Notey vs Granola: two bot-free notetakers, compared

If your problem is that a bot participant is awkward or blocked, either one solves it.

Where they differ is in what happens to the audio after it is captured. Granola sends it to a cloud transcription service and does not keep it. Notey transcribes it on the Mac and keeps the recording on your disk. Most of the other differences follow from that choice.

This comparison describes Granola from its own documentation as of September 2026. Products change; check Granola's help centre for the current state before deciding.

At a glance

How each one captures a meeting

Both apps take two inputs: your microphone, which is you, and the computer's audio output, which is everyone else. That is why both can label a transcript with your side and theirs without a bot in the call.

Granola streams that audio to its transcription provider while the meeting is happening. Its documentation says it "does not record or save audio or video at any point during the call, so there's no way to access audio from your meetings." You get a live transcript, and Granola keeps the transcript and your notes. (Granola: how transcription works)

Notey records the two inputs as two separate audio tracks on your Mac and transcribes both with the speech recognition built into macOS. The live transcript appears as you talk. After an English meeting, Notey reads the recording again on your Mac and keeps the words the recognisers agree on.

The practical difference: with Granola there is no recording to replay or re-transcribe; with Notey there is, and it is a file on your disk that you are responsible for.

Where your data goes

This is the difference most buyers are asking about, so it is worth being exact.

Granola

• Audio goes to a cloud transcription provider during the meeting and is not stored.
• Transcripts and notes are stored in Granola's cloud. Its security FAQ says they are held on AWS in the US and encrypted at rest and in transit. (Granola: security, privacy and data)
• Model training: Granola says third-party AI providers do not train on your data. It also says it trains on anonymised data to improve Granola, that you can opt out in settings, and that Enterprise plans have this off by default.

Notey

• Audio is written to your Mac and read from there. It is not uploaded for transcription, and there is no fallback, debug mode or crash report that sends it.
• Transcripts are made and stored on your Mac. With no account, nothing leaves the machine.
• AI notes send the finished transcript text — never audio — to Notey's service, which passes it to OpenAI to produce the note. That happens when you ask for a note, or automatically when a meeting ends if you have turned write-ups on. OpenAI processes it as a data processor and does not train on it, and Notey does not keep the transcript after the response. (Notey's privacy policy)
• Sync between your own Macs is optional and encrypted on your Mac with a key only your Macs hold. Recordings stay on the Mac that made them and are never uploaded, not even encrypted.

Neither approach is automatically "private enough". If your contracts say client conversations must not be processed by a third-party transcription service, Notey's model fits and Granola's does not. If your concern is keeping audio files off laptops that could be lost, Granola's model — no audio at all — fits better. See where does meeting audio go? for the questions to ask any vendor.

Notes and the AI

Granola is built around a notepad. You type rough notes during the meeting and Granola uses the transcript to fill them out afterwards, so the result follows the structure you gave it.

Notey does not have a notepad during the meeting. Afterwards you choose what to have written from the transcript: a summary with action items, minutes, a follow-up email, the questions worth asking next, or where the two sides disagreed. You can also ask questions about the meeting. Everything the AI wrote is labelled as AI-generated, and editing it marks it as edited by you.

If you like to steer notes while the meeting happens, Granola's approach suits you. If you would rather not type during a call and pick the kind of note afterwards, Notey's does.

Speakers and voices

Both label your side and the other side from which input the audio came from.

For several people on the other side, Granola documents speaker tags for Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Notey tells voices apart after the recording stops, on any app, and you name them. Notey can also recognise a named person in later meetings, but only if you switch voice recognition on — it is off by default, the voices are stored on your Mac, and a suggested name is always offered rather than applied.

Platforms and requirements

This is where Granola has the clear advantage for many people.

• Granola runs on macOS and Windows, and has iPhone and Android apps for in-person meetings.
• Notey runs only on Macs with Apple silicon and macOS 26 or later, because it relies on the on-device speech recognition Apple added in macOS 26. It does not run on Intel Macs, Windows or phones.

Notey's transcription covers the languages Apple's recogniser supports — English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Cantonese. The after-meeting improvement is English only.

Working with a team

Granola has workspaces for sharing notes with colleagues, with admin controls on business plans.

Notey is a personal tool. There is no shared workspace; you export a note as Markdown or the transcript as plain text and paste it wherever your team keeps things. A Team plan exists for billing several people together, but it does not add sharing.

Pricing

Notey's free plan records 2 hours a month, with transcription and search, and no account; paid plans record without a cap. AI notes are paid by the hour of meeting summarised: 16 hours a month on Light, 100 on Full, and a Team plan per seat. The current prices are on the pricing section.

Granola's plans and prices are on its own site; they change often enough that we do not repeat them here.

Which one fits

Granola is likely the better fit if:

• you use Windows, or want a phone app for in-person meetings;
• you like typing your own notes during the call and having them filled out;
• you want to share notes in a workspace with colleagues;
• you would rather have no audio files on your computer at all.

Notey is likely the better fit if:

• you cannot send client conversations to a third-party transcription service;
• you want to record and transcribe with no account and no network;
• you want the recording kept, so you can replay any line;
• you want nothing to leave your Mac until you ask for a note.

Both are honest answers to the same problem. The question is which trade-off your meetings, and your clients, can accept.

jamie is another bot-free notetaker that, like Granola, transcribes in the cloud, with its servers in Germany; a jamie alternative compares it with Notey.

Frequently asked questions

Does Granola record audio?

According to Granola's documentation, it passes audio from your microphone and system audio to its transcription provider and does not record or save it, so there is no audio to go back to. It keeps the transcript and notes.

Does Notey upload audio to transcribe it?

No. Notey transcribes with the speech recognition built into macOS, on your Mac. The recording is kept on your disk. Only transcript text is sent, and only when you ask for AI notes or leave automatic write-ups on.

Is Notey a Granola alternative for Windows?

No. Notey runs only on Apple silicon Macs with macOS 26 or later. Granola has desktop apps for macOS and Windows and mobile apps.

Can I use both?

Yes. Neither joins the call, so they do not interfere with each other in the meeting. Both capture your microphone and what your Mac plays, so you will have two transcripts of the same conversation.