Harku vs Otter/Whisper: Which Transcription Tool Fits Your Workflow?

Busy teams need more than accuracy bullet points. This guide compares how Harku, Otter, and self-hosted Whisper behave across multilingual meetings, podcast repurposing, editorial control, and compliance.

Quick verdict

• Harku pairs high-accuracy speech models with an AI post-production suite: automatic podcast show notes, bilingual summaries, highlight reels, and an editor that lets you merge/split segments or rebuild chapters without leaving the browser. Pricing starts with a 30-minute free plan, Basic $10/mo (500 minutes), and Pro $29/mo (2000 standard + 200 high-accuracy minutes). History retention runs from 7 days (Free) to 365 days (Pro), with manual purge / export available anytime.
• Otter shines for live collaboration in English meetings, but Mandarin/English code-switching still confuses diarization and tone-sensitive words.
• Whisper DIY gives you raw accuracy if you invest in GPUs, queueing, formatting scripts, and your own privacy controls.

CTA: Upload a clip and run a 5-minute free comparison. Choose “High accuracy mode” to see diarization, chapters, show notes, and exports generated in one pass.

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Scenario 1: Bilingual meeting with overlapping speakers

Requirement	Harku	Otter	Whisper DIY
Multilingual diarization	✅ GPU diarization tuned for Mandarin ↔ English turn-taking	⚠️ Speaker mix-ups after 3+ voices	❌ Needs custom clustering
Mandarin accuracy	✅ Idioms + punctuation auto-adjusted	⚠️ Homophone conflicts	✅ If you fine-tune + prompt
Export speed	✅ TXT / DOCX / SRT / VTT / JSON in one download	✅ TXT/VTT	⚠️ Build your own converters
Editor controls	✅ Merge/split segments, reassign speakers, chapter rewrite	⚠️ Limited line edits only	✅ Code your own UI

Why Harku wins: one upload yields a transcript, bilingual summary, and Slack-ready meeting recap. Editors can merge crosstalk segments or split long monologues without re-transcribing.

Scenario 2: Podcast repurposing with AI show notes

1. Upload MP3/MP4 (Free: 10 min cap, Basic: 60 min, Pro: 180 min).
2. Select the “Podcast show notes” workflow – Harku generates timestamps, hook ideas, CTA suggestions, bilingual summaries, and newsletter blurbs.
3. Publish faster – download Markdown, DOCX, or copy-rich text directly into your CMS.

Otter produces a transcript, but social snippets and show notes still require manual prompting.
Whisper DIY needs extra LLM orchestration, quality control, and formatting scripts.

Scenario 3: Editorial QA & team review

Editing need	Harku	Otter	Whisper DIY
Merge/split	✅ Native chapter + sentence merge/split with timestamp recalculation	❌ Manual copy/paste only	⚙️ Build it in your UI
Chapter rebuild	✅ AI chapters + manual override with drag & drop	⚠️ No chapter layer	⚙️ Requires coding

Why it matters: Harku keeps the “post studio” step in one editor—no spreadsheets or NLE required for podcast teams cleaning up filler words, chapter markers, or sponsor reads.

Scenario 4: Privacy & retention

Question	Harku	Otter	Whisper DIY
Retention defaults	Free: 7 days • Basic: 30 days • Pro: 365 days (manual delete & export anytime)	Manual purge	You script it
Compliance kit	GDPR, SOC 2 summary, DPA, audit logging	Standard privacy page	DIY legal + logging

Harku’s privacy vault mode isolates recordings for regulated teams—healthcare, finance, Web3—while still allowing internal reviewers to QA transcripts securely.

Total cost of ownership

• Harku: Free 30-minute quota monthly → Basic $10/mo (500 minutes) → Pro $29/mo (2000 standard + 200 high-accuracy minutes). Includes AI summaries, chapters, show notes, PDF/DOCX/SRT exports, merge/split editor, and priority queue on Pro. Minute packs (100, 300, 1000) remain available for one-off projects.
• Otter: $16.99/mo Pro seat. Add seats for each collaborator, plus third-party tools for show notes or localization.
• Whisper DIY: Model is free, but expect GPU spend (~$0.006/min), queueing infra (Redis/Workers), diarization tuning, show-note prompt pipelines, plus your own storage/compliance build-out.

When to pick what

• Choose Harku when you need Chinese + English accuracy, podcast repurposing, and post-production tools (merge/split, AI show notes, export in every format) out of the box.
• Stay with Otter if real-time collaborative notes in English are your only requirement.
• Roll your own Whisper only if a dev team can maintain GPUs, diarization, LLM prompts, and security controls continuously.

Final CTA

Give Harku the same episode or meeting you run through other tools. Run a 5-minute free comparison to see transcripts, chapters, show notes, and merge/split edits in a single workspace.