Granola

Granola is a desktop and mobile notepad for meetings. Its stated distinction is that it captures the user's device audio rather than joining the call as an extra participant. The product page says it works with Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, and other meeting apps, while the security FAQ says it captures microphone and system audio locally and that no bot joins the meeting. A user has to start recording manually. The same FAQ says Granola does not start automatically, so a meeting is not captured until the user clicks to start recording.

The output is more than a raw transcript. Granola combines the transcript with notes typed during the meeting, then supplies meeting notes, action items, and follow-up material after the call. Its home page describes notes, actions, and follow-ups as ready when the meeting ends. The desktop product therefore suits people who want a record of a meeting without the visible meeting-bot workflow used by many transcription services. Mobile use is also part of the product, with free mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Apple Watch described in the billing documentation.

Granola provides several routes out of the notepad. Its integration documentation names Slack, Notion, Zapier, Attio, HubSpot, and Affinity. Slack is available on Basic, while the broader integration set is available on paid plans according to the plan comparison. The REST API is for Business and Enterprise workspaces. It exposes meeting notes, transcripts, and AI summaries through API keys with selected personal or public-note access scopes, as set out in the API documentation.

Granola also runs an MCP server at its published endpoint. The MCP connection uses browser OAuth for an individual Granola account, or Enterprise-Managed Authorization for compatible enterprise setups. It can search notes, browse folders, read meeting details, and on paid plans retrieve raw transcripts. The vendor's MCP guide says Basic access is limited to accessible personal and public notes from the most recent 30 days. Enterprise administrators can select whether personal and public notes are available, turn off transcript access, and turn off change-making over MCP. That makes the connector a controlled meeting-context source for assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT rather than an unrestricted workspace archive.

Granola Chat can also prepare emails, Slack messages, and Google Calendar events using connected accounts. These actions are not autonomous external sends: the workflow guide says nothing is sent or added to a calendar until the user confirms the editable draft.

The standing free tier is Basic at $0 per user per month. Basic includes AI meeting notes and chat, but its meeting history is limited to the last 30 days in the app. Granola says the older notes are stored rather than deleted, and a user can export titles and summaries for the full history. Business is the lowest paid plan at $14 per user per month and changes that history allowance to unlimited. The vendor's pricing page also lists advanced AI models, expanded integrations, MCP access in apps, and API access on Business.

Billing is per workspace. Every active member shares the plan and counts as a paid seat, including administrators. The subscription guide says Business is billed monthly, while Enterprise may be monthly or annual. A member can upgrade to Business from Settings and complete checkout through Stripe. The same guide says mixed plan tiers are not supported inside a workspace, so a team that wants some paid users and some free users must use separate workspaces.

Cancellation is self-serve through Stripe's billing portal. The subscription remains active through the current billing cycle, then the workspace moves to Basic without further charge, according to Granola's cancellation policy.

Granola says third-party providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic are not allowed to train on user data. Free and Business data may still contribute to Granola's own improvements in anonymized form unless an individual changes the Data and sharing preference. The security FAQ says the opt-out applies to future training, while it cannot guarantee that anonymized data was not used before the setting changed. Enterprise customers have an organization-level setting handled through Granola.

Audio is not retained as a recording. Granola says audio is temporarily cached for transcription and deleted after transcription completes. Notes and transcripts have a different life cycle: notes and transcripts are retained indefinitely unless a transcript auto-deletion period is set. Individual users can choose one day, one week, one month, three months, six months, or one year, while Enterprise can apply a workspace-wide policy. The transcript deletion guide makes clear that deletion is permanent and affects the transcript only, not the note.

Data residency is a limitation. Granola documents that all data is stored on AWS in the United States and explicitly says it does not offer EU, UK, or other regional residency. Its DPA states that it acts as a processor for customer personal data and includes EU and UK transfer clauses.

Granola publishes SOC 2 Type II certification and directs buyers to its Trust Center for the report. It also publishes a DPA and describes GDPR and UK GDPR compliance. HIPAA support, including a business associate agreement, is limited to Enterprise customers, according to the security and privacy FAQ. The same page says ISO 27001 is not currently available.

Enterprise has the controls most relevant to a managed rollout. SSO and SCIM are Enterprise-only, and the SSO guide requires 50 active members or an Enterprise commitment of 50 seats. It supports SSO through an identity provider and allows the organization to enforce SSO for its email domain. Enterprise administrators can also set sharing restrictions, configure retention policies, govern API and MCP access, and make organization-wide model-training choices.

For audit operations, the Enterprise-only Audit API returns workspace events that record actions such as meeting transcription, note views, access changes, member changes, sign-ins, API key and MCP use, and data exports. Granola notes in the Audit API documentation that events are available for the last year and that read-event coverage is not complete across every surface. The vendor pages reviewed do not publish a written uptime percentage or service-level agreement.