Compiled by Amit KumarWhat is Granola?
Granola is a notepad for meetings. You type rough notes during the call as you always would, and Granola captures the audio in the background and rewrites your notes into something complete afterwards.
It captures your computer's audio directly, so no bot joins the meeting and nobody else on the call sees a recorder.
That combination is what separates it from the rest of the category. A transcriber gives you everything that was said. Granola's premise is that what you chose to write down is the signal, and the transcript is there to fill in what you missed.
It launched on Product Hunt on 22 May 2024 and holds a 4.8 rating from 56 reviews with 1.6K followers. Granola 2.0 reached #4 of the day in May 2025, the iOS app #5, and Granola for Windows #5 of the day on 16 June 2025.
A note on the address: Product Hunt lists granola.so, which now redirects to granola.ai. Both work; granola.ai is the canonical one.
Is Granola free?
Yes. The Basic plan is $0 a user a month and does not cap how many meetings you record. What it caps is how long the notes stay readable.
What Basic includes, from Granola's pricing page and its plan-comparison post:
- AI meeting notes and device-audio capture, with no bot.
- AI chat within a meeting and across meetings, on standard models.
- Shared folders for collaboration and custom templates.
- Multi-language support — 10 languages on desktop.
- Recipes and People & Companies, both bounded by the history window.
- MCP integration, also bounded by the history window.
- Opt-out of model training, per user.
That is a lot to give away, and the AI chat across meetings in particular is a feature several competitors charge for. The catch is entirely in the history window.
How long does the free plan keep your notes?
Granola's own pages give two different answers. One says 30 days, another says 14.
Both were read on 24 September 2026, and both are Granola's:
- The plan-comparison post states: "The Basic plan gives you a rolling 30-day window of note access."
- The getting-started post states: "The Free plan provides access to notes from the past 14 days."
- The pricing page itself says only "limited meeting history" and defines nothing.
We are recording both rather than picking one, because we cannot verify which is current and a vendor contradicting itself on a plan limit is itself the useful fact.
What this means in practice: plan for 14 days, because that is the shorter of the two and the one you would regret assuming away. If your work depends on notes staying available for a month, confirm the current window with Granola before you rely on the free tier.
Two things the window does not limit are worth stating, because they are easy to get wrong. It does not cap the number of meetings you record — Granola's documentation sets no meeting-count limit on any plan. And the notes are not deleted; what expires is your access to read them, which is why exporting before the window closes is the workaround.
How much does Granola cost?
Basic is $0, Business is $14 a user a month, and Enterprise is $35 a user a month. Granola publishes no annual pricing.
| Plan | Price | Meeting history | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $0 | Limited — 14 or 30 days, per Granola's own conflicting pages | AI notes, AI chat across meetings, shared folders, templates, MCP, training opt-out |
| Business | $14/user | Unlimited | Advanced AI models, Slack, Notion, Zapier, HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, central billing, API, full MCP |
| Enterprise | $35/user | Unlimited | SSO, enterprise security and admin controls, workspace-wide settings, HIPAA compliance, priority support |
The absence of annual pricing is unusual at this price point and cuts both ways: no discount for committing, but also no annual commitment to regret. At $14 a user a month with no annual option, a five-person team is $840 a year with the freedom to stop any month.
HIPAA compliance sitting on Enterprise rather than Business is the detail that will decide the plan for anyone in healthcare, and it is a 2.5x step up in price.
Granola vs Fathom and Tactiq
All three capture without putting a bot in the room. They meter completely different things, which makes the choice unusually clean.
- Granola meters time. Unlimited meetings, unlimited AI chat, but notes become unreadable after the free window closes. It is also the only one of the three built around merging your own typed notes with the transcript.
- Fathom meters depth. Unlimited recording, transcription and basic summaries are free forever; advanced summaries and action items start at $16 a month. Its bot-free capture, however, is a Mac beta — Granola's is how the product works everywhere.
- Tactiq meters AI. Its free tier is 10 transcripts and 5 AI credits a month, and even paid Pro caps AI at 10 meetings.
So: if you want a permanent free archive, Fathom. If you want AI on everything without counting, Granola's free plan is the most generous — for as long as the window lasts. If a bot must never appear on any operating system, Granola and Tactiq are the two that qualify.
Who Granola suits, and who it does not
It suits people who already take notes and want them finished rather than replaced. If you type during calls, Granola is the only tool in this group designed around that habit instead of against it. It suits back-to-back schedules for the same reason: the AI chat across meetings on the free plan answers questions spanning several calls, which is normally a paid feature elsewhere.
The platform coverage is also broad for this category — desktop, iOS, Android and Apple Watch, with Windows shipped in June 2025.
It does not suit anyone who needs an archive. A free tier whose limit is time rather than volume is exactly wrong if the value of a meeting shows up three months later, and $14 a user a month is the only fix. It does not suit healthcare work below the Enterprise tier, since HIPAA sits at $35. And it does not suit a buyer who wants certainty about the free plan today, while Granola's own pages disagree about what it is.
What to use instead of Granola, and for which job
Fathom — if you need a permanent archive. Unlimited recording, transcription and summaries free forever, with no expiry on access. Granola's free tier limits time, which is exactly wrong when a meeting's value surfaces months later.
Tactiq — also bot-free, via a browser extension. It meters AI rather than time: 10 transcripts and 5 AI credits free, and only 10 credits even on paid Pro.
Granola Business, if the window is the problem. At $14 a user a month it removes the history limit entirely, and with no annual pricing there is nothing to commit to.
Enterprise, if you are in healthcare. HIPAA compliance sits at $35 a user, not on Business — a two-and-a-half-fold step that is not optional if you need it.
Sources
Every figure on this page was read from the pages below on 24 September 2026.
- Granola pricing — plan prices, the undefined 'limited meeting history' wording, platform list and what Business and Enterprise add
- Granola blog: free vs paid features — the statement that the Basic plan gives a rolling 30-day window of note access, and the full Basic feature list
- Granola blog: getting started — the statement that the Free plan provides access to notes from the past 14 days — contradicting the post above
- Granola on Product Hunt — launch date, the Granola 2.0, iOS and Windows rankings, rating and review count
