Granola
Granola is an AI notepad for people who spend the day in meetings. Rather than sending a bot into the call, it captures audio from the user's own computer or phone, so it works with Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Slack huddles, phone calls and conversations in person. The user types rough notes during the meeting, and Granola merges them with the transcript into structured notes, decisions and next steps. It runs on macOS, Windows, iOS, Android and Apple Watch.
Around the notepad sit a Brief that prepares the user before each external meeting from earlier conversations and email, AI chat across all meetings, shared folders, reusable templates called Recipes, and drafted follow up emails. Notes stay private until the user shares them. For sales and investment teams, Business plans push notes into HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, Notion and Zapier, Enterprise adds Salesforce, and an MCP connection lets Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants read meeting notes.
Capture starts only when the user starts it; Granola never joins or records a meeting on its own. Because no bot appears, other participants learn Granola is running only if the user tells them or turns on its notifications, which post a message in the meeting chat or place a watermark on the user's video. Enterprise admins can enforce those notifications across a workspace. Chamberlain v. Granola, Inc., a proposed class action filed on July 30, 2026 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that the software recorded participants without notice and used their words for model training by default. Granola's position is that meeting audio is cached only for transcription and then deleted, never kept as a recording, and that each user, or an Enterprise admin, decides whether anonymized data trains its models.
Transcription runs through Deepgram and AssemblyAI, and summaries through OpenAI and Anthropic models, none of which may train on customer data. Granola trains its own models on deidentified, aggregated data unless a user opts out, and Enterprise workspaces are opted out by default. Audio is not stored; transcripts and notes sit in a US hosted AWS environment.
Basic is free with 30 days of meeting history. Business costs $14 per user per month with unlimited history, integrations and the API, and Enterprise costs $35 per user per month with SSO, SCIM, workspace retention and training policies, and an audit API. Brex is among its named customers.
Capability Axes
Capability grades
17 of 17 axes rated · 14 graded A or B
The notepad exists to merge a user's rough notes with a live transcript into finished notes, and both halves depend on models: speech recognition for the transcript and language models for the enhancement, Briefs, chat and follow ups. Without them the product is an empty text editor. Business users can pick among advanced models for chat across meetings.
Nothing runs without the user. Capture starts only when someone presses start, Granola never joins or records a meeting by itself, and follow up emails arrive as drafts. Chat answers questions on request. Admin controls on Enterprise govern sharing, MCP, API and integration access across the workspace.
Transcription runs through Deepgram and AssemblyAI, and summarization through models from OpenAI and Anthropic. Business and Enterprise users can choose the model for chat. Participants can be told that AI is transcribing through a meeting chat message or a watermark on the user's video, and Enterprise admins can make those notices mandatory.
Brex's chief executive, Pedro Franceschi, credits Granola with precise summaries and a stronger written culture, and a case study expands on that account. No figure on time saved, follow up speed or deal outcomes accompanies it, and the wider customer list appears as logos.
Recording consent is the regulated question for a notetaker, and Granola leaves securing it to the user where the law requires it. Manual start, chat notifications, a video watermark and notices configurable to regional rules give users the means; Enterprise can enforce them. Chamberlain v. Granola, Inc., a proposed class action filed on July 30, 2026 in the Northern District of California, alleges capture without notice to other participants and training on their words by default. Granola's position is that audio is cached only for transcription and then deleted, and the case is at an early stage.
A Data Processing Addendum sits alongside a detailed privacy policy, and Granola commits to GDPR compliance. Data is processed from the United States and the United Kingdom on AWS servers mainly in the US, with transfers wherever service providers operate. People heard in a meeting who never use Granola have no account settings of their own, so their notice depends entirely on the user.
The raw material is the user's own meeting audio, typed notes and connected calendar and email. Training draws only on deidentified, aggregated data from users who stay opted in. Once incorporated, that data stays in the trained models, since removing it would mean retraining from scratch.
Granola listens to the device's audio rather than joining a meeting through a platform's bot or app routes, so meeting platforms see one ordinary participant. CRM, Notion, Slack and Zapier connections are official integrations, and Google Workspace and Microsoft sign in drive calendar access. How local capture sits with each meeting platform's own recording rules is left to the customer.
OpenAI, Anthropic and the transcription providers may not train on customer data. Granola trains its own models on deidentified data by default, each user can opt out at any time, and Enterprise workspaces start opted out under admin control. Meeting audio is never stored, transcripts follow retention windows the user or admin sets, and redaction and deletion are available.
With no bot in the call, nothing signals Granola to other participants unless the user switches on a chat notification or a watermark on their video. Enterprise admins can enforce those notices and tune them to regional rules. Granola describes its Enterprise product as aligned with the EU AI Act without spelling out how participant notices meet Article 50.
Business connects HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, Notion and Zapier and opens the API, while Salesforce and admin control over integrations arrive with Enterprise. Slack works on every plan. MCP access reaches personal notes from the last 30 days on Basic and workspace notes on paid plans, and an audit API feeds security tools. Which CRM fields receive notes and how sync behaves are not spelled out.
Notes and transcripts sit in a US hosted AWS virtual private cloud, encrypted at rest and in transit with daily backups. Audio is transcribed live on desktop and cached only briefly on mobile. No EU hosting option is offered, and a private cloud version is handled through sales.
Granola holds SOC 2 Type 2, supports HIPAA workloads under a business associate agreement, and runs a trust portal with security documentation for procurement. SSO, SAML and SCIM come with Enterprise. Public post mortems cover an AssemblyAI key exposure, a Google Workspace auto join issue and a session logout vulnerability. The audit period and report access terms are not given.
Basic is free with 30 days of history. Business costs $14 per user per month with unlimited history, integrations, the API and advanced models, and Enterprise $35 per user per month with Salesforce, SSO, SCIM and workspace policies. A plan comparison sets out every feature by tier, so a team can budget either paid plan without a call.
Users can delete single notes, request deletion of all their data, or ask for a full copy of it, and paid plans can pull notes out through the API or push them into Notion and CRMs as they go. Retention windows are configurable. How long notes survive after a paid workspace ends is not given.
Granola drafts follow up emails for the user to send from their own mailbox and does no sending of its own. No volume controls or reputation tooling come with those drafts.
Granola is pitched to anyone in back to back meetings, from individuals on the free plan to enterprises, with separate startup, student and nonprofit programs. Integrations with HubSpot, Attio and Affinity point to sales and investment teams, and Brex is a named customer. No breakdown by role, company size or region accompanies that reach.
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Ordered by how closely the graded profiles match across the seventeen axes, inside the same categories. See how each axis is graded in the methodology.
Pricing
What this vendor charges, what it commits to in writing, and where the bill can move. Figures the vendor publishes itself are labeled Vendor Published. Figures labeled Estimated come from other sources and the vendor has not confirmed them.
- ›Basic is free and keeps 30 days of meeting history. Business costs $14 per user per month and adds unlimited history, Briefs, follow up emails, integrations with HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, Notion and Zapier, and the API. Enterprise costs $35 per user per month and adds Salesforce, SSO, SCIM, workspace retention and training controls, enforced participant notifications and an audit API.
How the price works
What you are charged for, and what makes the bill go up.
Per user per month by plan
What the contract says about your data
What the vendor commits to in writing once your data is in the product.
Business associate agreement for HIPAA workloads through sales; Data Processing Addendum available.
Getting started
What it costs and what is included before the product is running.
No implementation fee listed.
What to watch for
Where this pricing can surprise a buyer who has not read it closely.
Salesforce integration, SCIM, workspace analytics and admin control over MCP, API and integrations require Enterprise. HIPAA workloads need a business associate agreement through sales. Granola gives 1.5 percent of subscription revenue to carbon removal through Stripe Climate.