Otter Transcribes the Call. Perplexity Answers the Question. Same Research Label, Different Job.

I wanted receipts, not vibes, so I tested both on the same prompts. I ran Otter and Perplexity on the same source document.

About Otter: Otter is a live transcription app for meetings and interviews. it gives you a searchable transcript while the call is still going. Otter caught a quote I'd have misremembered from a messy panel; speaker labels still drifted.

About Perplexity: Perplexity is a search engine that answers instead of listing links. it shows its sources inline, so you can check the claim before you quote it. Perplexity answered a market question with three sources I could check; one was tangential and I caught it.

speaker labels drift and the free tier caps you hard. it sometimes conflates two sources and states a blend as fact. Neither is magic, and the gap between the demo and your actual workflow is where most of these comparisons fall apart.

Otter for the live conversation you'll search later; Perplexity for the open question you need sourced now. Pick Otter when the value is the verbatim record and the searchable transcript. Pick Perplexity when you need a map of a topic with the sources inline.