Heptabase vs Otter.ai

Which should you choose?

These tools serve fundamentally different needs and shouldn't be compared directly. Heptabase is a visual knowledge management system for organizing research, ideas, and learning over time through spatial whiteboards and atomic cards. Otter.ai is a meeting transcription and summarization assistant that captures spoken conversations into searchable records. Pick Heptabase if you're building a personal knowledge base or researching complex topics visually. Pick Otter.ai if you need to record, transcribe, and extract action items from meetings. The only overlap is search functionality—both index their content—but their input sources (manual notes vs. live audio) and use cases are distinct.