Granola vs Otter: Which AI Notetaker Fits How You Meet?

Hannah and Diego typed Granola vs Otter into a search bar on the same Monday. (Both are composites, not real people.)

Hannah is a product manager at a software company. She spends six hours a day on Zoom and Google Meet from her laptop, and she's tired of a bot showing up in the participant list of every customer call. Diego sells packaging equipment. His meetings happen in plant offices and on loading docks, half of them in Spanish, and his laptop stays in the car.

They're asking the same question, but they need different answers. Granola and Otter are both AI notetakers, both write a summary when the meeting ends, and both have a free plan. They differ in how they get into your meeting, what they keep afterwards, and what they charge for.

This comparison uses each vendor's own pages, checked on October 15, 2026: prices side by side, how each one captures a meeting, what each plan limits, year-one cost and a quick way to choose.

A disclosure: ParrotNotes publishes this blog and appears in one section near the end, for meetings that happen in a room or move between languages. If that sounds like Diego's week, you can try ParrotNotes free at your next customer visit.

Granola vs Otter at a glance

Granola is the better pick if you live on video calls from a laptop, want no bot in the room and don't need a recording to replay. Otter is the better pick if you want a live transcript, saved audio, a calendar bot that joins for you, or the cheapest paid seat for a small team. Granola Business is $14 a user a month; Otter Pro is $8.33 a user a month billed annually, or $16.99 monthly.

Sources: granola.ai/pricing, Granola's help center, otter.ai/pricing and otter.ai, all read on October 15, 2026.

Granola vs Otter pricing, side by side

Both price in USD, per user. Otter discounts annual billing; Granola's page shows one monthly price per plan.

Prices from granola.ai/pricing and otter.ai/pricing, checked October 15, 2026. Our Granola AI pricing and Otter AI pricing guides cover every plan in more depth.

One note on Otter's page. On October 15 it showed a "save 50%" promotion on Pro ($8.49 monthly, $4.17 billed annually) and a "20% off for 3 months" code on Business monthly. Promotions come and go, so this article uses the standard prices.

How each one captures a meeting

This is the real difference between the two, and it decides more than the price does.

Granola: a notepad on your laptop

Granola runs as an app on your Mac or Windows computer. Its transcription article says it "uses your system audio to capture transcription", alongside your microphone, so it hears both sides of a Zoom, Meet or Teams call without anyone joining. Nobody on the call sees a notetaker in the participant list.

You type rough notes while it listens, and Granola fills them out afterwards. Two details matter. First, it "does not record or save audio or video at any point during the call", so there's no recording to go back to. Second, it stops transcribing "when 15 minutes passes without any new audio being detected", or when it detects the call has ended.

Speaker names come from Zoom, Google Meet and Teams; otherwise the transcript shows "Me" and "Them".

Otter: a bot that joins for you, or an app that doesn't

Otter's homepage offers two routes. Connect your calendar and Otter's AI Meeting Agent will "automatically join all your Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet meetings", which means a notetaker appears in the call. Or use "A desktop app for bot-free meetings" to "Record conversations directly from your Mac or Windows desktop, without bots joining the call."

Otter also promises "Live transcription in multiple languages, and speaker recognition", so you can read along during the meeting. And it keeps the audio: its conversation page overview describes playback controls so you can play the recording while following along in the transcript, which helps when you want to check a quote before you send it.

On the phone

Both have iOS and Android apps. They do different jobs from the desktop.

Granola's mobile guide describes its phone app as a way to "take AI-enhanced notes during in-person meetings", and on iPhone, outbound calls made through Granola's own dialer. It's also clear about the limits: "Phones don't let apps capture audio from other apps, so Granola can't transcribe virtual meeting calls on mobile." "Granola Chat is currently available on iPhone only," and "Sharing to Notion, Slack, HubSpot, and other integrations requires the desktop app."

Otter's apps record in-person conversations too, and the plan meters below apply to phone recordings the same way they apply to calls.

In short: Granola is a laptop notepad with a phone companion. Otter is a recorder and calendar bot that works wherever you open it.

What each plan limits

Otter limits time

Every Otter plan below Business has a monthly minute pool: 300 minutes on Basic and 1,200 on Pro, per user. Each plan also caps one conversation: 30 minutes on Basic, 90 on Pro, 4 hours on Business and Enterprise. A 45-minute customer call on Basic keeps only its first 30 minutes of transcript.

Business removes the monthly cap for meetings and in-app recordings. Basic also keeps only your 25 most recent conversations; Pro makes history unlimited.

Seats matter too. Pro holds 5 billed users, Business 25.

Granola limits history

Granola's pricing page lists no minute pool, no meeting count and no length cap on any plan. What Basic limits is time in the other direction: 30 days of meeting history. Our Granola pricing guide found in its help center that older notes are stored, not deleted, and come back when you upgrade.

Business ($14) removes the 30-day window and adds pre-meeting briefs, follow-up emails, model selection in chat, API access and integrations with Notion, Zapier, HubSpot, Attio and Affinity. Enterprise ($35) adds single sign-on, Salesforce and admin controls.

In short: with Otter you watch the clock; with Granola you watch the calendar.

Languages, AI chat and integrations

Languages

This is one of the widest gaps. Otter's pricing page lists six transcription languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese.

Granola's multi-language article says it "supports 31 languages on desktop (macOS and Windows) and 17 languages on mobile (iOS and Android)". On desktop you can switch languages during one meeting; on the phone, Granola picks one language for the whole meeting. It has no built-in translation, though you can ask the chat to translate quotes from the transcript.

AI chat

Both let you ask questions about your meetings. Otter caps AI Chat by plan: 20 queries a month on Basic (3 per conversation), 50 on Pro and 200 on Business. Granola doesn't cap chat on its pricing page; Basic runs on an automatically chosen model ("Auto only"), and Business adds model selection.

Integrations

Otter Pro connects to Salesforce, HubSpot and Zapier, which the page says are "subject to user limits", and Business syncs CRM notes for more users. Granola puts Slack on Basic, the bigger list on Business, and Salesforce on Enterprise.

For a fuller look at either tool on its own, read our Granola AI review and our Otter AI review.

What Granola and Otter cost in year one

Here are three buyer shapes, priced at the standard rates on October 15, 2026. Each row names the limit that bites first.

Computed from granola.ai/pricing and otter.ai/pricing on October 15, 2026: Granola Business $14 × 12 = $168 per user; Otter Pro annual $8.33 × 12 = $99.96; Otter Pro monthly $16.99 × 12 = $203.88; Otter Business annual $19.99 × 12 = $239.88.

The pattern: for a small team on short calls, Otter Pro billed annually is cheaper. Once the team passes five people or meetings run past 90 minutes, Granola Business costs less.

Rachel's answer (she's a composite): she manages five account executives who run 40-minute discovery calls on Zoom. Otter Pro billed annually comes to $499.80 for the year against $840 for Granola Business, and her reps want saved audio so they can replay what a buyer said about budget. She picks Otter Pro, and puts a reminder in her calendar for the day she hires a sixth rep.

Which fits how you meet?

The cost table assumes every meeting has a link. Before you pick, sort last week's meetings into the rows below.

If you meet in person or across languages: ParrotNotes

Granola and Otter are both built around the laptop and the calendar invite. Diego's week doesn't have many of either. His meetings are in plant offices, the maintenance manager switches between Spanish and English mid-sentence, and he wants the notes and a follow-up email done before he leaves the parking lot.

That's the job ParrotNotes is built for. Open the app on the phone you already carry, tap record and set it on the table. When you stop, you get a transcript, a summary, the action items and a drafted follow-up email. Recording works offline; transcription and the AI run once you're back on a connection.

Granola and Otter facts from their pricing pages, Otter's homepage and Granola's help center on October 15, 2026; ParrotNotes facts from parrotnotes.app/pricing.

ParrotNotes Free gives you 100 minutes of recording a month, an AI summary on every recording, and 5 AI-powered recordings a month with insights, action items, sales frameworks and chat. ParrotNotes Pro is $19.99 a month, or $14.99 a month billed annually, with 3,000 minutes a month, recordings up to 3 hours, every AI feature on every recording, multilingual transcription and translation in 99+ languages, speaker identification and AI search across your notes. It runs on iOS, Android and macOS.

Diego records three visits a day at about 30 minutes each: roughly 1,800 minutes a month, well inside Pro's 3,000. You can keep Granola or Otter for video calls and use ParrotNotes for the room. If you'd like the direct match-up, our ParrotNotes vs Granola comparison goes through it situation by situation.

Whichever app you use, ask before you record. Some US states require everyone's consent; our guide to one-party consent states lists them.

Meeting in person this week? Download ParrotNotes free and record your next customer visit.

The verdict on Granola vs Otter

Choose Granola if your meetings are video calls on a laptop, you never want a bot in the participant list, you work in more than six languages, or your team is growing past five. Business at $14 a user a month has no minute meter or length cap listed.

Choose Otter if you want a live transcript, audio you can replay, a calendar bot that attends for you, or the cheapest paid seat for a team of up to five on short calls. Pro is $8.33 a user a month billed annually.

Check both pricing pages on the day you buy, because prices and promotions move.

And if your most important conversations happen across a table, not on a screen, download ParrotNotes free. You get an AI summary on every recording, 99+ languages on Pro, and no bot to admit, on the phone you already carry.