This is one of our top picks in the category so we recommend it over others (you're on the right page), read below to learn why we love and recommend it! ⤵
This is one of the better tools in its category, see below if this tool is right for you! ⤵
Granola is essentially an always-on listening assistant (primarily for meetings), allowing for perfect recollection, along with meeting assistance (call context question/answers mid-call), no meeting bot required.
Granola has become the meeting repository for all internal (in-person) and external meetings and brainstorming sessions. We have a new rule at Efficient App: if Granola wasn't there, it didn't happen.
We believe there are better options available in this category, read below to learn what they do well, and what they could do better. ⤵
The AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings
Granola is a meeting recorder tool that doesn't require those annoying bots to join. In-fact the people you're on the call with don't even have to know you're using it.
Interestingly enough, this isn't any different than just having a note taker on the call, because they don't allow you to playback the audio. What you can do is ask Granola's AI Chatbot questions about the call, or any calls you've had across the company.
While Granola does all the typical meeting recorder/note taking features you'd expect (e.g. AI meeting summary), they also give you effectively a scratchpad to take ad-hoc notes throughout the call, for which AI enhances all the notes written with further context automatically:
You can even ask Granola questions mid-call, which uses full context of the call up to that point, or can even come up with contextual questions to ask to help the conversation flowing. It's really as if you have an active note taking assistant on the call alongside you, helping you keep the conversation flowing. That said, the questions you ask have to pertain to what is said on the call, it will not do outside research currently within the chat, likely to prevent from hallucinations which we have seen happen when comparing Granola vs Cluely for example, Cluely can search the web, but you lose the specific focus of the call and what was specifically said:
Granola has a freemium model, and somehow even though they have limits in-place, we've somehow managed to get away from even paying for it (even though we use it for everything). That said, we're going to pay for it for team features as it has become such a big help.
We make sure to always have Granola recording our meetings (even in-person team meetings and brainstorming meetings), even if we have one of the best AI note taker bots joining the call as well.
It's just a more lightweight solution that can't be kicked from calls and is less invasive, so it feels like a meeting without Granola, is a meeting that never actually happened (there's no excuse).
With how much AI LLMs are improving, we're learning that context is everything, and there's not more context than a recorder that has your entire team's meetings in memory. So while it's already impressive software, it feels like one that only just gets better the more you and your team use it.
No reason to not give it a try, everyone we know uses it and loves it. Just make sure to grab the Granola discount if you give it a shot (tied to your account for use later even if you just grab the free tier to start).
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Granola is a desktop app that is works on both MacOS and Windows. They do not currently have a web app.
Granola has an iOS app so you can record meetings on-the-go, with no release date for their Android app.
We've tracked and verified the above companies are using this software in their team's stack.
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