Granola

Granola is an AI meeting notepad that captures device audio without sending a visible bot into your call. It works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack Huddles, and other meeting platforms because it listens through the desktop app rather than joining as another participant.

You start Granola manually when the meeting begins. Write rough notes during the conversation or leave the page mostly empty. When the meeting ends, Granola combines your notes and the transcript into a structured record with decisions, action items, follow ups, and other details selected by your template.

This approach works particularly well when your own notes provide a signal about what mattered. A product manager can mark an important roadmap decision. A salesperson can jot down an objection. Granola then builds those points into a more complete meeting summary.

Calendar integration connects meetings with their attendees and previous notes. Before an external meeting, Granola can prepare a Brief containing information about the participants, earlier conversations, and useful context.

Granola Chat answers questions within one meeting or across your meeting history. You can ask what was decided, find commitments made during the week, draft a follow up email, list action items, or turn a discussion into a project plan.

Folders organize meetings around clients, projects, teams, or research topics. Notes remain private until you share them. Shared notes can be opened in a browser, and collaborators can be given editing access. Business plans add connections for Slack, Notion, HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, and Zapier. Granola’s sharing documentation explains the available access controls.

The MCP connector makes meeting notes available to compatible tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and other AI applications. Access follows your Granola permissions and personal API token. An API is also available for teams building internal tools around meeting information.

Desktop apps support online calls on macOS and Windows. The mobile apps capture in person conversations and phone calls, while Apple Watch support provides another way to begin note capture away from a computer.

Privacy, audio and consent

Granola does not retain meeting audio. Desktop audio is transcribed in real time, while mobile audio may be cached temporarily during processing. The transcript, generated notes, and anything you type are stored.

Granola uses transcription providers including Deepgram and Assembly, along with AI providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Those third parties are not permitted to use Granola customer data to train their models.

Granola may use anonymized customer data to improve its own models. Individual users can opt out in Settings, while Enterprise workspaces have training disabled by default. Notes are stored in a US-hosted AWS environment with encryption in transit and at rest. Granola reports SOC 2 Type 2 controls and GDPR support, but it does not currently provide regional data residency outside the United States.

No stored meeting audio is useful for privacy, but it removes the ability to replay the original recording when a transcript is unclear. Teams that need permanent audio or video evidence may prefer a conventional meeting recorder.

A bot does not appear in the participant list, so other attendees may not realize AI transcription is running. You remain responsible for obtaining consent and following recording and transcription laws. Granola provides an optional consent message, but it must be enabled and used correctly.

Accuracy and reliability

Review important notes before sharing them. Check names, figures, deadlines, decisions, and assigned owners against your own recollection or transcript.

The free Basic plan includes unlimited note capture, AI enhanced notes, meeting chat, shared folders, custom templates, and multiple languages. Its main restriction is limited note history, with older meetings becoming inaccessible after the rolling history window. Paid Business plans add unlimited history, advanced AI models, integrations, MCP, API access, and team billing. Enterprise adds SSO, administrative controls, retention policies, security settings, and organization-wide consent options.

Granola: Pros & Cons

| Pros (The Wins) | Cons (The Friction) |

| :--- | :--- |

| Bot free capture:<br>No extra participant joins<br>your online meeting. | Consent remains necessary:<br>Participants may not know<br>transcription is active. |

| Editable notes:<br>Your rough notes guide<br>the generated summary. | Details can be missed:<br>Long meetings may produce<br>incomplete notes or actions. |

| Meeting memory:<br>Chat searches decisions and<br>commitments across calls. | No audio archive:<br>You cannot replay the original<br>meeting through Granola. |

| Connected workflow:<br>MCP, API, CRM, Slack,<br>Notion, and Zapier access. | Free history limit:<br>Older notes require a<br>paid subscription. |

| Desktop and mobile:<br>Capture online, in person,<br>and phone conversations. | US data residency:<br>Regional hosting options<br>are not currently available. |

Key features

• Bot free meeting transcription
• AI enhanced notes and summaries
• Decisions, action items, and follow ups
• Custom templates for different meeting types
• Pre-meeting Briefs from calendar and meeting history
• AI Chat within individual meetings
• Questions across meeting history and folders
• People and Companies views
• Shared folders and collaborative notes
• Private, company, and link sharing controls
• Slack and Notion integrations
• HubSpot, Attio, and Affinity CRM connections
• Zapier automation
• MCP connector for external AI applications
• API access
• macOS and Windows desktop apps
• iPhone, Android, and Apple Watch support
• Multiple language support
• Optional participant consent messages
• SOC 2 Type 2 controls
• Free plan with limited meeting history

<h3>Alternatives to Granola</h3>

<ul>

<li><strong><a href="https://aitoolsdirectory.com/tool/supernormal">Supernormal</a></strong>: Another bot free meeting assistant that can turn conversations into slides, documents, images, and client deliverables.</li>

<li><strong><a href="https://aitoolsdirectory.com/tool/krisp">Krisp</a></strong>: Combines bot free meeting notes with noise cancellation, accent conversion, recordings, and contact center voice tools.</li>

<li><strong><a href="https://aitoolsdirectory.com/tool/fireflies">Fireflies</a></strong>: Provides searchable recordings, transcripts, summaries, conversation analysis, and broad CRM integrations through a more conventional meeting assistant workflow.</li>

<li><strong><a href="https://aitoolsdirectory.com/tool/meetgeek">MeetGeek</a></strong>: Records and summarizes meetings with stronger emphasis on automated capture, meeting analytics, team insights, and searchable recordings.</li>

</ul>