Otter.ai is excellent at what it does. If your team works in English, it's genuinely hard to beat: automatic transcription, meeting summaries, CRM integrations, a clean interface. It's the default choice for good reason.
The problem appears the moment your meeting isn't in English.
Otter's language limitation
Otter's transcription is focused primarily on English, with partial support for a small number of other languages. If your meeting is in Russian, German, Arabic, or another language — or if your participants regularly switch between languages mid-conversation — you'll get unusable output, or no transcription at all.
Check the current language list at otter.ai before drawing firm conclusions — it gets updated periodically.
This isn't an edge case. Expats, international teams, and anyone working across language boundaries run into it constantly:
- A client call where the client prefers their native language
- A recorded school meeting held in the local language
- An interview with a non-English-speaking source
- A team standup where half the team speaks Spanish and the other half English
For all of these, Otter leaves you without options.
What a multilingual transcription tool actually needs to do
Three things:
- Auto-detect the language — you shouldn't have to configure it before every file
- Handle code-switching — real conversations mix languages; the tool needs to keep up when someone switches mid-sentence
- Provide a translation — if the original is in a language you don't read fluently, you need the transcript in your language, not theirs
Most tools that claim multilingual support still require manual language selection, produce unreliable output on mixed-language audio, and offer no translation — leaving you with a document you still can't read.
How Voiz handles it
Voiz is built around this scenario. You upload a recording — a meeting, a voice message, an event you attended — and Gemini AI automatically detects the language or languages spoken. Multiple speakers, multiple languages in the same file: it handles that too.
The output: a full transcript in the original language(s), a translation into your target language, and speaker labels so you can follow who said what.
Comparison
| | Otter.ai | Voiz | |---|---|---| | Languages | English-primary (see their site for current list) | Auto-detect, 50+ languages | | Translation | No | Yes, included | | Speaker labels | Yes | Yes | | Code-switching | No | Yes | | Commitment | Monthly subscription | Pay-as-you-go | | Free tier | 300 min/month | 30 min total |
Otter's free tier is more generous for regular English use. Voiz's advantage shows up when language or translation is the constraint — and when you don't want a subscription for occasional use.
If Otter works for your use case — English meetings, clean audio, team workflow integrations — it's a solid choice. If it doesn't, upload a short test recording below and see what Voiz produces.
FAQ
- Does Voiz integrate with Zoom or Google Meet like Otter does?
- Not directly — Voiz works with uploaded recordings rather than joining live meetings. Record your Zoom or Meet session, download the recording, and upload it here. Most platforms let you record locally or to the cloud.
- What languages does Voiz support?
- Voiz uses Gemini AI for transcription, which auto-detects the spoken language. It covers all major European languages, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and many more — including audio where speakers switch between languages mid-conversation.
- I already use Otter for English meetings. Can I use Voiz just for multilingual ones?
- Yes. Voiz is pay-as-you-go — you buy minutes when you need them, with no subscription required. It's straightforward to use alongside other tools.