Efficient at Effortless Recording, Clear Summaries and Action Items, Search and Recall, Sharing and Collaboration, and User Experience
Granola is incredibly light-weight, runs in the background, and gives you perfect recollection of all your calls, only presenting itself when needed.
Cluely goes the direction of getting way too involved in what is being said, with an attempt to proactively research and suggest what to say, but it fails to deliver in the marketing promise.
Granola quietly records every meeting, internal, external, even in-person sessions, without needing a bot to join or anyone else to know. It acts as an always-on assistant, lets you ask questions mid-call using the full context so far, and becomes the go-to memory for your team. The workflow is seamless and non-intrusive, so you never risk missing key info or having your notes disappear if a bot gets kicked.
Cluely, meanwhile, takes a more active role in meetings by popping up with suggested questions and context-specific prompts as topics arise. Its standout move is proactively surfacing info in real time, but the experience doesn't feel as finished or reliable. The review calls out that its main advantage, preemptive prompts, isn't much different from just using a chat app like ChatGPT on the side. The feature set comes off as more about clever marketing than true workflow improvement, and it doesn't match the depth or polish of Granola.
If you want a meeting note taker that just works, stays out of the way, and guarantees you never lose the thread, Granola is the clear pick. Cluely's active prompting is interesting, but it lacks the reliability and smooth integration that makes Granola essential for teams relying on perfect meeting recall.
