Granola

So what's different about Granola? No bot. Most AI note-takers join your call as an extra guest, and everyone can see it sitting there.

Granola doesn't join anything. It listens through your own laptop's mic and speakers, so it works with Zoom, Meet, Teams, whatever you're on.

The other nice bit is how the notes get made. You type a few rough words during the call, like "pricing pushback" or "send deck friday", and afterwards it fills them out from the transcript. So the notes follow what you cared about, not just whatever was said.

You can ask it things later, too. "What did I promise to do this week?" and it digs through your meetings.

And it's not stuck at your desk. There are iPhone and Android apps for in-person chats, plus an Apple Watch app.

The free plan has a sneaky wall. You can record as much as you like, but you can only see the last 30 days of notes. Older ones aren't deleted, they're just locked until you pay.

Honestly, that's the one to know about before you start. Three months in, your early notes are behind a paywall.

A few other things came up in the App Store reviews. One person wanted to edit the raw notes and couldn't, and said the AI write-up sometimes changed what was meant. Another found the Watch app stops recording the moment you check a text.

There's no web app either, and the Mac app needs macOS 14 or later. You also have to sign in with a Google or Microsoft account.

And some people are just uneasy about it. On Hacker News you'll find folks asking what it means to give an app your mic, your calendar and your private meeting notes. A reasonable thing to ask of any tool like this.

Start free. There's no daily limit on transcription, and the phone apps are free too.

The paid plan is Business, at $14 a person a month. That unlocks your full history, the Notion, HubSpot and Zapier hook-ups, a brief before each meeting, and API access.

One odd thing: Business is billed monthly only. There's no cheaper yearly price unless you're on an Enterprise contract, and those start at $35 a person.

It's worth checking if you qualify for a freebie, though. Startups can get 12 months of Business free (under 30 people, pre-seed or seed). So can students at universities in the US, UK and Canada. Registered nonprofits get 50% off.

Granola has 4.96 on the App Store from about 14,000 ratings. That's about as high as scores go.

What do the happy ones say? Mostly that the notes are simply better than what they got from other tools, and that it clicked straight away.

The grumbles are smaller and more specific. Losing the formatting when you copy notes out on the free plan. The Watch app. Not being able to fix the raw notes.

We also noticed people building their own stuff on top of it, like turning action items into a to-do board. That tends to happen with tools people really rely on.