Granola is the AI notepad that takes meeting notes without ever joining your call as a bot. Its free plan gives you a real, usable workflow — here is how to set it up and get clean notes and action items out of every meeting.
What makes Granola different
Most AI meeting tools work by sending a bot into your Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams call. Everyone sees "AI Notetaker has joined," the vibe changes, and clients sometimes ask you to remove it.
Granola skips all of that. It is a desktop app that listens through your Mac's own audio — your microphone plus the system audio coming from your speakers — so it captures the conversation without appearing in the meeting at all. During the call it looks like a plain notes app: you type the way you normally would, and when the meeting ends Granola merges your typed notes with the full transcript into a polished summary.
That blend is the product's core idea. Raw AI transcripts are messy; your typed notes carry judgment about what mattered. Granola combines both.
What's actually free (and what isn't)
Granola runs on a freemium model. The free tier is generous enough for light users and for properly evaluating the tool:
- 25 free meetings per account, lifetime — not per month. Once you burn through all 25, you need a paid plan to record more.
- Enhance Notes — the one-click feature that turns your rough in-meeting notes into a clean summary, included.
- AI chat across all your meeting notes — ask questions about what was said, included.
- Custom note templates — on recent free plans, you can build your own templates; at minimum the built-in ones are included.
- Limited history — you can only open notes from recent meetings. Older notes get locked behind a paid plan, so export anything you need to keep.
The paid ladder, as listed on Granola's pricing page: Business at $14 per user per month adds unlimited meetings and unlimited history plus integrations with Notion, Slack, HubSpot, Attio, and Zapier. Enterprise starts around $35 per user per month and adds SSO, admin controls, and org-wide settings.
With 25 lifetime meetings on the free plan, the strategy is simple: use them on real meetings, learn the workflow, and decide whether it is worth paying for before you run out.
Step 1 — Install and connect your calendar
1. Go to granola.ai and download the desktop app. As of 2026, Granola is Mac-only — there is no Windows version and no mobile app. If you are on Windows, Otter.ai or Fireflies.ai are the closest alternatives.
2. Sign up and grant the permissions it asks for: calendar access, microphone, and system audio recording. Calendar access matters — Granola uses your calendar to detect which meeting is starting and attach notes to it automatically.
3. Open the app before your first call and confirm it sees your upcoming meetings in the sidebar. If a meeting is missing, add it manually with the "Add meeting" option.
Without calendar access, Granola cannot auto-attach notes to the right event, so this step is what makes the rest of the workflow automatic.
Step 2 — Pick or build a note template
Templates decide what your final notes look like. Open the templates section and start with a built-in one that matches your most common meeting type:
- Sales calls: look for a template with sections for needs, objections, decision-makers, and next steps.
- 1:1s and team syncs: a simple template with updates, blockers, and action items works best.
- Interviews: a template with sections per question and a scoring area.
Then customize it. On the free plan you can create custom templates, so build one that matches how you actually follow up. A good template has no more than four or five sections — anything longer and the AI pads it with filler. Name it clearly, for example "Client call" or "Weekly standup," and set it as the default for that meeting type.
Step 3 — Run it during a meeting
When a call starts, Granola detects it from your calendar and begins capturing audio in the background. What you do during the call matters more than anything else:
- Type the way you always type. Jot down names, numbers, commitments, and your own reactions. Do not try to transcribe — that is Granola's job.
- Mark the moments that matter. If someone agrees to a deadline or states a price, type it exactly as said. These become anchors the AI uses when building the summary.
- Keep it visible. Because Granola is a notes app on your screen, not a bot in the call, nobody is disrupted — but that also means you should disclose that you are taking AI-assisted notes on calls where it matters. Consent rules vary by company and region, and a bot-free recorder is still a recorder.
One thing to know: Granola processes audio when the meeting ends rather than showing live transcription during the call. Your in-meeting screen is just your typed notes.
Step 4 — Let AI turn raw notes into the final summary
When the call ends, Granola combines the transcript with what you typed and produces enhanced notes in your chosen template. Open the meeting and review what it generated:
- Read the action items first. Check every owner and deadline against your memory of the call. AI summaries are readable, but a wrong action item creates real friction — names, numbers, and commitments are the three things to verify every time.
- Use Enhance Notes. If your template did not apply automatically, run the enhancement on your raw notes. The AI restructures your fragments into full sentences under your template's headings.
- Fix tone before sharing. If the summary will go to a client, read it once as the recipient. AI-written follow-ups can sound flatter than you intend.
This verification habit is the difference between people who trust their meeting notes and people who get burned by them. It takes two minutes and it is the most important step in this guide.
Step 5 — Ask questions across your meetings
This is the feature that justifies Granola over a plain recorder. The AI chat works across all your stored meetings, not just one:
- "What did we agree on the launch date across my calls with the client this month?"
- "Summarize every objection raised in my last five sales calls."
- "What commitments did I make to my manager this week?"
It also builds People and Companies profiles from your meetings — open a contact and see every commitment and decision associated with them. For sales reps and consultants doing high-volume pipeline calls, this turns scattered conversations into a searchable memory.
On the free plan this works for the meetings within your accessible history window. Older notes lock when history expires, so run your cross-meeting queries while the notes are still open to you.
Step 6 — Share and export
Before your free history runs out, decide where your notes should live permanently:
1. Export important meetings as soon as they matter — copy the enhanced notes into Notion, Google Docs, or wherever your team keeps records.
2. Share selectively. Granola lets you share individual meeting notes via link. Share the client summary with the client, not the raw version with your private asides.
3. Set up integrations when you upgrade. On the Business plan, native integrations push notes to Slack, Notion, HubSpot, and CRM tools automatically. On free, the workflow is manual — keep a simple habit like a weekly export of the week's key meetings.
Honest limitations
- Mac-only. No Windows, no mobile app. This alone rules it out for many teams.
- 25 lifetime meetings on free. It is a trial shaped like a plan. Pace yourself and export as you go.
- No audio or video playback. Granola keeps no recording you can replay, so you cannot double-check a disputed figure by listening back. For calls where a number drives a decision, use a tool that keeps the recording.
- AI training is on by default on lower-tier plans, meaning your meeting data can be used to train their models unless you opt out. You can opt out in settings — do it during setup, not later.
- Garbage in, garbage out. If the call is chaotic and you type nothing, the summary will be clean-sounding chaos. It cannot create a decision nobody made.