Granola AI vs Otter: which meeting notes app should you use?

• Granola AI is better if you take notes in the meeting and want them polished, with no bot ever and a generous free plan.
• Otter is better if you want a note taker that joins from your calendar, file imports, and a cheap yearly plan for a team.
• Over a year, Otter Pro billed yearly costs about $100 a person, and Granola Business $168.

Neither is ours. We make Koi, a third option at the end. Every fact about Granola and Otter comes from their own pages, or the press we link, checked October 16, 2026. We didn't test either for accuracy.

Sources: Granola's pricing, security page and speaker docs; Otter's pricing, desktop page and privacy page.

Granola is a notepad. You type rough notes during the call, and afterwards it fills them in from the transcript, so the result reads like your notes, not a recap. It listens through your computer's audio and never joins the call.

Otter is a note taker. Its Notetaker can join Zoom, Teams and Meet from your calendar and write everything down live, with speakers, while you just talk. Its desktop app can do the same without the bot, including in person. You get more done for you, and less of your own voice in the notes.

Both are cloud services, and both say they're SOC 2 Type 2 audited. The differences are in what they keep. Granola doesn't store meeting audio; it keeps the transcript and your notes on AWS in the US. Otter stores conversations on AWS with AES-256 encryption, and keeps recordings to play back.

Both train their own models. Granola uses anonymized data unless you opt out, and Enterprise is off by default. Otter trains on de-identified data and its page doesn't describe an opt-out. If your calls shouldn't be in a cloud service at all, neither fits: see local meeting notes for Mac.

Per person. Granola doesn't show a yearly price, so its row uses the monthly one.

The free plans are where they really differ. Granola's has no meeting cap on its pricing page, only 30 days of history. Otter's caps you at 300 minutes a month and 30 minutes per conversation, and shows only your 25 most recent conversations. Otter gives students 20% off Pro.

• No bot, ever, and nothing joins unless you start it.
• Notes that blend what you typed with the transcript.
• A free plan without a minutes cap.
• 32 languages against Otter's 6.
• An Apple Watch app, as well as Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android.

• A Notetaker that joins from your calendar when you can't.
• Speaker identification on its recordings, where Granola names people only on Meet, Zoom and Teams desktop.
• File imports, and exports to mp3, txt, pdf, docx and srt on Pro.
• Recordings you can play back.
• A cheaper yearly plan, and a student discount.

Otter's Notetaker shows in the participant list, and Otter says users must ask for consent. Granola and Otter's desktop app don't join, so nothing tells the call. Some places require everyone to agree. This isn't legal advice.

Both face proposed class actions, and both are allegations, not rulings. Brewer v. Otter.ai, filed in August 2025, alleges the Notetaker recorded and trained on conversations without participants' consent, per NPR. Chamberlain v. Granola alleges Granola captured conversations without the other participants' knowledge, per RuntimeWire. Whatever you use, say you're recording at the start.

If what bothers you about both is the cloud, Koi takes the opposite approach. Tap Fn + ⌃, pick Online call, and Koi records your Mac with no bot: your microphone is You, what the Mac plays is Them, and each stretch is written down on your Mac with Whisper. The screen is filmed with both sides' sound, and the video and transcript stay on your Mac. Notes are written online only when you say yes to that recording.

It does less than either for a team. Koi names no one past You and Them, has no shared folders, integrations or file imports, has no free plan, and is Mac only. Pro is $20 a month after a 3-day trial with a card, or Lifetime from $59. See Granola AI alternatives and Otter AI alternatives for more options, or how Koi records calls.