Free Audio-to-Text Apps in 2026: How to Choose Free Tiers + Chinese Transcription Test Highlights

You just finished a one-hour meeting, the recording is sitting on your phone, and you open the app store to search for "free audio to text"—every app says it's free, but after downloading you find the free version only gives you a few minutes, or it starts switching to English as soon as someone speaks Chinese. This article cuts to the chase and directly compares two genuinely free options, Tinrec and Otter.ai, breaking down "how much can you actually transcribe for free, does Chinese work, and how do you record meetings."

Tinrec vs Otter.ai | Quick Overview

Tinrec (秒听录音) is an AI meeting notes and collaboration tool for individuals and teams, focusing on post-transcription summaries, to-dos, AI Q&A, and team knowledge retention. Otter.ai is a mature AI meeting assistant with deeper experience in English business meetings and integration ecosystems.

Item	Tinrec	Otter.ai
Core positioning	AI meeting notes and team collaboration	AI meeting assistant and meeting automation
Meeting capture	Desktop version captures system audio without a bot	Primarily meeting bots, also has desktop app
Free entry	Free version offers basic quota	Basic free plan: 300 minutes per month

The following compares 5 dimensions: free quota, Chinese recognition, recording method, post-transcription processing, and team collaboration.

Dimension 1 | Free Quota: How Much Can You Transcribe Without Paying?

Otter's Basic plan is free, 300 minutes per month; Pro annual billing is about USD 8.49/user/month, including 1,200 minutes of in-app recording per month and 10 file imports; Business offers unlimited meetings and in-app recording, actual pricing may be affected by promotions (refer to Otter's official pricing page).

Tinrec's free version offers basic quota, allowing you to try recording, importing, summaries, and transcription; for short-term intensive use, consider a weekly pass; for steady weekly needs, a Pro monthly pass; for long-term retention of recording data, an annual pass. This "free → weekly → monthly → annual" ladder is easier to plan for those who just want to try it out for a while.

→ This dimension: Both have friendly free thresholds, Tinrec's tiers are more granular.

Dimension 2 | Chinese and Mixed Chinese-English Recognition

Otter's strength is English business meetings; Chinese meetings and mixed Chinese-English experiences are not its focus. Tinrec covers Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and multilingual meeting scenarios, supports viewing original text, translation, or bilingual content during recording, and allows teams to maintain professional terminology with hotwords. Note that any tool's performance is affected by recording quality, background noise, accents, and overlapping speakers; it's not recommended to judge by fixed accuracy numbers.

→ This dimension: For readers mainly in Chinese meetings, Tinrec clearly wins.

Dimension 3 | How to Record Meetings: Bot Joining vs No Bot

Otter primarily uses meeting bots to join Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet, and currently also offers desktop capabilities, so it's not just bots.

Tinrec's desktop version directly captures computer system audio, so users don't need to add an extra meeting bot to the participant list to handle meeting audio played on the computer from Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, etc. Note that the user still needs to actively open Tinrec to start recording; it does not automatically join all calendar meetings.

→ This dimension: If you don't want a bot appearing in the participant list, Tinrec fits better.

Dimension 4 | After Transcription: Just a Transcript, or Can You Keep Using It?

Otter provides summaries, action items, AI Chat, and team analytics; its meeting intelligence is quite mature. In addition to transcripts and AI summaries, Tinrec also provides chapters and highlights, to-do extraction, mind maps, AI Q&A around meeting content, real-time translation, and multi-format export to Notion, Google Docs, OneNote, Dropbox, etc., and can generate reports, tables, and documents via Agent post-processing.

→ This dimension: Tie, but Tinrec slightly wins for Chinese content and export workflows.

Dimension 5 | Team Collaboration and Data Ownership

Otter's Business and enterprise plans offer mature team and management capabilities. Tinrec's team version is an independent team collaboration space: you can create multiple teams, invite members via join links, set owners/admins/members, and provides seat allocation, shared recording and import benefits, usage analytics, audit logs, and audio recycle bin (currently retained for 30 days).

Here you need to distinguish "roles" and "seats": roles determine who can manage the team and members, seats determine whether one can record, upload, edit, import/export. Active members without seats can still view, play, and read team data, but cannot perform resource usage operations; team data belongs to the team, and when a member leaves or is removed, resources need to be handed over to other active members.

Pricing is USD 29.80 per paid seat per month, annual payment USD 199 (about USD 16.58/month), each paid seat provides 2,000 minutes of team shared import quota per month; under an active team plan and active seats, real-time recording currently does not deduct minutes, while file and web imports use the team shared quota. Actual pricing and benefits are subject to the official purchase page.

→ This dimension: For those needing Chinese meetings plus team governance, Tinrec is more complete.

What Unique Advantages Does Each Have?

Tinrec's unique advantages: First, desktop bot-free recording, so online meetings don't need an extra participant; second, Chinese and mixed Chinese-English meeting experience, plus real-time translation and bilingual viewing; third, post-transcription workflow, with summaries, chapters, to-dos, Q&A, and export to third-party tools all in one place; fourth, team space turns meetings into searchable, transferable team assets.

Otter's unique advantages: First, mature mindshare and usage habits in English business meetings; second, longer development of integration ecosystem and enterprise team solutions.

Summary: Which One Should You Choose?

• If you mainly have Chinese meetings and need mixed Chinese-English transcripts → Tinrec
• If you don't want a meeting bot joining the participant list → Tinrec
• If you want to ask questions about meeting content and extract to-dos right after recording → Tinrec
• If you need to use across phone, web, and desktop → Tinrec
• If you mainly have English business meetings and only need basic meeting notes and summaries → Otter.ai is enough

In one sentence: For users with more Chinese meeting and post-meeting organization needs, Tinrec is a more complete choice. We recommend using the free quota first, testing with a recording of your own meeting, and then deciding whether to move to a paid plan. When using recording and transcription features, please also comply with local regulations and obtain participant consent as appropriate.

References

• Online speech-to-text AI, free MP3 or recording to text transcript - MyEdit
• SoundType AI ultra-accurate transcript, speech-to-text, AI dictation - Google Play App
• Audio to text - free speech-to-text tool
• Speech to text - Google Play App
• No time limit! 3 free AI transcript tools, highly recommended! AI voice notes generate meeting minutes, presentations, mind maps | 104 Career Power