Best Granola Alternatives in 2026

If you want one dependable Granola alternative, take Fathom: it is the only product in this category whose free tier gives you unlimited recordings and transcription forever, and as of 14 October 2026 its paid plans cost less than Granola Business once you commit to a year. Granola itself is not weak. It is the most polished personal note-taker on the market, and the reason people leave is usually the 30-day history cut on its free plan, monthly-only billing, or the absence of video, exports and sales analytics. This guide compares ten active Granola alternatives on price, limits and workflow fit.

Granola alternatives at a glance

The short version: Granola is a personal notepad, and most alternatives are meeting recorders. That distinction drives every recommendation below.

Alternative	Best for	Free plan	Starting price	Main advantage	Main limitation
Fathom	Free-first users, small teams	Yes, unlimited	$20/mo, or $16 annual	Unlimited free transcription and summaries	Bot-free capture still beta, Mac only
Otter.ai	Transcript archives and exports	Yes, 300 min/mo	$16.99/mo, or $8.33 annual	docx, pdf, srt and bulk exports	Bot joins every recorded meeting
Fireflies.ai	Power users and analysis	Yes, limited AI summaries	$18/seat/mo, or $10 annual	Conversation intelligence and voice agents	AI credits meter the useful extras
tl;dv	Teams and workflow automation	Yes, 10 AI-noted meetings	$18/seat/mo annual	5,000+ integrations, MCP, API, webhooks	Business jumps to $59/seat/month
Notta	Budget transcription, many languages	Yes, 120 min/mo	$8.17/mo annual	Cheapest paid tier in the group	3-minute cap per conversation on free
Read AI	Enterprise reports and readouts	Yes, 30 meetings/mo	$19.75/mo, or $15 annual	Automated reports and meeting coach	Heavier than a personal notepad
Fellow	Structured meetings and action items	Sample only, 5 notes	$7/mo annual	Agenda builder and action tracking	Free plan is a demo, not a tier
Avoma	Sales and customer calls	No, trial only	$19/recorder seat annual	Free viewers, CRM write-back	Analytics are paid add-ons
Krisp	Call quality plus notes	No, trial only	$16/mo, or $8 annual	Bot-free capture and noise cancellation	Narrower meeting-notes feature set
Sembly	Agencies and consultancies	No, trial only	$10/mo annual	Client workspaces and deliverables	Capped client counts per plan

Why look for a Granola alternative?

The free plan keeps your notes out of reach. Granola’s Basic tier records unlimited meetings with no daily limit, but the in-app history stops at 30 days. Older notes are still stored and can be dumped as a CSV, but you cannot search or chat with them without paying. For anyone who takes more than a handful of meetings a month, that is the moment the free tier stops working.

You cannot buy Granola annually on the self-serve plans. As verified on 14 October 2026, Basic is free, Business is $14 per user per month, and Enterprise starts at $35 per user per month, and Granola’s subscriptions and billing guide states plainly that Basic and Business are billed monthly while annual invoicing is reserved for Enterprise deals. Two-year commitments are where Fathom, Otter and tl;dv win.

Granola deliberately does less. Granola never joins your call with a bot, never stores meeting audio, and transcribes your device audio instead, as the company explains in its security documentation. That privacy model is the product. It also means no video recording, no per-meeting speaker analytics, no conversation intelligence, and no bulk export to docx, pdf or srt.

Plan structure gets awkward as teams grow. Granola bills per workspace, not per user: every member of a workspace shares one tier, mixed tiers inside a workspace are not supported, and pricing follows each member as they join or leave. Granola offers twelve free months of Business to accepted startups and students, and registered nonprofits can apply for 50% off, but if only three of your twenty colleagues need the paid tier you are running two workspaces. The full plan matrix, including which features are gated where, sits on Granola’s pricing page.

The market moved and Granola moved with it. Granola shipped Windows support in June 2025, Android in July 2026, Apple Watch in July 2026 and 32-language support in September 2026, and it raised a $125M Series C at a $1.5bn valuation led by Index Ventures in March 2026. It is not a product at risk of being abandoned. It is a product that now costs more per seat than several credible rivals.

How I chose these alternatives

Prices, plan names and limits come from vendor pricing pages and documentation checked on 14 October 2026.

MeetGeek was excluded because its current pricing could not be confirmed. The comparison distinguishes monthly rates, annual discounts and recorder-seat pricing.

I scored each product on the things that decide a switch: output quality and how much editing the notes need, how much setup the tool demands, price per seat, how generous the free tier actually is, integrations, collaboration and admin controls, privacy and security posture, platform support, migration effort, and whether the product is still actively developed. I weighted free-tier value heavily, because that is the single biggest gap in the paid meeting-notes market.

A permanent free plan is available indefinitely. Fellow, Avoma, Krisp and Sembly offer time-limited trials and are labelled accordingly. All ten alternatives were active at the pricing date.

Where a vendor’s free plan has a usage cap that makes it unusable in practice, I say so rather than pretending the word “free” settles the question.

1. Fathom - Best overall

Fathom is the best Granola alternative overall because it is the only product here whose free plan is genuinely unlimited. As of 14 October 2026 its Free tier includes unlimited recordings, unlimited transcription and instant AI call summaries with no credit card, and its paid plans start below Granola Business once billed annually.

What it does: joins Zoom, Google Meet and Teams, records, transcribes, then produces a summary, action items and highlight clips you can search across. The plan structure separates individuals from teams. Free is $0 forever. Premium is $20 per user per month, or $16 on annual billing. Team is $19 monthly or $15 annually with a two-user minimum, adding global search, highlight playlists and collaboration. Business is $34 monthly or $25 annually, adding CRM field sync, Deal View, coaching metrics and custom summaries. Enterprise is custom and brings SSO, SCIM, custom data retention and a signed HIPAA BAA. Each tier’s exact contents and prices are set out on its pricing page.

Why it is a valid alternative: it covers the same daily job as Granola, capture a meeting and get a readable note without touching a transcript.

Strengths: the free tier is the most generous in the category, not merely the most generous marketing claim. Bot-free capture exists and is in beta on Mac, which is the same philosophy Granola applies everywhere. Premium at $16 annual undercuts Granola Business at $14 monthly once you factor in the absence of an annual option on Granola’s side.

Limitations: bot-free capture is beta and Mac-only, so most teams still get a bot in the meeting. Team and Business plans require a minimum of two users, which quietly rules out a one-person upgrade if you want those features. Free, Premium and Team are capped at three users per domain, so this is not a company-wide rollout on the cheap.

Free plan detail: yes, a permanent free plan. Unlimited recordings and transcriptions, instant AI summaries, clips, playlists and search. No trial is needed because there is nothing to expire.

Direct comparison with Granola: Fathom wins on price and on free-tier generosity. Granola wins on polish and on having shipped bot-free capture across desktop, iOS, Android and Apple Watch. If your meetings are on a Mac, Fathom is now a genuinely close substitute. If they are on a Windows laptop, a phone or a watch, Granola still has the broader surface.

Verdict: switch to Fathom if cost or the 30-day history cap is what bothers you. Stay on Granola if you have already built habits around its note templates and its per-user workspace model.

2. Otter.ai - Best for transcript archives and exports

Otter.ai is the best alternative when the transcript itself is the product. Its Business and Enterprise plans export to mp3, txt, pdf, docx and srt with bulk export, which no other tool in this guide matches.

What it does: transcribes meetings in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese, identifies speakers, summarises with action items, and provides live notes and captioning inside Zoom and Google Meet. A bot joins recorded meetings and writes the notes for you.

Pricing, read from the Otter pricing page on 14 October 2026: Basic is free forever with 300 monthly transcription minutes shared across transcription types and the 25 most recent conversations. Pro is $16.99 per user per month, or $8.33 billed annually, with 1,200 minutes. Business is $19.99 per user per month on annual billing for a minimum of 25 billed users, with unlimited meeting transcription and 6,000 imported-file minutes. Enterprise is by quote. Maximum conversation length rises from 30 minutes on Basic to 90 on Pro to four hours on Business and Enterprise, which matters for interviews and long workshops.

Why it is a valid alternative: if your reason for wanting notes is archival and searchable rather than personal, Otter is more mature on that axis.

Strengths: real file formats on export, bulk export at scale, live in-meeting captioning, an MCP server for AI assistants, Zapier plus Salesforce and HubSpot sync, and a 20% student and teacher discount that puts Pro at $6.67 per month annually.

Limitations: the bot. Many Granola users moved to Granola specifically to avoid one. HIPAA is a paid add-on, and SSO and SCIM require a minimum 100-user licence, so enterprise governance is priced for large companies only.

Direct comparison with Granola: Otter gives you transcripts you can hand to legal, compliance or an external partner. Granola gives you notes that are private by default and not built for distribution. Those are different products wearing the same category label.

Verdict: choose Otter if exports and archive matter more than the no-bot experience. Our existing Fathom review covers the free-first option in more depth if you want to compare the two free tiers.

3. Fireflies.ai - Best for power users

Fireflies.ai is the best pick for power users because it analyses meetings instead of summarising them. Conversation intelligence, topic trackers, speaker talk-time analytics and voice agents are all first-class features rather than add-ons.

What it does: joins meetings with a bot, transcribes in 100+ languages, then layers AI summaries, AskFred chat, a personal assistant, an email assistant and voice agents on top. It is the deepest analytics product in this category.

Pricing from its pricing page, verified 14 October 2026: Free is $0 forever with unlimited transcription, limited AI summaries, 400 minutes of team storage and 20 AI credits. Pro is $18 per seat per month, or $10 on annual billing, with 8,000 minutes of storage per seat. Business is $29 monthly or $19 annually, adding conversation intelligence, team analytics and user groups. Enterprise is $39 per seat per month on annual billing only, with SSO, SCIM, audit logs, HIPAA compliance, private storage and a rules engine.

Strengths: it is the only tool here that treats the meeting as data rather than as a document. Video recording, soundbite clips, tasks and contacts are all on Pro. SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and zero data retention are stated on the same page.

Limitations: the free plan’s AI summaries are limited and metered by AI credits, so “free” here means transcription is free rather than intelligence is free. Bot-based capture. And the useful admin and analytics layer starts at $19 per seat annually.

Direct comparison with Granola: Granola’s Chat is a personal memory system over your own notes; Fireflies is a team analytics system over everyone’s meetings. If you are the only person who reads the notes, Granola is the better fit. If a manager or a revenue leader reads them, Fireflies pays for itself.

Verdict: pick Fireflies if you want to learn from your meetings at scale. It is not a cheaper Granola; it is a different job.

4. tl;dv - Best for teams and automation

tl;dv is the best Granola alternative for teams that want notes to trigger work automatically. Its Business plan adds scheduled AI reports, playbook monitoring and objection handling on top of a very large integration surface.

What it does: records and transcribes in 30+ languages, then automates what happens next, with more than 5,000 integrations through Zapier, plus its own MCP server, API and webhooks.

Pricing from its pricing page, verified 14 October 2026: Free is $0 with unlimited video recordings and unlimited transcription, but AI notes are included for only 10 meetings and Ask AI is limited to 5 queries. Pro is $18 per seat per month on annual billing and lifts the AI limits, adds custom templates, action item assignment, follow-up email drafting and unlimited uploads. Business is $59 per seat per month annually, adding advanced transcription, scheduled AI reports, playbooks and team-wide automation. Enterprise is custom, with SCIM, custom SSO and privately hosted AI. Recording length is capped at three hours on every self-serve tier, and the free plan retains data for up to three months.

Strengths: the clearest automation story of any option here, a genuinely usable free plan for light users, and SOC 2, GDPR and EU AI Act compliance plus EU hosting options.

Limitations: $59 per seat for Business is steep for a team that only needs notes. The three-hour recording cap and three-month free retention are real constraints for anyone who treats notes as an archive.

Direct comparison with Granola: Granola’s integrations are Slack plus a paid set including Notion, Zapier, HubSpot, Attio and Affinity on Business. tl;dv’s integration count is an order of magnitude larger, and it exposes an MCP server and webhooks where Granola’s MCP and API arrive on paid tiers only.

Verdict: choose tl;dv when the meeting has to hand work to another system. Otherwise it is overkill for a single user.

5. Notta - Best on a budget

Notta is the cheapest credible paid option here, at $8.17 per user per month on annual billing. It is the sensible choice when transcription minutes are the real constraint.

What it does: transcribes web meetings and uploaded files, identifies speakers, and adds export, translation and custom vocabulary on paid plans. Noted as the most multilingual-friendly budget tool.

Pricing verified 14 October 2026: Free is $0 with 120 transcription minutes a month and conversations capped at three minutes each. Pro is $8.17 per user per month billed annually, totalling $97.99 a year, with 1,800 minutes a month, recordings up to five hours and 100 file uploads. Business is $16.67 per user per month billed annually at $199.99 a year, with unlimited transcription. Enterprise is custom, adding SAML SSO, audit logs and auto-deletion. Translation is sold separately: monolingual at $10 per month monthly or $6 annually, bilingual at $15 monthly or $9 annually, and the Notta Brain add-on is $93.59 per year.

Strengths: the lowest entry price of the group, a real free tier rather than a demo, and generous annual discounts already baked into the headline number.

Limitations: the three-minute cap on free conversations makes the free plan nearly useless for a real meeting. The most useful extras are add-ons, so the effective cost can climb quickly. And note this is the weakest overall product here on polish, which is why it scores lowest in my list.

Direct comparison with Granola: Granola Basic gives you unlimited free transcription, which Notta does not. Notta Pro at $8.17 annual undercuts Granola Business at $14 monthly by a wide margin if minutes are the constraint.

Verdict: choose Notta when you need volume cheaply or you work in many languages. If you want Granola’s unlimited free tier, Granola already has it.

6. Read AI - Best for enterprise reporting

Read AI is the best alternative when the output is a report rather than a personal note. It generates automated meeting reports, readouts and a personalised meeting coach, and it also ships as a Claude connector, a ChatGPT app and an MCP server.

Pricing verified 14 October 2026: Free is $0 with no credit card required, 30 meetings a month, 20+ languages and apps for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. Pro is $19.75 per user per month, or $15 billed annually. Team is $29.75 monthly or $22.50 annually with 200 file upload credits a month. Enterprise is $39.75 monthly or $29.75 annually with 300 file upload credits and workspace onboarding.

Strengths: the most enterprise-shaped packaging of the mid-market options, native apps on every desktop platform rather than desktop-only capture, and availability inside the AI assistants your team may already use.

Limitations: 30 meetings a month on free is tight. Upload credits are metered on the upper tiers. And the product is built to circulate reports to a group, which is the opposite of Granola’s private-by-default personal notes.

Direct comparison with Granola: Granola’s answer to a team is Spaces and shared folders. Read AI’s answer is a generated report with readouts. If your meetings produce deliverables, Read AI is closer to what you want; if they produce memory, Granola is.

Verdict: choose Read AI for reporting-heavy organisations. For a single person taking notes for themselves, it is more machinery than needed.

7. Fellow - Best for structured meetings

Fellow is the best alternative if your meetings lack structure rather than notes. Its agenda builder, pre-meeting notes and AI action item tracking treat the whole meeting lifecycle, not just the recording.

Pricing verified 14 October 2026: Free is $0 and includes 5 AI notes in total, plus AI action items and Ask Fellow. Team is $7 per user per month on annual billing, or $11 monthly, with 10 AI notes per user per month, meeting automations, project management integrations and API access. Business is $15 per user per month annually, or $23 monthly, with unlimited AI notes, CRM integration and keyword tracking. Enterprise is $25 per user per month on annual billing.

Strengths: genuinely cheap at the Team tier, stronger pre-meeting workflow than any other option here, and Notion, Confluence plus CRM integrations on paid plans.

Limitations: the free plan is a five-note lifetime sample, so treat it as a trial, not a free tier. Meeting caps persist until Business. And Fellow uses a bot for recorded meetings, which is the thing Granola users most often leave Granola to avoid.

Direct comparison with Granola: Granola’s Briefs feature prepares you before external meetings, and Follow-up emails handle the after. Fellow does both as part of a broader meeting-management workflow, with deeper agenda and action-item tooling.

Verdict: pick Fellow when the problem is that meetings drift. If the problem is that your notes are expensive or trapped, Fellow is not the answer.

8. Avoma - Best for sales and customer calls

Avoma is the best alternative for sales teams, and its per-recorder pricing is the fairest model in this category. Viewers and collaborators are free, so you only pay for people who actually record.

Pricing verified 14 October 2026: the Startup tier is $19 per recorder seat per month on annual billing, or $29 monthly. Organization is $29 annually or $39 monthly. Enterprise is $39 annually only. All tiers include unlimited AI summary notes, Ask Avoma, AI email follow-ups, automatic CRM record saving and dialer integration. Add-ons sit on top: Conversation Intelligence at $29 per seat per month annually, Revenue Intelligence at $29 annually, and Lead Router at $19 annually. Every plan ships with an unrestricted trial that has all add-ons enabled.

Strengths: the only product here where non-recording colleagues cost nothing, which changes the maths on a large team. The sales workflow is not an add-on bolted on later; it is the product.

Limitations: no permanent free plan, only the trial. Analytics and revenue features are extra spend per seat. And the headline $19 rate requires annual billing, with monthly at $29.

Direct comparison with Granola: Granola’s CRM integrations write notes to systems on Business and Enterprise. Avoma’s centre of gravity is that write-back, and it prices it per recorder rather than per seat. If most of your colleagues only ever read notes, Avoma is materially cheaper than Granola Business.

Verdict: choose Avoma for revenue teams. For anyone outside sales, the recorder-seat model offers no advantage.

9. Krisp - Best for call quality plus notes

Krisp is the best alternative for teams that already care about call audio quality, because notes and noise cancellation come from one vendor. Its Core plan records without a bot, which is the Granola-style capture model.

Pricing verified 14 October 2026: a free trial with no credit card required, Core at $16 per user per month or $8 on annual billing, Advanced at $30 monthly or $15 annually, and Enterprise from $15 per agent per month billed annually. Core includes unlimited AI notes, bot-free transcription, MCP integration with Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor, and 10 GB of storage.

Strengths: bot-free capture on a paid plan that costs $8 per user per month annually, matching Granola’s price for the closest thing to its philosophy. MCP integration is included rather than gated.

Limitations: no permanent free plan. Advanced doubles the price and its headline feature is accent conversion, which most teams do not need. And Krisp’s meeting-notes feature set is narrower than its noise cancellation one, so it overlaps Granola only partially.

Direct comparison with Granola: Granola captures device audio on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android and Apple Watch without joining the call. Krisp does the same on desktop with noise removal attached. Granola remains the broader capture device story.

Verdict: choose Krisp if audio quality is already a purchase you make. Otherwise Fathom or Granola cover the notes job better.

10. Sembly - Best for agencies and consultancies

Sembly is the best alternative for agencies and consultancies because it treats each conversation as a client deliverable. Client workspaces, branding and generated artefacts are included on every paid plan.

Pricing verified 14 October 2026: a free trial, Basic at $10 per month on annual billing, or $17 monthly, covering one user, 25 clients and one year of history. Pro is $20 per user per month annually, or $29 monthly, for up to 40 users and 100 clients with two years of history. MAX is $30 per user per month annually, or $39 monthly, for 3 to 500 users, 500 clients, priority support and HIPAA compliance. Enterprise is custom.

Strengths: the only option here designed around a client roster rather than a team roster, and the cheapest self-serve entry point of any paid product in this guide.

Limitations: no permanent free plan. Client caps are hard limits tied to plan tier, so growth forces an upgrade. And for personal note-taking it is the wrong shape entirely.

Direct comparison with Granola: Granola’s sharing model is a personal note you choose to send. Sembly’s is a client workspace with your branding on the output. If you bill for the conversation, Sembly does something Granola does not attempt.

Verdict: choose Sembly in a consultancy. Everyone else should look at Fathom, Otter or tl;dv.

Which Granola alternative should you choose?

1. You want the best all-round replacement - Fathom. Permanent free plan with unlimited transcription, and paid tiers below Granola Business on annual billing.
2. You want transcripts you can hand to someone else - Otter.ai, for pdf, docx and srt exports with bulk export on Business.
3. You want to analyse every conversation - Fireflies.ai, for conversation intelligence, topic trackers and voice agents.
4. You want notes that trigger work automatically - tl;dv, for 5,000+ integrations, MCP, API and webhooks.
5. You want the cheapest paid tier - Notta Pro at $8.17 per user per month billed annually.
6. You want reports circulated to a wider group - Read AI, for automated reports, readouts and a meeting coach.
7. You want better-structured meetings - Fellow, for agendas, pre-meeting notes and action item tracking.
8. You are in sales - Avoma, priced per recorder seat with viewers free.
9. You already buy call-quality tools - Krisp, for bot-free capture with noise cancellation attached.
10. You run an agency or consultancy - Sembly, for client workspaces and branded deliverables.

When you should keep Granola

Keep it if these describe you. You take back-to-back meetings and want the note to be yours, private until you decide otherwise. You would rather not have a bot appear in the client call. You rely on the note templates, the pre-meeting Briefs and the follow-up emails that arrive automatically. You take notes on a phone, an Apple Watch or a Windows machine and want one app across all of them. You are happy on monthly billing. And you want a vendor with momentum: the $125M Series C at a $1.5bn valuation announced in March 2026 means the roadmap is funded, not the opposite. Granola’s own pricing page leads with the reason its customers stay:

“As we rebuild Brex into an AI-native company, we need tools that move fast without ever compromising accuracy. Granola earned our trust by delivering precise, reliable summaries, and helped strengthen our written culture.”

Pedro Franceschi, founder and CEO of Brex

There is a specific reason not to leave for Fathom, Otter, Fireflies or tl;dv today. Each records through a bot by default, which shows up in the call window as a participant and can unsettle clients who have not consented. Granola never does that.

When switching makes sense

Your history keeps vanishing at 30 days. If you search for something from two months ago and cannot find it, the free plan is the problem. Fathom’s free tier has no lookback limit.

You need a file, not a screen. If legal, compliance or an external partner needs a document, Granola’s CSV export is not that. Otter exports pdf, docx and srt with bulk export on Business.

You need video or analytics. Granola stores no meeting audio and offers no conversation intelligence. Fireflies records video and tracks talk time, sentiment, questions and topics.

Your team pays for people who only read notes. Granola bills every active seat in a workspace. Avoma charges only recorders, which can be dramatically cheaper for a wide organisation.

You want the meeting to do something. If follow-ups live in a spreadsheet because no tool moves them, tl;dv’s automations and Fireflies’ task manager are built for exactly that.

Compliance needs are changing. Granola reserves SSO, SCIM, audit API, HIPAA workspaces and org-wide admin policies for Enterprise at $35 per user per month. Read AI and tl;dv Enterprise are credible routes to the same place, and worth pricing against.

How to migrate without chaos

Export before you cancel. Granola can generate a CSV of your full note history from Settings, with titles and summaries, emailed to you within hours. Do this first, while you still have access.

Run both for two weeks. Granola has no annual self-serve discount to lose, so overlap costs little. Keep Granola on Basic for history and move new meetings to the new tool. Two weeks is enough to catch the workflows you forgot you had.

Rebuild templates, not notes. Whatever tool you pick, recreate your note templates and your dictionary of names and jargon in week one. Speaker-tag accuracy depends on it far more than on the vendor’s model.

Move integrations before you move history. Granola Business includes Notion, Zapier, HubSpot, Attio and Affinity. Rebuild those automations in the new tool while the old ones are still live, then switch them over.

Check your consent story before the first bot-joined call. Otter, Fireflies, tl;dv, Notta, Read AI, Fellow and Avoma all join calls by default. Tell your team and, where it matters, your clients before the first one. Fathom’s bot-free beta and Krisp’s bot-free Core plan are the exceptions.

Decide where the archive lives. Granola is deliberately not an archive. If you need years of searchable history, Otter or tl;dv fit that requirement better than any Granola alternative on privacy grounds.

Final recommendation

Best overall: Fathom. As of 14 October 2026 it is the only product in this category with an unlimited free plan that a real person can rely on, and its $16-per-user annual Premium tier costs less than Granola’s monthly-only Business plan. Best free: Fathom, for the same reason, with Otter and Fireflies as respectable but capped runners-up. Best for power users: Fireflies.ai, whose conversation intelligence and voice agents go well beyond summarising a meeting.

Keep Granola if a bot appearing in your client calls is unacceptable, if you take notes across desktop, phone and watch, and if you like notes that stay private until you share them. Switch if the 30-day history cap frustrates you, if you need exports, video or analytics, or if you want to pay less per seat. Granola is a well-funded, fast-moving product with a real point of view, so this is not a story of a tool in decline. It is a story of a tool that costs more than it needs to for some people.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best Granola alternative overall? Fathom. It gives you unlimited free recordings and transcriptions forever, clean AI summaries, and, as of 14 October 2026, the closest mainstream rival to Granola’s bot-free capture model. If you need exports instead, Otter.ai is the pick.

Is there a free alternative to Granola? Yes. Fathom’s free plan is permanent and unlimited for recordings and transcription. Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai also keep permanent free tiers, but Otter caps you at 300 transcription minutes a month and 25 conversations, and Fireflies limits AI summaries and meters extras with AI credits.

How much does Granola cost? Basic is free, Business is $14 per user per month, and Enterprise starts at $35 per user per month. Verified 14 October 2026. Basic and Business are billed monthly only; annual billing is available on Enterprise contracts through sales.

What does Granola’s free plan actually include? Unlimited meeting notes, unlimited transcription, AI chat, shared folders, note templates and multi-language support. The catch is that only the last 30 days of notes are visible in the app. Older notes are stored and can be exported as CSV, but browsing or chatting with them needs Business.

Which Granola alternative is best for sales teams? Fireflies.ai if you want talk-time analytics, topic trackers and objection handling. Avoma if you want CRM write-back and follow-up emails, and if many colleagues only read notes, since Avoma charges per recorder seat rather than per user.

Does any Granola alternative work without joining the call with a bot? Krisp records bot-free on its Core plan, and Fathom offers bot-free capture in beta on Mac. Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, tl;dv, Notta, Read AI, Fellow and Avoma use a meeting bot by default.

Can I get my Granola notes somewhere else? Yes. Granola generates a CSV export of your full note history from Settings, and Business and Enterprise plans include API access plus an MCP connector for tools such as Claude and ChatGPT. Otter and tl;dv also export richer formats including docx, pdf and srt.

Is there an open-source alternative to Granola? There is no credible open-source equivalent with a comparable feature set. Every product in this guide is proprietary, and the open-source meeting tools that exist are self-hosted bots rather than private personal note apps. Budget accordingly if source auditability is a hard requirement.

Should I stay on Granola? Stay if privacy and personal notes come first, if you need capture across desktop, phone and watch, and if you are happy paying monthly. Granola raised $125M in March 2026 at a $1.5bn valuation and shipped Android, Apple Watch and 32-language support through 2026, so it is actively developed.

What is the cheapest way to get unlimited AI meeting notes? Fathom Premium at $16 per user per month on annual billing. Granola Business is $14 per user per month but is monthly-only. Notta Pro is cheaper at $8.17 per user per month annually, but it meters transcription minutes rather than giving them away.