immediately.

Step 4: During the Meeting — Live Transcription

Once OtterPilot is active, you’ll see a live transcript appearing in real time in your Otter dashboard. You can follow along, highlight important moments by clicking the star icon, and even add comments inline. Other participants can also access the live transcript if you share the Otter link.

Step 5: After the Meeting — Review the Summary

Within minutes of the meeting ending, Otter generates an AI summary with key topics, decisions, and action items. Open the transcript in your Otter dashboard to see the summary at the top, followed by the full transcript with speaker labels. Action items are automatically extracted and highlighted.

Step 6: Share and Collaborate

Share the transcript with teammates by clicking the Share button — you can set permissions for view-only or comment access. Teammates can highlight key moments, add comments, and assign action items. You can also export the transcript as a text file, PDF, or copy it directly to your notes app.

ProTips:

• Use the OtterPilot chat feature to ask questions about past meetings — “What did we decide about the product launch?” — and get instant answers from your transcript library
• Set up Otter’s Slack integration to automatically post meeting summaries in a designated channel, keeping the whole team informed
• For important meetings, review the AI summary for accuracy and manually correct any transcription errors before sharing