Overview
Granola is a note-taking app for meetings, with desktop clients for macOS and Windows. It takes a different route from most meeting bots: instead of dropping a participant into the call, it captures the audio playing on your own device. A small floating window stays on screen and turns the conversation into structured notes while it happens, so the notes are ready when the meeting ends.
This year it made voice typing free and unlimited. The feature shares the same transcription stack as meeting notes but works the other way around: wherever your cursor sits, you speak and the text lands there. Tech journalist Alex Heath said he uses it all day on his Mac instead of typing and no longer installs a separate dictation app.
On the team side it follows a workspace model. The free Basic tier includes 30 days of meeting history and shared folders, while Business at 14 dollars per user per month opens up unlimited history, pre-meeting briefs, follow-up emails, Notion and Zapier style integrations, plus MCP and API access. Every tier carries a commercial licence.
Key Features
- Capture without a bot: Reads the audio your device is already playing, so no third-party account shows up in the participant list, which matters for calls with clients.
- Structured notes and templates: Builds headed notes while the meeting runs, and lets you keep one template each for sales, interviews and standups so every note follows the same shape.
- Search across meetings: Ask questions in plain language across your history and get answers tied to a specific meeting and timestamp.
- Voice typing anywhere: Speak into whichever input box has focus, with no word limit, available on the free Basic plan as a replacement for system dictation.
- Briefs and follow-ups: From Business upward it can gather relevant history before a meeting and draft the follow-up email afterwards.
- MCP and API: Connects your note library to Claude, ChatGPT or internal tools with permission-aware access, and exposes an API for automated archiving.
Use Cases
- A sales rep turns a client call into notes with committed next steps and sends the follow-up the same hour.
- Recruiters record each interview round and tag answers so candidates can be compared side by side.
- A weekly standup ends with an action list that already has owners and due dates.
- Podcasters and reporters get a transcript while recording instead of running a separate transcription pass.
- Writers dictate instead of typing, with the text landing in whichever app has focus.
- Teams keep shared folders of past meetings so new joiners can catch up on project context.
Pros
- No bot joins the call, which makes external meetings simpler.
- Meeting notes and voice typing share one transcription stack, so a single install covers both jobs.
- The free tier already includes voice typing and shared folders.
- Templates and recipes lock in the structure of recurring meetings.
- Business adds MCP and API access for existing workflows and data stores.
- The company states it does not let third parties train on your data, with one-click opt-out for its own training.
Pricing
Basic is 0 dollars per user per month and includes meeting notes, 30 days of history, AI chat within and across meetings, shared folders, custom templates, voice typing in any app and multi-language support. Business is 14 dollars per user per month with unlimited history, access to advanced reasoning models, pre-meeting briefs, follow-up emails, integrations with Attio, Notion, HubSpot, Affinity and Zapier, MCP, API access and centralised billing. Enterprise is 35 dollars per user per month and adds SSO, SCIM, an audit API, org-wide retention policies and admin-enforced model training opt-out, and it is the only tier with HIPAA-compliant workspaces. All tiers include a commercial licence, and the product is SOC 2 Type II certified.
Summary
Granola sits at the light end of meeting capture. Not inserting a bot and keeping capture on your own device is what makes it usable in external calls, and opening the same transcription stack up as system-wide voice typing widens it from a meeting tool into all-day text input. What keeps it in daily use is not summary quality but the fact that recording and typing share one capability, so one install covers two frequent actions.
Version History
- Granola listed: free unlimited voice typing (2026-10-31): Form at listing: desktop app for macOS and Windows that captures device audio rather than joining calls as a bot, producing structured notes in real time with custom templates and cross-meeting search. Adds voice typing, unlimited and free, working in any app. Basic is free with 30 days of history and shared folders, Business at 14 dollars per user per month adds unlimited history, pre-meeting briefs, follow-up emails, integrations plus MCP and API, and Enterprise at 35 dollars adds SSO, audit and org-wide data policies.