⚡ Quick Verdict:
- Pricing: Notta pricing runs Free, Pro at $8.17/month, Business at $16.67/month, and Enterprise at custom pricing. Microsoft lists OneNote cost as contact-for-quote.
- Best for: Notta suits people who transcribe meetings, interviews, and audio recordings. OneNote suits people who create notes and organize information.
- Key difference: Notta is an AI transcription tool. OneNote is a note taking app with OCR technology and drawing tools.
- Our pick: Microsoft OneNote, at 4.2 versus 4.1, because the free version is genuinely free across multiple devices.
These two tools get compared a lot, but they do not do the same job.
Notta turns audio or video files into text.
Microsoft OneNote stores your ideas in notebooks you can search later.
One kills tedious note taking during calls.
The other keeps every scrap of thinking in one place.
This detailed overview shows which one fits your week.
Overview
This Notta vs Microsoft OneNote detailed review covers pricing, features, and daily fit.
Our sources include published specs, official documentation, and user reviews.
Our writers also spent hands-on time with both apps.
Those observations sit in the “What Our Team Noticed” sections below.
What is Notta?
Notta is an AI transcription tool that turns speech into text.
You can import audio or upload video files and get a transcript back.
Notta AI also joins live calls and transcribes them in real time.
That covers webinars, conferences, and everyday virtual meetings.
The company reports 98.86% accuracy when the source audio is clear.
Notta says it serves over a million users across roughly 119 countries.
Here is a walkthrough of the Notta app in action.
Notta
Built for people who record conversations all day. The free plan gives you 120 minutes of audio transcription per month.
Notta Pricing
Here is what Notta pricing looks like in 2026.
| Plan | Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/month | Testing quick transcription on short clips |
| Pro | $8.17/month | Solo users transcribing meetings weekly |
| Business | $16.67/month | Small teams sharing transcripts |
| Enterprise | Custom pricing | Large orgs with security reviews |
Pricing verified July 2026.
Free trial: Yes. The free plan works without a card, and paid plans have a trial window.
Money-back guarantee: Notta does not publish a blanket refund window. Check the terms before you buy.
📌 Note: The free version caps you at 120 minutes per month and 3 minutes per single recording. The Pro plan lifts that to 1,800 minutes monthly. The Business plan adds a second seat and 2,400 minutes. The Enterprise plan is quoted per organization.
⚠️ Pricing conflict flagged: Notta’s public page has also shown Pro at $13.99 monthly or $8.25 billed annually, and Business at $59 monthly or $44 annually. Our table uses our verified figures. Confirm the current rate at checkout before you pay.
Key Benefits of Notta
Here is what makes Notta worth a look:
- Live meeting capture: The Notta Bot joins Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex. A Chrome extension covers everything else.
- AI summary and meeting highlights: The summarizer pulls key takeaways out of a long call. Custom templates shape the output.
- Translation for international meetings: Transcripts translate into 42 languages. Transcription itself covers 50+ languages.
- Export freedom: Send transcripts to TXT, DOCX, SRT, PDF, or XLSX. DOCX opens straight in MS Word.
- Compliance coverage: Notta lists GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, and SOC 2. HTTPS transfer adds network security between you and the service.
- Cross-device sync: Record on your phone, then edit transcripts on your laptop. Notta Memo is a handheld recorder for in-person sessions.
What Our Team Noticed
Our writer signed up for Notta and ran it through real calls and uploaded recordings. Here is what stood out from that hands-on time:
Notta Pros & Cons
✅ Pros
- Real-time transcription during a video conference or job interview
- Speaker labels keep two-way conversations readable
- Translation into 42 languages helps cross-border teams
- Five export formats including PDF and DOCX
❌ Cons
- The 120-minute free tier trails rivals like tl;dv and Fireflies.ai
- Reviewers report glitches and a buggy summarizer at times
- Fewer integrations than competitors with thousands of connectors
What is Microsoft OneNote?
Microsoft OneNote is a note taking app built by Microsoft.
It uses a notebook metaphor to organize information into sections and pages.
You click anywhere on a page and a text box appears.
That free-form canvas is the whole point.
You can create notes, sketch, clip web pages, and record audio in one file.
OneNote runs on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and the web.
This review shows how the interface handles real notebooks.
🏆 Winner: Microsoft OneNote
A free note taking app with real depth. You need a Microsoft account, not a paid subscription, to start.
Microsoft OneNote Pricing
Microsoft quotes OneNote licensing on request, so the table below reflects that.
| Plan | Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft OneNote | Contact for the exact pricing | Individuals and teams inside Microsoft 365 |
Pricing verified July 2026.
Free trial: The standalone app is free to download and use with a Microsoft account.
Money-back guarantee: Refunds follow standard Microsoft 365 subscription terms, not a separate OneNote policy.
📌 Note: The free version of OneNote ships with 5GB of OneDrive cloud storage. Notes sync across devices with no cap on note count, file size, or monthly uploads.
⚠️ Pricing conflict flagged: Our data lists OneNote cost as contact-for-quote, while Microsoft offers the app free and sells more storage through Microsoft 365 at 1TB. Both are true. The free app costs nothing, and the bundle price varies depending on your region and seat count.
Key Benefits of Microsoft OneNote
Here is what OneNote offers that keeps its users around:
- Genuinely free: No paid plan is required for core note taking. That beats Evernote, which locks syncing behind payment.
- OCR technology: Optical character recognition finds text inside photos and handwritten notes. Search features reach into images most apps ignore.
- Real-time collaboration: Multiple users can co-author one notebook. You grant edit or view-only rights when sharing notes.
- Web clipper: The browser extension saves an article, a page section, or a whole site into your notebooks.
- Ink and drawing tools: Handwrite notes with a stylus, sketch diagrams, or annotate a screenshot.
- Office integration: It links with Microsoft Office applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, plus custom templates for meeting notes and project plans.
This clip walks through those benefits on screen.
What Our Team Noticed
Our writer keeps a working notebook in OneNote across a desktop and a phone. Here is what stood out from that hands-on time:
Microsoft OneNote Pros & Cons
✅ Pros
- Free across Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and the browser
- Unlimited notes with no cap per notebook
- OCR search reaches text inside images and ink
- Deep links to Microsoft apps you already pay for
❌ Cons
- Steep learning curve that overwhelms new users
- Thin export options make it hard to leave
- Formatting can shift between different platforms
Feature Comparison
These two apps overlap in one narrow place: capturing what was said. Everywhere else they split apart. Below are ten areas that decide the choice for most people.
| Feature | Notta | Microsoft OneNote |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $0/month free plan | Free app, quote for licensing |
| Real-time meeting transcription | ✅ | ❌ |
| AI summary of a call | ✅ | ✅ (Copilot) |
| Handwriting and drawing tools | ❌ | ✅ |
| OCR technology | ❌ | ✅ |
| Translation into multiple languages | ✅ (42) | ❌ |
| Web clipper browser extension | ❌ | ✅ |
| Record audio inside notes | ✅ | ✅ |
| Export options | ✅ (5 formats) | ❌ (limited) |
| Best For | Transcribing meetings and interviews | Long-term note taking |
1. AI Transcription
Notta: This is the core product. Notta transcribes live calls and uploaded recordings, and the company claims 98.86% accuracy on clean audio. Speaker labels tag each voice as Speaker 1 or Speaker 2 so a two-way conversation stays readable.
Microsoft OneNote: Voice transcription exists, but it is not built for a long video conference. It converts dictated speech inside a page rather than processing a two-hour recording end to end.
⚠️ Warning: Accuracy drops in noisy rooms. Reviewers report uneven results when background sound is heavy, so a decent mic matters more than the plan you pick.
2. AI Summary and Meeting Notes
Notta: The summarizer condenses a long recording into meeting highlights and action items. Custom templates shape the format, which speeds up decision making processes after a call ends.
Microsoft OneNote: Copilot summarizes pages you already wrote and highlights key points. It works on your notes, not on raw audio, so it complements rather than replaces an AI transcription tool.
3. Note Taking and Structure
Notta: AI Notes gives you a clean writing surface tied to a recording. It is fine for cleanup work, but it is not where you park a research project for three years.
Microsoft OneNote: Notebooks hold sections, sections hold pages, and sections can be color-coded. You can create notes anywhere on the canvas and add custom tags to find them later. Multiple notebooks keep work and personal ideas apart.
4. Handwriting, Ink and OCR
Notta: No ink layer at all. Visual insights can turn a transcript into a mind map or infographic, but you cannot handwrite notes on the page.
Microsoft OneNote: Drawing tools support stylus input, sketching, and annotation over screen clippings. Optical character recognition then makes handwritten notes searchable, which is the single feature that keeps students on this app.
5. Translation and Multiple Languages
Notta: Transcription covers over 50 languages, and transcripts translate into 42. For international meetings or language learning, that gap is the whole argument.
Bilingual sessions get their own handling when two languages run in one room.
Microsoft OneNote: Translation runs through the wider Microsoft Office layer rather than a native audio pipeline. There is no bilingual transcription mode here.
6. Meeting Bots and Scheduling
Notta: The Notta Bot joins Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex so you skip the join-and-hit-record dance. Teams meetings land in your library automatically.
A scheduler handles recurring calls so nothing gets missed.
Microsoft OneNote: No meeting bot. It hooks into Outlook meeting details and gives you a page template, but you are still taking notes yourself.
7. Collaboration and Sharing Notes
Notta: Easy sharing of transcripts by link, plus workflow hooks into Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot, and Notion. Collaboration means commenting on a transcript, not co-writing a document.
Microsoft OneNote: Multiple users edit a single page at once, the way Google Docs works. You choose edit or view-only access, and changes from other OneNote users appear live.
8. Recording and Playback
Notta: The voice recorder captures audio and video recording in real time, and you can playback recordings while you edit transcripts. Notta Memo, a handheld device, covers in-person sessions where no laptop is open.
Microsoft OneNote: You can record audio and video straight into a page during a lecture. Playback is tied to the note you typed at that moment, which is useful for revision.
9. Search, Chat and Study Tools
Notta: Notta Brain and AI Chat let you query a transcript in plain language. Ask what a client agreed to and it pulls the essential info out of the recording.
Microsoft OneNote: Search features cover typed text, ink, and images. Microsoft offers study extras for subscribers, including the Math Assistant, which walks through equation steps.
10. Pricing & Cost
Here are the paid plans side by side.
| Plan | Notta | Microsoft OneNote |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/month | Free app with a Microsoft account |
| Pro | $8.17/month | ❌ |
| Business | $16.67/month | ❌ |
| Enterprise | Custom pricing | Contact for the exact pricing |
Notta: You pay for minutes, not seats. The Pro plan at $8.17/month is the sweet spot for one person who transcribes audio several times a week. The Business plan doubles the seats and lifts the monthly cap.
Microsoft OneNote: The app itself costs nothing. You pay only when you want more storage or premium features through Microsoft 365, and that bundle price is quoted rather than listed.
Different Scenarios
| If You Need… | Choose | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Zero budget | Microsoft OneNote | Free app, no minute cap |
| Transcribing meetings | Notta | Live bot joins the call |
| Handwritten notes | Microsoft OneNote | Ink plus OCR search |
| Multiple languages | Notta | 50+ transcribed, 42 translated |
| One long-term knowledge base | Microsoft OneNote | Notebooks, sections, custom tags |
| Beginner-friendly start | Notta | Fewer menus to learn |
💰 Your Budget
OneNote asks for nothing up front, which is hard to beat. Notta’s free version stops at 120 minutes, so heavy users land on a paid plan fast.
🔌 Your Tech Stack
If your team already lives in Microsoft apps, OneNote slots in beside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Notta plugs into Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot, and Notion instead.
📝 How You Work
Journalists, researchers, and podcasters who transcribe YouTube videos or a recorded business negotiation want Notta. Anyone who thinks in sketches and outlines wants OneNote.
🎓 Your Experience Level
Notta has an easy-to-follow user interface with few settings to learn. OneNote hides real depth behind customization options, and new users often feel lost for a week.
📱 Your Devices
The OneNote Windows version carries the most tools, and the Mac desktop version trails it slightly. On mobile devices, the Android version and iOS mobile apps run a simplified version. Notta syncs cleanly between phone and browser.
♿ Accessibility Needs
Live captions during a call help people with hearing loss follow along in the moment. Only Notta produces that stream in real time.
🛟 Support Options
Microsoft support runs through a huge public help library, and OneNote support questions usually have an existing answer. Notta users have flagged slow replies on billing issues.
Switching Guide
Already using one of these? Here is what changes.
🔄 Switching from Notta to Microsoft OneNote?
✅ What you’ll gain:
- A free home for notes with no monthly minute cap
- Ink, drawing tools, and OCR search across images
- Real-time co-authoring with multiple users
❌ What you’ll lose:
- Automatic transcription of a live video conference
- Translation into 42 languages
- Five-format export, including SRT subtitles
📋 How to switch:
- Export your transcripts from Notta web as DOCX or PDF
- Sign in with a Microsoft account to access OneNote
- Create multiple notebooks, then drop the files onto a page
🔄 Switching from Microsoft OneNote to Notta?
✅ What you’ll gain:
- A bot that records conversations without you touching anything
- Speaker-labelled transcripts you can search and edit
- More advanced features for audio, including bilingual sessions
❌ What you’ll lose:
- The free unlimited notebook structure
- Handwriting capture and the web clipper
- Tight links to Microsoft Word and other apps in Office
📋 How to switch:
- Print or copy your pages out of OneNote, since export options are thin
- Open a free Notta account and connect your calendar
- Import audio from old recordings, then start transcribing notes from live calls
What Our Review Didn’t Cover
This comparison focused on individuals and small teams. We did not test enterprise deployment, admin controls, or how either app behaves under a corporate security review. Heavy word processing workflows and offline-only setups also sit outside what we looked at. If you manage fifty seats or work in a regulated industry, your priorities will differ from ours.
Final Verdict
| Category | Winner |
|---|---|
| 💰 Pricing | Microsoft OneNote |
| 🎙️ Audio transcription | Notta |
| 🗂️ Organization | Microsoft OneNote |
| 🌍 Language support | Notta |
| 👥 Collaboration | Microsoft OneNote |
| 👶 Ease of Use | Notta |
| 🔌 Office integration | Microsoft OneNote |
| 🏆 Overall Winner | Microsoft OneNote |
🏆 WINNER: MICROSOFT ONENOTE
Microsoft OneNote wins 4 of 7 categories.
Best for: students, Microsoft Office households, and anyone building one searchable knowledge base
An awesome rating on its own does not pick your tool. The 4.2 versus 4.1 gap is thin, and the two apps barely compete.
OneNote takes the win because it costs nothing and holds everything. It saves time writing things down twice, and it never charges you by the minute.
Notta is the best tool for one specific job: providing accurate transcriptions that turn speech into actionable text. If your week is full of calls, it buys back real hours and lets you spend more time focusing on the conversation instead of the keyboard.
Plenty of people run both. Notta handles transcribing audio, then the transcript lands in a OneNote page for good.
More of Notta Compared
Here is how Notta lines up against other AI meeting assistants:
Notta vs Sembly
Notta wins on: wider language coverage at 50+, a handheld recorder for offline sessions, and five export formats
Sembly wins on: deeper task extraction, stronger CRM workflows, and richer team analytics
Notta vs Fireflies AI
Notta wins on: translation into 42 languages, bilingual sessions, and a lighter interface for solo users
Fireflies AI wins on: a more generous free tier, a bigger integration catalogue, and conversation intelligence for sales teams
Notta vs MeetGeek
Notta wins on: uploading old files to convert audio to text, subtitle export, and multilingual accuracy
MeetGeek wins on: automatic meeting scoring, branded recap emails, and hands-off calendar coverage
More of Microsoft OneNote Compared
Here is how OneNote holds up against other note apps:
Microsoft OneNote wins on: a free tier that actually syncs, unlimited notes per notebook, and a free-form canvas instead of fixed note cards
Evernote wins on: a sharper web clipper, stronger OCR results, and a more polished search experience
Microsoft OneNote wins on: pen input, offline reliability on Windows, and no cost for full personal use
Notion wins on: relational databases, published web pages, and a far cleaner template gallery
Microsoft OneNote vs Craft
Microsoft OneNote wins on: Windows and Android parity, Office file embedding, and zero cost at the entry point
Craft wins on: document design, faster Apple-side performance, and easier public sharing links
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Notta AI do?
It records meetings and can convert audio to text automatically. It also summarizes calls, labels speakers, and translates transcripts into other languages.
How much does OneNote cost?
The standalone app is free with a Microsoft account. Extra storage and premium features come through Microsoft 365, which is quoted separately by region and seat count.
Is OneNote actually free?
Yes. Core note taking, syncing, and 5GB of OneDrive storage cost nothing. You only pay if you want 1TB of space or Copilot.
How accurate is Notta?
The company claims 98.86% accuracy on clear recordings. Reviewers report weaker results in noisy rooms or with heavy accents, so a good microphone matters.
Is Notta better than Otter?
It depends on language needs. Notta covers 50+ languages and translates into 42, while Otter stays stronger for English-only teams with deeper collaboration tools.
English 
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Vietnamese 