An offline, private alternative to Otter.ai live captions
Last updated September 2026
Otter.ai is a meeting assistant: it joins calls, transcribes them in the cloud, and produces searchable notes and summaries. LiveCaptionIt is narrower. It shows live captions for any audio your browser can hear in a floating picture-in-picture window, and the speech model (Whisper) runs on your device via WebGPU.
Why pick ours
- Audio is transcribed locally and never uploaded.
- Works on any tab — videos, podcasts, lectures, browser-based meetings.
- Captions float over other apps in a picture-in-picture window.
- Free, with no monthly minute cap.
Where Otter.ai live captions is better
- Otter saves full transcripts with speaker labels, search and AI summaries; LiveCaptionIt is for live viewing.
- Otter can join Zoom, Meet and Teams calls as a bot.
- It has mobile apps and works with microphone audio in person.
- Cloud models are usually faster on low-end hardware.
Which should you use?
Use LiveCaptionIt to follow along with audio privately in real time. Use Otter when you need stored meeting notes and summaries.
FAQ
What does it need to run?
A browser with WebGPU (recent Chrome or Edge on desktop works best). The Whisper model downloads once on first use.
Does my audio leave my device?
No. Transcription runs locally in your browser.
Can it caption desktop apps outside the browser?
It captions audio your browser can capture, such as a shared tab. Desktop-app audio depends on what your browser lets you share.
Otter.ai live captions is a trademark of its respective owner. This page is an independent comparison and is not affiliated with or endorsed by them. Feature details reflect our understanding at the time of writing.