Back-to-back meeting schedules
Capture decisions and actions without dividing attention between active listening and verbatim notes.
Independent tool overview
Granola at a glance
Granola is a bot-free AI meeting notepad that uses device audio, a live transcript, and any notes you type to produce structured summaries, action items, and searchable meeting memory.
Visit the official Granola site ↗
- Product type
- Bot-free AI meeting notepad and searchable meeting memory
- Platforms
- macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android
- Starting price
- Free; Business costs $14 per user per month
- Meeting support
- Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Huddles, phone calls, and in-person conversations
- Recording approach
- Uses device audio and does not add a meeting bot
- Security
- SOC 2 Type 2; notes stored encrypted in a US-hosted AWS VPC
Overview
What Granola is
Granola runs on macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android and captures a meeting through the user's device rather than sending a visible bot into the call. You can jot down only the points that matter—or write nothing—and Granola combines the transcript, raw notes, and calendar context into an editable summary after the meeting.
The product has expanded beyond summaries into pre-meeting briefs, custom templates, cross-meeting chat, people and company views, mobile capture, integrations, an API, and an MCP connector. Its best fit is someone in frequent calls who values private-by-default notes and a human-guided notepad, provided the organization has clear consent, retention, and sharing rules.
Use cases
Who Granola is best for
The strongest fit depends on the job you need the product to complete, not the size of its feature list.
Product and research teams
Turn user interviews, planning calls, and design reviews into specs, themes, and follow-up work.
Sales and customer teams
Keep a searchable history of account conversations and send selected notes into CRM or collaboration tools.
People who dislike meeting bots
Transcribe through the user's device without adding another participant to a video call.
Teams building meeting-aware workflows
Use Business-plan API, MCP, and integrations to make approved meeting context available in other tools.
Capabilities
Core Granola features
Bot-free transcription
Captures system and microphone audio on the user's device after the user starts a note, with no bot joining the meeting.
Human-guided notes
Raw notes tell the AI what matters, while the transcript fills in context, structure, and detail.
Source tracing
Inspect the transcript or raw-note basis behind an enhanced note instead of treating every summary point as unsupported.
Custom templates
Use built-in or custom structures for interviews, sales calls, stand-ups, one-on-ones, and other recurring formats.
Granola Chat
Ask questions within one meeting or across selected meetings, folders, people, companies, or the full available history.
Pre-meeting briefs
Prepare for external meetings from prior notes, shared workspace notes, calendar details, the web, and optional Gmail context.
Private and shared spaces
Keep notes private by default, then share a note or organize approved material in team folders.
People and company views
Organize meeting history around calendar attendees and company information for relationship-level recall.
Workflow integrations
Share notes to Slack, Notion, HubSpot, Affinity, Attio, and Zapier on eligible plans.
API and MCP access
Business includes API access and an MCP connector for making meeting notes available to compatible AI applications.
Process
How the Granola workflow works
Step 1
Connect the calendar
Sign in with Google Workspace or Microsoft and confirm that only the intended calendar context is available.
Step 2
Set a disclosure policy
Decide how participants will be informed and obtain any consent required by law, contract, or company policy.
Step 3
Start the note
Open the scheduled meeting or a quick note and confirm that the transcription indicator is active.
Step 4
Mark important moments
Write short notes or headings during the conversation to guide the enhanced summary.
Step 5
Review the result
Check decisions, owners, dates, quotations, and action items against the transcript before distributing them.
Step 6
Share deliberately
Send only the approved summary to the right folder, person, CRM, or integration and apply the team's retention rules.
Cost
Granola pricing and free plan
Granola offers a free Basic plan, a $14-per-user monthly Business plan, and a $35-per-user monthly Enterprise plan. Business adds full history, advanced AI, integrations, API, MCP, and centralized billing; Enterprise adds organization-level security, administration, retention, and notification controls.
Basic
$0 per user/month
For evaluating Granola's core meeting notes and chat.
- AI meeting notes
- Limited meeting history
- AI chat within and across meetings
- Shared folders, templates, and multiple languages
Business
$14 per user/month
For individuals and small teams that need complete history and connected workflows.
- Unlimited meeting notes and history
- Advanced AI thinking models and features
- Attio, Notion, Slack, HubSpot, Affinity, and Zapier integrations
- API, MCP, centralized billing, and user management
Enterprise
$35 per user/month
For organizations that need centralized security, administration, and data controls.
- Single sign-on and priority support
- Usage analytics and organization-wide auto-deletion periods
- Admin controls for sharing and API access
- Organization-wide model-training opt-out and usage notification
Pricing checked . Check current pricing at the source ↗
Assessment
Granola strengths and limitations
Where it stands out
- Does not add a bot participant to video calls.
- Lets the user's own notes guide what the AI emphasizes.
- Works across major meeting apps as well as in-person and mobile conversations.
- Notes are private by default and are not automatically sent to attendees.
- Source tracing makes important summary points easier to verify against the transcript.
- Cross-meeting chat can surface commitments and patterns from a large meeting history.
- Business includes API, MCP, and useful CRM and collaboration integrations.
- Granola says third-party model providers cannot train on customer data.
- Enterprise adds SSO, admin controls, deletion periods, analytics, and company-wide transparency options.
What to consider
- A bot-free interface can be less visible to participants, so the user still needs clear verbal or in-product disclosure and any required consent.
- Recording and transcription laws vary by jurisdiction and can depend on where every participant is located.
- AI summaries can omit nuance, assign an action to the wrong person, or state an inference as a decision.
- Speaker attribution and transcription quality degrade with overlapping speech, poor microphones, accents, jargon, or noisy rooms.
- Granola does not retain source audio, so a transcript cannot always resolve a dispute the way an authorized recording could.
- Granola stores transcripts and notes in a US-hosted AWS environment, which may not meet every organization's residency requirement.
- Granola says it uses anonymized data to improve its product unless the user opts out; Enterprise disables this by default.
- Basic users have limited note history, and Granola Chat documentation describes a 30-day context window for that plan.
- Pre-meeting briefs can combine notes, public web data, calendar details, and optional Gmail, increasing the amount of sensitive context processed.
- People and company enrichment can misidentify a person, employer, title, or logo.
- Shared links, folders, CRM exports, APIs, and MCP connections expand the risk of accidental or overbroad disclosure.
- The desktop or mobile app is required to transcribe; the web interface only views and edits existing notes.
- Granola Chat only knows the notes and files in scope and should not be treated as a complete project or customer system of record.
- Regulated teams should verify contractual, retention, residency, HIPAA, and industry-specific requirements rather than relying on a general security page.
- Business and Enterprise prices are per user, so cost scales directly with team size.
Compare
Granola alternatives
The right alternative depends on the specific output, workflow, controls and budget your project requires.
Project Management
Fathom
Choose Fathom for a meeting assistant centered on automated summaries and a generous individual workflow.
Explore Fathom →Business Operations
Fireflies AI
Choose Fireflies for bot-based meeting capture, broad integrations, and conversation analytics.
Explore Fireflies AI →Project Management
Otter.ai
Choose Otter.ai for established live transcription, collaborative transcripts, and meeting-agent features.
Explore Otter.ai →Questions
Granola FAQs
What is Granola AI?
Granola is an AI meeting notepad that transcribes device audio, combines the transcript with any notes you type, and produces editable summaries, action items, and searchable meeting context.
Does Granola join meetings as a bot?
No. Granola runs on the user's computer or phone and captures audio after the user starts a note. It does not add a participant to the call.
Is Granola free?
Yes. Basic is free with AI meeting notes, limited history, chat, folders, templates, and multi-language support. Business is $14 per user per month and Enterprise is $35.
Does Granola record meeting audio?
Granola says it does not store meeting recordings. Desktop audio is transcribed in real time; mobile may temporarily cache audio for processing. It stores the transcript and notes.
Does Granola work with Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams?
Yes. Because it uses device audio, Granola works across Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack Huddles, and other meeting apps.
Does Granola train AI models on meeting data?
Granola says third-party providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic may not use customer data for training. Granola uses anonymized data to improve its own product unless the user opts out; Enterprise has training disabled by default.
Is Granola SOC 2 compliant?
Granola says independent auditors have assessed it against SOC 2 Type 2 standards. Buyers should obtain the current report and evaluate controls relevant to their own use case.
Do I need participant consent to use Granola?
Consent and notice requirements depend on location, contract, workplace policy, and the nature of the conversation. Granola encourages a verbal notice and provides transparency features, but the user and organization remain responsible for compliance.
Bottom line
Our Granola verdict
Granola is a compelling meeting-notes choice for people who want high-quality, editable summaries without a bot in the room. Its human-guided note model, cross-meeting chat, and Business integrations are genuinely useful; the essential implementation work is making the unobtrusive capture transparent through strong consent, sharing, retention, and verification practices.
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