Granola vs Otter: AI Meeting Notes Compared (2026)

The summary said $40,000. I was fairly sure the client had said $14,000.

It was a scoping call, forty minutes, notes taken by Granola. The AI-enhanced note was clean and confident, and the budget line in it was wrong, or maybe it wasn't, and I had no way to find out. Granola does not keep the audio. There was nothing to replay. I had a transcript that said "forty" with a "Them" label next to it, and my own memory, which said "fourteen," and an email to write.

That afternoon is why this comparison is organised the way it is. Every Granola vs Otter review I read before writing it covers the bot and the price, and they are right to. None of them asks what you can do the day after the meeting when the AI got something wrong. That turns out to be the whole decision.

If you want the wider field first, our roundup of seven AI meeting note tools and the Otter vs Fireflies vs Fathom head-to-head cover the bot-based tools in depth. Granola is not in either of them, which is part of why this page exists.

What each one actually is

Granola is a notepad that listens. You open it during a call, type whatever scrappy notes you were going to type anyway, and it transcribes the computer's audio in the background. When the call ends it rewrites your notes using the transcript, keeping your structure and filling in what you missed. No bot joins the call. Nobody else in the meeting sees anything.

Otter is a recorder that writes. Its Notetaker joins your Zoom, Google Meet or Teams call as a visible participant, records audio, transcribes it live, and files the result in a searchable archive with a summary on top. It can also capture without a bot through its desktop app or Chrome extension. Either way, the audio is kept.

One of them produces a document. The other produces a record.

The short answer

	Granola	Otter
How it captures	Your computer's audio, no visible participant	Notetaker bot in the call, or desktop app / Chrome extension
Keeps the audio	No, deleted after transcription	Yes, with playback and MP3 export on paid plans
Live transcript during the call	Not the point of the product	Yes, the main event
Speaker labels	"Me" and "Them," or names via speaker tags on Meet, Zoom and Teams	Named speakers
Free plan	30 days of history	300 minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation, 3 lifetime imports
Paid	Business $14 per user a month, Enterprise $35	Pro $16.99 a month or $8.33 billed yearly, Business $30 or $19.99 billed yearly
Platforms	Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android, Apple Watch	Mac, Windows, web, iOS, Android

Granola, the one that makes your notes better

The notes are better than mine. Annoyingly so.

What Granola gets right is that my typed fragments steer the output. If I write "pricing ??" during the call, the enhanced note gives pricing its own section and pulls in what was said about it. If I type nothing, I get a decent generic summary. The more I type, the more the result reads like I wrote it on a good day, which is exactly what I want to paste into a CRM or forward to a colleague.

The lack of a bot matters more than I expected. On external calls, a visible "Notetaker" tile changes how people talk. I have watched a prospect stop mid-sentence when one appeared. With Granola there is nothing to notice, which puts the consent conversation entirely on you. Tell people you are transcribing. Granola will not do it for you.

Business is $14 per user a month and unlocks unlimited history plus API access and integrations with Notion, Zapier, HubSpot and Affinity. The free plan is usable, but its 30-day history means last quarter's meetings simply vanish from view, and that is the point at which most people pay.

The weak spot is attribution. Out of the box, the desktop app labels your microphone "Me" and everything coming through your speakers "Them." On a call with four other people, "Them" is four people. Speaker tags fix that for Google Meet, Zoom and Teams on Mac and Windows, using participants' display names, but Granola's own help docs list where they break: several people on one shared device, people talking over each other, audio from another app on your computer, and any transcript made before you set them up. A conference room dialled in on one laptop is one "Them," forever.

Otter, the one that keeps the receipts

Otter's live transcript is still the best reason to use it. You can watch the words land and comment on a line while the meeting is still going. For a team where someone joins late and needs to catch up in thirty seconds, Granola has no answer at all.

The calendar automation is thorough to the point of needing supervision. Under Account Settings, Meetings, you choose when the Notetaker auto-joins: every event with a video link, only meetings you host, only external meetings, only internal ones, or only the ones you toggle by hand. Pick "meetings I manually select" until you trust it. Then look at "Default audience for shared notes" and decide on purpose whether your notes go out to calendar guests, because "Don't Share" is an option you have to choose.

Pricing is fiddly. The free plan caps each conversation at 30 minutes, which ends most real meetings early. Pro is $16.99 a month, or $8.33 a month billed yearly, with 1,200 minutes and a 90-minute cap per conversation. Business ($30 monthly, $19.99 yearly) removes the meeting limit and raises the cap to four hours. The yearly discount on Pro is large enough that paying monthly only makes sense as a trial.

What you get for that, and what Granola cannot give you, is the audio.

The day after: what each app lets you verify

Back to my $40,000.

AI meeting notes fail in a specific, quiet way. The transcription mishears a number or a name, and then the summary, which reads the transcript, states the mistake fluently. Fourteen becomes forty. "Can't" becomes "can." The note looks exactly as trustworthy as one that is right.

With Otter, checking is a click. Find the line in the transcript, play the ten seconds around it, hear what was actually said. If the summary and the client disagree later, you have the recording, and so does anyone you shared it with. That is useful in a sales dispute and very useful in an interview or research call where a direct quote is going into a document.

With Granola, the transcript is the floor. The help docs are explicit that it "does not record or save audio or video at any point during the call, so there's no way to access audio from your meetings." So the only checks you have are the ones you set up beforehand:

• Type the numbers yourself during the call. Granola treats what you typed as yours and builds around it. Typed figures are the one part of the note the transcription cannot overwrite.
• Set up speaker tags before the meeting, because they do not add names to older transcripts. "Them said forty" is not something you can send to a client.
• Add client names and product terms to Personal jargon, which is the help center's own recommendation for transcription quality.
• Confirm anything with money attached by email the same day. I do this now for every figure that matters. It is old-fashioned and it works.

Now the other side of it. That missing audio is also why Granola is easier to approve. A recording of a client saying something candid is a file somebody has to govern and, one day, delete. Otter keeps that file by design, in searchable archives and shared channels. Granola keeps a transcript and your notes, which is less to lose. Neither is wrong. They are different bets about whether you will need proof more often than you will need to not have it.

Which one to install

Install Granola if you attend your own meetings, you already take notes, and what you want afterwards is a document rather than a recording. Anyone running sales calls from a laptop will feel the difference in the first week. Type the numbers. Set up speaker tags on day one.

Install Otter if the transcript itself is the deliverable: research interviews, recorded calls you need to quote, meetings you cannot attend, or a team that reads along live. Pay yearly for Pro, set auto-join to manual, and check the sharing default before your first external call.

I use Granola, and I paid for the $40,000 lesson with an awkward email (it was $14,000). If I were doing customer research where exact words mattered, I would switch to Otter that afternoon. If either one is going to turn its notes into follow-up tasks, our guide to AI workflow automation tools covers that plumbing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Granola or Otter better?

Granola is better for people who take their own notes and want a polished document after the call, with no bot joining the meeting. Otter is better when you need a live transcript, a saved recording you can replay, or capture of meetings you cannot attend. Granola deletes audio after transcription; Otter keeps it.

Does Granola record audio?

No. Granola's help center states that it does not record or save audio or video at any point during the call, so meeting audio cannot be replayed later. It keeps the transcript and your enhanced notes.

Does Otter need a bot to join meetings?

No. Otter's Notetaker joins Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams as a visible participant, but Otter can also capture without a bot through its desktop app or Chrome extension. Auto-join can be limited to meetings you host, external or internal meetings, or meetings you select manually.

How much do Granola and Otter cost?

Granola has a free Basic plan with 30 days of history, a Business plan at $14 per user a month, and Enterprise at $35 per user a month. Otter has a free Basic plan with 300 minutes a month and a 30-minute limit per conversation, Pro at $16.99 a month or $8.33 a month billed yearly, and Business at $30 a month or $19.99 a month billed yearly.

Why does Granola label speakers as Me and Them?

The Granola desktop app separates your microphone from your computer's system audio, labelling them Me and Them. Speaker tags add participants' display names on Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams on Mac and Windows, but they cannot separate several people sharing one device and do not apply to transcripts made before they were set up.