Comparing 3 Tools That Suit Japanese Meetings
Otter in the previous article was strong at English. If you mainly handle Japanese meetings, choosing among tl;dv, Notta, and Fireflies is realistic. Each has a different strength, so pick by use. Prices and plans change often, so always check the official site before subscribing (below is a rough guide as of May 2026).
tl;dv: For Those Who Want to Start Free
- Integrates with Zoom / Google Meet / Microsoft Teams
- Generous free plan; recording/transcription itself is near-unlimited, with a cap on AI summary count
- Supports 30+ languages; integrates with Slack and calendar
- AI Q&A to ask past meetings; timestamped sharing
Pricing guide: usable from free; paid raises AI-summary caps and team features (roughly USD 20–60/user/mo band).
Notta: For Those Prioritizing Japanese Accuracy
- Strength in Japanese accuracy (developed by a Japanese company, Japanese UI and support)
- Supports Webex / Zoom / Meet / Teams; multilingual translation
- Rich minutes templates; custom vocabulary for proper nouns works in Japanese too
- As a Japanese business it can issue qualified invoices—a practical plus
Pricing guide: free is up to 120 min/mo and 3 min/conversation. Pro is around USD 13–14/mo (cheaper annual) for 1,800 min/mo and long recordings. Upper plans add monthly transcription quota.
Fireflies: For Those Prioritizing Sales/Marketing Analytics
- Sales-meeting analytics (talk ratio, keyword tracking)
- Integrates with CRMs like Salesforce / HubSpot
- Good at "next action" extraction; custom integration via API
- Supports 100+ languages
Pricing guide: free available (caps on transcription storage and AI credits). Pro around USD 10/user/mo (annual), Business around USD 19/user/mo, Enterprise around USD 39/user/mo.
How to Choose by Use
| Use | Recommended |
|---|---|
| Personal/small, try free first | tl;dv |
| Mainly Japanese meetings | Notta |
| Sales/marketing meeting analysis | Fireflies |
| English/global meetings | Otter (see previous article) |
Common Cautions
- Conversations are sent to the cloud, so check terms and plan conditions for confidential meetings
- Free plans may use data for AI improvement (check the latest terms)
- Get prior consent for client meetings
- Proper nouns/names are easily misrecognized; setting a name dictionary / custom vocabulary improves it
Common Misunderstandings
- "Otter is enough for Japanese": Otter is good at English; for Japanese-centric, Notta and others get accuracy more easily
- "Free plan conditions are the same": tl;dv leans unlimited recording, Notta caps minutes, Fireflies caps storage—different characters
- "Roll out company-wide right after adopting": try one meeting body for a month, fix one template, then expand
How to Roll Out
- Try the free plan for a month
- Notify meeting participants in advance (recording consent)
- Make and fix one minutes template
- Decide on paid based on the usage feel
You can use Fireflies for sales and tl;dv internally together, but unifying to one per meeting is easier to operate. The next article covers the translation-specialized tool DeepL.
