Otter.ai Singapore: AI Meeting Notes Guide for 2026

Every SME here has one person who writes the minutes. They sit in the Zoom call with a supplier in Johor, scribble half the numbers, then spend forty minutes afterwards rebuilding what was agreed. The BTO renovation meeting fails the same way. The designer says the tile upgrade is $1,800 before GST, your spouse hears $800, and the variation order two weeks later says $1,800. Nobody kept a record.

Otter.ai is an AI notetaker, and nothing about it is region-locked for Singapore: you sign up normally, billing runs in US dollars. It records a conversation, transcribes it, labels who spoke, then writes a summary with action items. It has been running since 2016, so this is not a startup experiment.

On 20 October, TechCrunch reported Otter raised US$320 million from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund, a non-dilutive deal repaid out of the revenue the spending generates. The company says it has 40 million users and passed US$100 million in annual revenue last year. The money funds international expansion and three features not yet shipped: a brief that lands before your meeting, live help during the call, and workflow automation.

The difference from ChatGPT is simple. ChatGPT needs you to hand it text. Otter joins the Zoom, Teams or Google Meet call and produces the text, with speaker names and time codes.

1. Sign up at otter.ai with Google. The Basic plan is free and takes no card.
2. Install the desktop app for Mac or Windows, plus the phone app. Desktop joins your video calls. The phone handles in-person meetings, like a contractor walking through your flat.
3. Set the language before your first recording. Otter transcribes English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and spoken Mandarin. Pick one.
4. Spend your custom vocabulary carefully. Free accounts get five terms, so use them on words it will butcher: your company name, HDB, GST, a client's surname.
5. Think before connecting your calendar. Otter will join every meeting with a link, including the one-to-one with your boss. Start recordings manually until the habit is solid.
6. Run one meeting, then rename Speaker 2 to a real name. Otter remembers it.

These go into Otter AI Chat, which sits beside the transcript. The free plan allows 3 questions per conversation and 20 a month, so ask properly instead of chatting idly. Pro raises that to 50.

Minutes a client can read

Turn this meeting into minutes I can send to the client. Structure: date and attendees, three bullets on what was decided, what is still open, then every action item with an owner and a date. Under 250 words. Do not add anything that was not said.

Catch every number

List every number mentioned in this recording with the sentence around it: prices, quantities, deposits, GST, discounts, dates. If two people gave different figures, show both and say who said which.

Find what you missed while talking

I was presenting, so I missed parts of this. Scan for commitments, deadlines and scope changes, especially where speakers overlap. List them with timestamps.

Compare against last week

Compare this meeting with my previous one with the same team. What changed, what was promised last time and dropped today, what looks newly at risk? Five bullets.

Follow-up email, no fluff

Draft a follow-up email to the client in plain professional English. Restate the three most important points, confirm each action item with its date, and ask about the one thing left undecided. No pleasantries.

Prices from Otter's pricing page, checked 22 October 2026, converted at roughly 1.28 to the Singapore dollar.

The 30 minute ceiling is the dealbreaker. Long meetings do not pause politely at minute 30. The recording stops and the tail end, usually where the decision lives, is gone. If your calls run long, treat Pro as an S$11 a month subscription rather than a free tool.

Mandarin works, dialect does not. Spoken Mandarin transcribes with Simplified Chinese output. Traditional Chinese and Cantonese are not offered, which rules out a call with a Hong Kong supplier. English and Mandarin mixed in one hour comes out messy too, because you choose one language per recording. The full list sits in Otter's help centre.

Singlish survives, sort of. Accented English holds up better than expected. Local acronyms and particles still confuse it, so spend those five free vocabulary slots on them.

Tell people you are recording. Otter's bot announces itself when it joins, but say it out loud anyway. A client's voice is personal data. If you work for an organisation, check with whoever owns your PDPA obligations before pushing recordings into a US-hosted tool, and keep NRIC numbers, medical letters and salary figures out of shared notes.

You may already be paying for it. Otter is bundled inside Singtel's AI Pass, one option under the SkillsFuture AI Subscription. Check that before paying Otter directly. If the follow-up writing is your real problem, the office productivity guide covers it, and the tools directory lists the alternatives.