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TL;DR: Is Granola AI Worth It in 2026?
- Granola AI raised $125M at a $1.5B valuation in March 2026 and is now building toward enterprise AI rather than simple note taking
- It’s bot-free: no participant joins your call, it captures audio directly from your device
- No video or audio recording: if the transcript makes a mistake, you cannot go back and listen
- Trains its AI on your data by default, though you can opt out in Settings on any plan, including free Basic. Only Enterprise lets an admin enforce it team-wide
- The free Basic plan gives unlimited meetings but only 30 days of history. The pricing page still won’t tell you that, it just says “limited meeting history” and leaves you to find the real number inside the app
- MCP access on the free plan is limited in a way Granola doesn’t spell out: you get all six tools, then hit walls. No workspace notes, no folders, nothing older than 30 days
- Great for individuals who want clean, friction-free transcription; weaker for teams that need US-only data residency to not be a problem
- Best for: People who want live transcription without a bot, with clean Notion-style notes, on Mac, Windows or iOS
- Not great for: Teams needing audio and video playback, EU or UK data residency, or sales-specific call analysis
This Granola AI review is the latest in our honest review series. In it, I’ll get into what I liked and disliked about the platform. I’ll cover my entire process as a user, as well as what real everyday users think. In the end, you’ll have enough information to make up your mind about whether Granola is worth your time and money.
Investment-wise, Granola has been on a tear. It raised $20M in Series A in October 2024, then $43M in May 2025, and in March 2026 secured $125M in a Series C round led by Danny Rimer at Index Ventures, with Mamoon Hamid at Kleiner Perkins participating alongside existing backers Lightspeed, Spark and NFDG. That tips the company’s valuation to $1.5 billion, up from $250M less than a year ago, and brings total funding to $192M. Bloomberg reported the round followed a quarter in which revenue grew 250%, which is what explains the jump. Rimer joins the board as an observer. But what does all this money actually equate to in terms of product? That’s what I’m here to find out.
For the record: I am a writer for tl;dv, one of Granola’s competitors. You’ll find a few places in here where I’ve had to correct criticisms I made last time, because Granola has fixed them. I’m basing this review on personal first-hand experience across personal calls, work calls, and even online language lessons, plus a fresh Basic account I set up to check the plan limits properly. To counter my lack of experience in team settings, I’ve gathered real user reviews from G2, ProductHunt, Reddit, and more.
Table of Contents
How Did I Test Granola AI?
I installed Granola on Windows and tested it across more than 20 real calls over several weeks, including Google Meet, MS Teams, Zoom, and a Russian language lesson on Preply. I evaluated onboarding friction, transcription accuracy, note quality, the Ask Granola feature, UI and organization, privacy controls, and how the tool holds up in multilingual and multi-speaker scenarios.
For this update I went back in on a fresh Basic account, worked through every settings panel to find the plan limits Granola doesn’t publish, and connected their MCP server to see what a free account can actually reach. Where a claim in here comes from Granola’s own documentation rather than my own testing, I’ve said so.
Granola vs tl;dv: How They Compare in 2026
| Feature | tl;dv | Granola |
|---|---|---|
| Capture model & platform | Bot or bot-free desktop app. Mac, Windows, Linux, mobile on iOS and Android Winner | Bot-free only. Mac, Windows, iOS. Android planned, no date |
| Recording & playback | Video and audio kept, searchable library Winner | Transcript only. No audio, no video, nothing to replay |
| Transcription accuracy | Consistently strong | Strong, slightly behind in my testing |
| Languages supported | 30+ | 10 on desktop, more on iPhone. No Chinese |
| Note editing | Editable summaries | Notion-style pages, click and type Winner |
| Cross-meeting AI | Unlimited multi-meeting insights on Business Winner | AI chat across a folder of meetings, from the free plan up |
| MCP server | Yes, on Pro and above | Yes, since February 2026, and labelled beta in-app. Free plan gets all six tools but no workspace notes, no folders, nothing past 30 days |
| API access | Yes, on Pro and above | Personal API on Business and up, enterprise API on Enterprise only |
| CRM & integrations | 5,000+ via Zapier, native HubSpot and Salesforce Winner | Nine connectors including Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Attio and Notion. Slack only on free |
| Consent collection | Built in Winner | Heads Up still in pilot on Enterprise |
| Free plan | Unlimited recordings and transcripts. AI notes on your first 10 meetings, then the first 10 minutes only. Recordings archive after 3 days | Unlimited meetings, history limited to 30 days. The pricing page won't give you the number |
What Is Granola AI and How Has It Changed in 2026?
Granola started as a prosumer app that sits on your computer, transcribes meetings without a bot joining the call, and generates Notion-style notes afterward. In 2026 it has expanded significantly. With the Series C announcement, Granola launched Spaces: team workspaces with granular access controls, alongside a personal API (available on Business and Enterprise plans) and an enterprise API (Enterprise only) for integrating meeting context into broader AI workflows. An MCP server launched in February 2026.
Enterprise clients now include Vanta, Gusto, Thumbtack, Asana, Cursor, Lovable, Decagon, and Mistral AI. The enterprise costume has started to fit.
Spaces is the odd one out in that list. It arrived as the headline enterprise feature and it’s available on the free plan, which I only found out by setting one up on a Basic account.
The MCP server is the piece that interested me most, so I connected it to Claude on a free account to see what it could actually reach. Setup is easy enough: one URL, browser OAuth, no keys to generate. All six tools showed up, covering meeting search, note retrieval, transcripts, folders, and natural-language querying across your meetings. Then they started hitting walls. Listing meetings returned nothing past 30 days, folder listing errored out as a paid feature, and Granola itself reported that public workspace notes were excluded on my plan. So the free tier’s 30-day history cap isn’t only a UI limit, it’s enforced at the API layer too.
There’s also a detail buried in the in-app plan comparison, tucked behind an info icon: Granola’s MCP access is “currently in beta. Usage terms may vary.” That doesn’t appear on their pricing page, in their docs, or in any of the February launch coverage. Worth knowing before you build a workflow on top of it.
The pressure isn’t only coming from meeting tools, either. Notion has built meeting notes straight into the workspace people already keep their documents in, which is a harder thing to compete with than another notetaker. It isn’t the cheap option the framing usually suggests: it rides on Notion’s AI add-on at $10 per member per month, or $8 billed annually, and free and Plus workspaces get a small pool of AI responses before it locks. But if your team already lives in Notion, that’s one fewer tool to buy, and Granola’s whole pitch is being the place your meeting context lives.
The core technology hasn’t changed. Granola captures device audio rather than joining as a bot. That means:
- No bot participant visible to others in the call
- Works across any platform: Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex, Slack Huddles, even browser-based calls
- Can transcribe podcasts, YouTube videos, or any audio playing on your device
- No video and no stored audio. Audio is transcribed live or from a temporary cache, then discarded, so all you keep is text
- You are responsible for informing participants they are being transcribed
My Honest Granola AI Review
How Easy Was Granola’s Onboarding?
I’ve tested a lot of AI meeting assistants, but not many of them require me to download actual software. This threw me off a little bit, but I bit the bullet and installed it to Windows without any problems. Setting up the account was where I hit a wall. Granola rejected my personal Gmail outright. That’s been fixed since, and personal Gmail, Google Workspace and Microsoft accounts all sign in now, so you won’t run into what I did.
What Was My First Impression?
The first thing I did after setting up my Granola account was start a test call on Google Meet to see how it worked. It was a bit confusing at first. The call was going on, but on Granola, this was all I could see.
As you can see, there are no speaker names on the transcript, and it’s displayed as if there’s only one speaker at all. Just text after text, laid out like a one-sided WhatsApp or Messenger chat. This was actually a two-way conversation, so I’m not sure what went wrong.
That’s changed since. Going back into Granola in August 2026, there’s now a Speaker tags setting under Preferences, described as identifying who is speaking in your calls, and it was switched on by default on a fresh account. So the complaint below is a record of what I hit at the time rather than what you’d hit today.
You might be thinking Granola sounds worthless after hearing everything so far, but weirdly enough, all these malfunctions seemed to happen on the first test and the first test only. In future calls, I was able to Ask Granola things without error, I was able to see the live transcript with speaker names, and I was able to find everything I needed straight away because I already knew where it was. The answers themselves were thin, which I’ll come back to when I get to the Ask Granola feature properly. I’ve covered how tl;dv and Fireflies handle the same job elsewhere.
How Are the Meeting Notes?
Here’s an example of some meeting notes from a coffee chat with a colleague.
Most of Granola’s note templates are for business meetings, which is why I stuck with Auto. It’s nice to have so many options though.
How Easy Is Granola AI to Use?
Another nice thing about Granola is that when you get a calendar reminder for a call, you get the option to set Granola to transcribe straight away. Here’s a pop-up I received recently.
This little detail makes it much easier to get started with your transcription. You don’t need to faff about trying to open Granola whilst doing two hundred other things. You just join the meeting and open Granola simultaneously. It’s a subtle feature, but it’s enormously helpful.
There are some things that could be easier though. For instance, on the transcript, there’s no scroll bar for you to quickly jump to the beginning of the meeting. Instead, you have to scroll all the way up. This is a little detail that can go a long way. Nobody wants to be scrolling through an hour’s worth of conversation to get to the top, especially not on a regular basis.
Does Granola AI Have High Transcription Accuracy?
I noticed in other test calls that Granola’s transcript accuracy is quite good. Compared to other live transcription tools like Notta, Otter, and Tactiq, I found Granola’s transcription accuracy better than all of them in my testing. It still makes mistakes, but it’s not riddled with them the way Tactiq was, for example.
The other thing about transcripts, at the time I tested, was the lack of speaker names. The AI notes usually picked up on who’s who, especially in an online meeting where people join with their email addresses. In other conversations the AI couldn’t detect speaker names at all, and the transcript never showed them, which made multi-speaker calls awkward to read. That’s the gap Speaker tags is meant to close, so this may not be your experience now.
I also tested Granola during a Russian language lesson on Preply. It worked fine, transcribed live, and gave a good summary afterwards. I was focused on the lesson at the time, though, not the transcript. Only when looking back did I realize how broken the transcript actually was. The notes seem to make sense of it as a cohesive whole, but some of it was just gibberish.
How Is the Ask Granola Feature?
To take this further, I wanted to test the Ask Granola feature to see if I could get more out of my lessons.
The AI is quick and straight to the point. It doesn’t add any fluff or go out of its way to help you. It’s better at identifying things than engaging in intellectual conversations about them.
This is great if you want to use it to catch you up when you zoned out of a meeting, or to identify specific things from the transcript. For me as a language learner though, in this example, I didn’t benefit from it as much as I’d hoped. I asked a few other questions before and after these and got very simple replies.
In other chats, I mostly used the Ask Granola feature to locate things from the discussion or to test its knowledge of what we discussed. It’s always quick to respond, but I did feel that the answers were lacking something.
Another thing I noticed is that when you go out of a meeting and then re-enter, all of your Ask Granola questions and answers are gone. This is a bit annoying, especially if you wanted to refer back to them later. Instead, you’re forced to ask the same question again.
What’s Granola Like for Meeting Organization and UI?
One of the biggest limitations of Granola, when I first tested it, was the lack of organization. Folders that could be either “shared” or “private” were the only way to sort transcripts and notes, and I couldn’t see how that would hold up for a team.
Spaces fixed most of that. Going back in, a Basic account comes with two by default: a private My notes space, and a Team space that everyone on your domain can see. Folders now sit inside spaces rather than being the whole filing system. It’s a proper structure, and I was surprised to find it on the free plan given it launched as the flagship enterprise feature.
Granola’s color scheme is also so bland. The gray on gray makes me think I’m on Windows 95. It’s not a huge deal, but it could do with a makeover. A splash of color never hurt anybody.
How Are Granola’s Language Settings and Custom Vocabulary?
Granola does have a custom vocabulary feature, called Internal Jargon. You can add a list of words here that you regularly use during your calls to make sure the AI picks up on them.
This feature doesn’t work, though, if you run multi-language transcripts. I tend to keep multi-language transcripts on because I never know when I might switch languages. This is also the case in many global organizations with multilingual colleagues.
If you know your conversations will be in English (or any other language) and nothing else, then you can select your chosen language and add some internal jargon so it gets captured accurately. So you’re choosing between accurate jargon and flexible languages, which is an odd trade to have to make. I didn’t specifically test this feature, so I’m not sure how well it actually works.
Does Granola Have Solid Privacy Features?
Now to the really interesting thing about Granola. As it doesn’t need to join your calls as a bot, you can technically run Granola in the back of any call on any platform. Whether it’s Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, Skype, Slack Huddles, or even browser-based WhatsApp calls, Granola can transcribe. That’s because it records your device’s audio.
That means you can even use it to transcribe podcasts, YouTube videos, or any other audible content you can play from your PC or into your PC’s mic.
Their docs are clear on what happens to that audio: it’s cached temporarily during the meeting for transcription, then deleted from Granola’s systems and any third-party services. Nothing is retained. That’s the reason there’s no playback, and it’s a genuine privacy advantage over tools that keep the recording.
The downside to all this is user privacy, especially in meetings, and even more so in business meetings that include sensitive information.
Granola does not tell meeting participants that it’s transcribing the call. It relies on you, the user, to do that. And because Granola does not technically record audio and video, it is slightly less problematic than something like MeetJamie. Still, Granola records text, and this can be an issue depending on your jurisdiction. Granola has been piloting an org-wide consent notification called Heads Up, though it was still limited to Enterprise when I last checked.
Regardless of your situation, it’s good practice to ask permission from your fellow meeting participants if you can transcribe the call. It keeps sensitive information private, and it’s all-round good ethics.
tl;dv, for instance, has just released a bot-free recording feature on its desktop app that has a built-in consent collection mechanism, keeping it compliant with GDPR and APPI.
One more thing worth knowing before your legal team asks: everything sits on AWS servers in the United States. Granola doesn’t currently offer EU, UK, Canadian or Australian data residency. They’re GDPR and UK GDPR compliant through a UK entity and a DPA carrying the standard contractual clauses, so this isn’t a compliance gap. It’s a residency one, and no amount of money fixes it.
On certifications, they hold SOC 2 Type II and that’s it. No ISO 27001, no HIPAA, no BAA, and no FERPA, so healthcare and education are ruled out before you start.
Does Granola Train Its AI Models On Your Data?
Yes, by default. Granola openly admits to training its AI model on your conversations, and says you can opt out. Their docs point you to Settings, Preferences, under Data and sharing. On a free Basic account I went through Preferences, Profile, Workspace settings and Notifications and couldn’t find that section at all. Either it’s somewhere non-obvious, or the free plan doesn’t get it, and Granola’s own pricing page lists “opt out of model training any time” as a Basic feature.
What the Enterprise plan adds is org-wide enforcement: one admin switch that opts the whole team out at once. On Business, every person has to do it themselves. So the fair criticism isn’t that opt-out is locked behind Enterprise. It’s that training runs unless each person digs into their own settings to stop it, and only Enterprise lets an admin do it for everyone.
Granola claims this training is based on anonymized data, but it does not offer any examples of how that data is anonymized. It also admits it can’t guarantee anonymized data wasn’t already used before you flipped the switch, which is honest and slightly alarming in equal measure. For an individual using Granola on light conversations, this might not be a deal-breaker. For small businesses regularly dealing with clients and sensitive information, it gives more cause for concern.
One point in Granola’s favor: third parties never get to train on your data. OpenAI and Anthropic are contractually barred from it. The training in question is Granola’s own model improvement.
So that’s Granola and my opinion of it, but how much does it actually cost?
Granola AI Pricing: How Much Does It Cost in 2026?
To cut straight to the chase and see how much you can expect to pay for your team, check out the Granola pricing calculator below. Simply choose the plan and number of seats and you’ll get an estimate of monthly and yearly costs. Two things to know before you read the numbers: Granola doesn’t offer an annual discount, so the yearly figure is just the monthly one twelve times over. And Enterprise starts at $35 rather than sitting at it, with custom contracts above that, so treat the top tier as a floor.
Granola Pricing Calculator
For a long time, Granola had two simple plans. One was free and one was $10 per month. Then they switched that up to a four-plan structure. Since testing Granola, though, they’ve changed their pricing structure a third time.
Now, they’ve scrapped both the Individual and Pro plans and have a total of 3 plans:
- Basic — $0 per user per month
- Business — $14 per user per month
- Enterprise — $35 per user per month
If you’ve seen a Granola “Pro” or “Individual” plan around $18 quoted somewhere, that’s out of date. Both solo tiers were retired in the 2026 restructure, and there’s now no middle option: you go from the free Basic plan straight to a $14 Business seat.
All prices are per user per month. There’s no annual discount, so that’s the price whether you pay monthly or commit for a year. Plenty of tools in this category knock 30 to 50% off for annual billing, which makes $14 look better than it is.
What was once the free trial is now called Basic. Granola still doesn’t spell out its limits up front. The pricing page says “limited meeting history” with no number attached, which is exactly what it said when I first looked months ago.
The in-app plan comparison spells it out even though the pricing page doesn’t: unlimited meeting notes on Basic, with meeting history capped at 30 days. Hover the info icon and Granola tells you what that actually means. “Upgrade to see all your past notes, they’re securely stored and accessible once you upgrade.”
So the notes aren’t deleted. Their own docs say notes and transcripts are retained indefinitely unless someone sets a retention policy. You just can’t see yours after 30 days unless you pay. That’s a fair enough business model, but it’s a different thing from a free tier that forgets you, and it sits oddly next to a pricing page that won’t name the number. Compared to the wider AI note taker market, unlimited capture with a 30-day viewing window is about par.
Granola Business costs $14 per user per month and lifts the history cap, opens up the integrations, and adds API and MCP access, team folders and consolidated billing. Enterprise costs $35 per user per month.
Its headline addition is org-wide control over model training, covered above.
It also adds more admin controls for meeting link sharing, usage analytics, priority support, and single sign-on. SSO covers Okta, Azure AD and Google Workspace, and is available to teams with 50 or more users. Google and Microsoft sign-in work on every plan.
One of the newer Enterprise features is an org-wide notification that tells participants Granola is being used. It’s called Heads Up, and it was still in pilot when I last checked. It could be a useful way to gather meeting consent within your organization. How well it works for external calls is still an open question.
What Do Everyday Users Think of Granola AI?
It’s all well and good listening to my Granola review, but I’ve been on Basic. What do actual paid users think? Are they satisfied or do they regret it? Does it work well for teams? Let’s find out.
I scoured the web to find Granola reviews across a wide range of popular third-party review sites, but as it turns out, most of them don’t feature Granola at all. Here’s what I found:
- Granola scores 4.7/5 from 34 reviews on G2.
- Granola scores 4.8/5 from 51 reviews on ProductHunt.
- TrustPilot and Capterra still do not feature Granola AI at all.
That gives Granola a weighted average of 4.76/5 from 85 reviews.
The rating is good. The number of reviews behind it is still a little thin for a company at a $1.5 billion valuation.
Both platforms have grown since I first checked, when G2 had 11 reviews and every one of them was five stars. It’s 34 now and the average has slipped to 4.7, which is what usually happens when a sample stops being made up of early enthusiasts.
To support these, I also checked out Reddit, YouTube, and some independent Granola reviews. Most were feature lists written by people who’d clearly never opened the app. The rest were affiliates, desperate for you to download it. I’ve excluded both.
All in all, there still aren’t loads of reviews. Here is the best YouTube video I found, and you can see him testing Granola in the call, using the “Enhance Notes” feature as well as discussing shareability.
The review is mostly positive, highlighting beneficial features and some of the comments agree.
One commenter says “this app is perfect. Best AI note taker I’ve used.” Even this commenter, though, goes on to say that the price is “steep” and that the AI lacks “full workspace context.”
That comment has aged. Granola’s AI chat now works across meetings and folders, and it’s on the free plan rather than behind a paywall. What it still can’t do is the sales layer on top: scoring calls against a framework, or tracking how a rep’s objection handling shifts across a quarter. That’s tl;dv’s conversational intelligence, which sits on the Business plan and is built for teams running coaching rather than individuals keeping notes.
One of the other commenters says, “I’m surprised it doesn’t identify speakers in its transcription.” That surprised me too at the time. Granola has since added Speaker tags, which was switched on by default when I set up a fresh account, so this is another comment that’s been overtaken.
A third commenter noted that it “currently requires a Google Workspace account to work,” which was a problem I hit too when I first tested. That’s since changed. As @digit432 points out, a personal account works now, and Granola’s current sign-in supports Google Workspace, personal Gmail and Microsoft accounts. The older comments reflect how it used to be, not how it works today.
One commenter found the Granola review to be too biased, even claiming that it was a “paid review.” This user claims to have tried Granola with a friend to check its accuracy and was disappointed that it was only “90-92%.” They make a point that there are other platforms out there that are more accurate and cheaper. He’s not wrong there, but I do have to say that 92% is pretty good for an AI live transcription tool. Worth saying out loud: I’m paid by a Granola competitor, which is why this piece keeps correcting itself where Granola has fixed things. Take the accuracy figure from the commenter rather than from me.
The old complaint about Granola was that notes went in and nothing came out. A Reddit user asked how to sync notes to a Google Doc without copying and pasting, and at the time the honest answer was Zapier or nothing.
The poster uses Granola to transcribe meetings and says there’s no post-call workflow to get notes from one place to another automatically. The user specifies in a comment that they want notes syncing to a Google Doc without copying and pasting, which wasn’t possible natively when they asked.
That’s changed. Granola’s connectors list now runs to nine: Gmail, Slack, Notion, Zapier, Affinity, HubSpot, Salesforce, Attio and Pipedrive. Salesforce and Pipedrive aren’t even on Granola’s pricing page, which lists six. There’s a personal API on Business and up, an admin API on Enterprise, and the MCP server on top. The criticism I made last time doesn’t hold anymore.
The catch is the free plan. Granola’s own plan comparison shows Basic getting Slack and nothing else, so if you’re not paying, the automation story is still Zapier or nothing.
This particular verified user says that Granola makes transcriptions and follow ups “a breeze,” praising the clean transcripts and the summaries that skip the padding. I can attest to that. The transcripts are generally clean, if a little clunky as they’re stuck in a small box.
As a small negative, the same user notes that speaker attribution isn’t always right on larger group calls, though they describe it as minor and improving.
Over on ProductHunt there’s enough variety to be worth reading, so let’s go through a few.
Andrew Wang rated Granola 2/5 because it doesn’t work for the Chinese language. He does add that “Granola is great for English.” Granola’s own language list backs him up: ten languages on desktop, and Chinese isn’t one of them.
Meanwhile, both Den on Rails and Jorge Escobar gave Granola 4 stars. Den struggled to get it set up on his Mac, and couldn’t find any contact points on the website or the app to report the problem.
Jorge was using it with his Google Workspace account but wanted his wife to use it on an Outlook account. That was a no-go at the time, and he describes the problem as a “must-solve issue” for Granola to really take off. It’s since been solved: Microsoft accounts sign in fine now, along with personal Gmail. Besides that hiccup, he had a positive experience with the app.
Back on Reddit, some users share concerns.
Cookielcy4693 says, “Is it weird that [Granola] doesn’t tell other people that it’s recording? Like nobody in your meeting knows.” I agree that this is a little bit sketchy.
Another user chimes in saying that “it’s illegal in certain jurisdictions to not notify parties you’re recording them.” That’s also true, but Granola may sneak into a gray area.
As JasonWorthing8 points out, Granola doesn’t actually record anything. It generates and keeps transcripts, your own notes, and the AI-generated notes, but no meeting is stored anywhere. That’s why there’s no audio or video playback. Granola doesn’t have them. It just transcribes the audio to text in real-time and then makes notes based on the complete transcript. Granola’s own docs confirm it: audio is cached temporarily for transcription, then deleted.
Obviously don’t take this as legal advice. Transcribing without consent, especially with AI tools, can still be illegal in some places. It’s also worth noting that Granola has started piloting a participant notification called Heads Up, though it’s Enterprise-only for now, so the disclosure job still falls to you on every other plan.
The original poster asked for the best AI note taking app. The first comment suggests transcription heavyweights Fireflies and Otter, and the second heaps praise upon Granola. This was in early 2025, back when Granola was Mac-only. I have Windows, and I can confirm that Granola does work for Windows.
This commenter claims Granola is so good that one of their execs “is contemplating making the switch from PC to Mac or even buying a Mac just for note-taking.” That’s quite high praise, and it dates the thread neatly, because nobody needs to buy a Mac for Granola anymore.
The Verdict
The sample is thin. Reddit threads with single-digit upvotes, YouTube videos nobody watched, and a review count across the major platforms that still sits in the dozens. Some of that is a naming problem, since Granola is also an oaty cereal with considerably better search volume (and a better thing to spend money on). Most of it is that the user base was small when I first looked, and it’s grown since without the reviews really catching up. After a $125M round and a customer list running from Vanta to Mistral AI, you’d expect more people to have written something.
Granola vs tl;dv: Who Is Each One For?
Granola and tl;dv solve the same problem in opposite ways. Granola sits on your device, captures audio without a bot, and gives you clean notes with no recording kept. tl;dv joins (or records bot-free) and keeps a searchable library of the actual calls, with deeper team and sales tooling on top. Neither is “better” in the abstract, it comes down to whether you’re a solo note-taker or running meetings at scale.
Granola is the better fit if you:
- Want lightweight, bot-free transcription for your own use
- Like clean, editable Notion-style notes and are happy that no audio survives the call
- Work solo or in a small team and value a tool that stays out of the way
- Want cross-meeting AI chat without paying for it, since Granola includes it on the free plan
- Are happy on Mac, Windows or iOS (there’s no Android app)
tl;dv is the better fit if you:
- Need recorded video and audio you can replay rather than a text transcript alone
- Want analysis across your call library: playbook scoring, objection tracking, coaching
- Rely on CRM automation, sales coaching, or 5,000+ integrations
- Need your meeting data reachable by your other tools, without hitting scope walls
- Want built-in consent collection for GDPR and APPI compliance
- Need your data held in the EU or UK, which Granola doesn’t currently offer
That’s the short version: Granola for the solo note-taker who wants to stay light, tl;dv for teams and anyone who needs the recording, the call library, and the integrations to back it up.
Is Granola Worth the Money?
I enjoyed using Granola, despite its limitations. The free Basic plan is genuinely usable: unlimited meetings, with the catch that you only keep 30 days of history before older notes roll out of view. The Business plan isn’t the cheapest, especially with no annual discount to soften it, but it’s fair enough if you need integrations with CRM systems or full MCP access. As for Enterprise, it states its pricing openly, which is rare, and whether it’s worth it depends on how much you need enterprise-grade security and how that price compares to Granola’s competitors.
There are lots of other tools that provide more for less. tl;dv, for instance, has always had unlimited transcripts and AI moment summaries for free. It might lock some things behind paywalls, like deep integrations, sales coaching, and multi-meeting AI insights, but the basics are free forever. On top of that, tl;dv now has bot-free recording as well as a built-in consent collection mechanism, so you can rest assured it’s legally compliant with GDPR.
The team story has moved. Spaces, SSO, usage analytics and admin controls all landed with the Series C, and Spaces turns out to be available on the free plan rather than gated behind Enterprise. The organization problem I complained about last time has largely been fixed. What I can’t tell you is how it holds up with fifty people in a workspace, because I’m one person, and the user reviews still aren’t there to fill the gap.
So the verdict has shifted since I first wrote this. Basic is still the tier I’d point an individual to, and it’s more generous than the pricing page lets on. Business now buys you something real rather than just lifting a cap. Three things would still stop me putting a team on it: the MCP is in beta, there’s no EU or UK data residency at any price, and consent notification is Enterprise-only. If any of those matter to you, tl;dv’s free plan covers the same ground with the recording, the consent mechanism, and the integrations already in place, and it costs nothing to find out.
FAQs About Granola AI
What is Granola AI?
Granola AI is a meeting transcription tool that runs locally on your device rather than joining your call as a bot. It transcribes audio from your device in real-time, so it works with any video call platform: Google Meet, Zoom, Teams, and more. No audio or video is kept, just text.
Does Granola record video or audio?
No. Granola does not keep video or audio. Audio is cached briefly during the meeting so it can be transcribed, then deleted from Granola’s systems. What’s left is text: transcripts and AI-generated notes. There’s no playback, so you can’t check what was actually said.
Is Granola free?
Yes, with a catch. Granola’s Basic plan is free and gives you unlimited meetings, AI notes, AI chat across meetings and shared folders. What it caps is history: notes drop out of view after 30 days. Granola’s pricing page won’t tell you that. Paid plans start at $14 per user per month, with no annual discount.
Can I use Granola with a personal Gmail account?
Yes.
Granola signs in with Google Workspace, personal Gmail or a Microsoft account. That wasn’t always true. Personal Gmail was rejected when I first tested, and there was a waitlist while support rolled out. Any Google or Microsoft account works now.
Is it legal to use Granola without informing other meeting participants?
Does Granola identify who’s speaking in the transcript?
Yes, now. Granola has added Speaker tags, and it was switched on by default when I set up a fresh account. When I first tested, the transcript showed no names at all, just text after text like an SMS thread between two unnamed parties. That’s the gap this feature is meant to close.
Does Granola work in other languages?
Yes, but fewer than you’d think. Granola supports 10 languages on desktop: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, Russian, and Hindi. More on iPhone. Chinese isn’t supported. I tested Russian, and the AI notes were good even though the transcript wasn’t.
Does Granola train its AI on my data?
Yes, by default. Granola’s docs say you can opt out in Settings, Preferences, under Data and sharing. I couldn’t find that section anywhere on a free Basic account. Enterprise adds one admin switch for the whole team. Granola says the data is anonymized but doesn’t explain how, and admits it can’t guarantee yours wasn’t used before you opted out.
Can I customize Granola's meeting notes?
Yes. Granola includes multiple meeting note templates, or you can create your own. Notes are editable in a Notion-style interface, so you click straight into the text and type. That makes it easy to refine or reorganize content after the meeting, and it’s one of the things Granola does better than most.
