Granola

For frequent meeting attendees, yes. The Business plan unlocks unlimited meeting history (free tier is limited to 14 days), advanced AI models, and integrations with Notion, HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, Slack, and Zapier. If you take more than a few meetings per week or need meeting notes to flow into your CRM or docs, $14/mo pays for itself in saved data entry and searchable history.

No. Granola is a desktop app (macOS and Windows) that captures audio directly from your computer without joining the call as a visible participant. This is its biggest differentiator — no awkward bot in the attendee list, no consent popups for participants, and no need to add Granola to calendar invites. It simply transcribes whatever is playing through your system audio.

For most users, yes. Granola's bot-free approach and clean note editing are preferred by founders, consultants, and executives who don't want a visible recording bot in meetings. Otter and Fireflies still win on real-time collaboration and deeper CRM intelligence features. Granola wins on simplicity and a more natural meeting experience. If CRM analytics is critical, Fireflies is still the leader.

The free plan includes unlimited meetings, AI-generated notes with key points, action items, and decisions, custom templates, and AI chat within and across meetings. The main limitation is meeting history — free users can only see the last 14 days of meetings. For individuals who just need a recent-meetings reference, the free plan is genuinely useful.

Partially. Granola can capture and transcribe meeting audio offline, but AI-generated summaries and advanced features require an internet connection since they rely on cloud-based LLMs. Your meeting notes sync once you're back online. This is useful for traveling professionals who may join calls from spotty WiFi.

Granola is SOC 2 Type II compliant and GDPR compliant. Enterprise plan users can opt out of model training for their entire team. For highly regulated industries, Enterprise also adds admin controls for meeting link sharing, usage analytics, and priority support. The recent $125M raise brought Granola's valuation to $1.5B, giving it enterprise-grade resources for security.

Granola wins for bot-free meetings and clean editing. Fathom wins on free tier value (unlimited recording, CRM sync at $19/mo). tl;dv wins on multi-platform support including in-meeting highlights and translation. If you hate seeing a bot in your meetings, Granola is the clear pick.

Spaces are team workspaces launched in 2026 with granular access controls, letting teams share selective meeting notes with specific people or departments. Spaces come bundled with a personal API (Business and Enterprise) and an enterprise API (Enterprise only) for integrating meeting context into broader AI workflows. An MCP server launched in February 2026 for connecting Granola directly to Claude and other LLMs.