Mainroom vs. Otter.ai
Otter.ai is an AI notetaker: live transcription, meeting notes and summaries. Mainroom is an AI meeting agent that participates. A factual comparison of what each one does in and after a meeting.
In one sentence: Otter.ai transcribes and summarizes meetings. Mainroom puts an AI participant in the meeting that speaks, presents, draws and acts.
What Otter.ai does
- Live transcription during the meeting, with speaker identification.
- Automated meeting notes and summaries after the call, and a chat over your notes.
- A bot (OtterPilot) that joins Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams to record.
- Search across all past meetings.
What Mainroom does
Mainroom builds AI agents that join Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Zoom as participants from a calendar invite. In the call an agent speaks when addressed, puts slides and tables on the shared screen, teaches on a whiteboard, runs live browser demos the room can steer, looks things up in your tools, opens anonymous intake for the room, logs decisions and commitments as they are confirmed, and coaches the person who invited it privately. After the call it emails a recap and queues proposed actions for approval.
Side by side
| Otter.ai | Mainroom | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | AI notetaker | AI meeting agent |
| Joins Meet, Teams and Zoom as a participant | Yes | Yes |
| Transcript and summary | Yes, core product | Yes, as a by-product (recap email, ledger) |
| Speaks in the meeting when addressed | No | Yes |
| Puts slides, tables and charts on the shared screen | No | Yes |
| Whiteboard teaching | No | Yes |
| Live browser demo steered by the room | No | Yes |
| Lookups in your tools mid-call | No | Yes, any MCP server plus web search |
| Anonymous intake for the room | No | Yes |
| Proposed actions to CRM and tickets with approval | No | Yes |
| Private live coaching for the inviter | No | Yes |
| Build your own agent with persona, tools and manners | No | Yes |
| Pricing | Free tier and paid plans (see otter.ai) | Free during beta |
Which to choose
Pick Otter.ai if what you need is a dependable transcript and searchable notes across every meeting. Pick Mainroom if you want the meeting itself to go differently: answers in the call, material on the screen, input from everyone, and follow-ups queued for approval. Many teams run both; a Mainroom agent does not need to be the recorder of record.
A note on accuracy
Details about other products on this page come from their public product pages as of September 17, 2026 and may have changed; check the vendor's site for current features and pricing. Mainroom details are current as of the same date. Corrections: hello@mainroom.ai.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use Otter.ai and Mainroom together?
Yes. A Mainroom agent is one more participant in the meeting and does not need to be the recorder of record. Teams that like their current notetaker keep it.
Does Mainroom produce a transcript and summary too?
Yes. Every call ends with a recap email matched to the agent's role and a ledger of decisions, commitments, open questions and risks that carries to the next meeting with the same people.
Does anything get written to my CRM without approval?
No. Writes to systems of record arrive as proposed actions that the agent's owner approves or discards.