Published: April 2026 | 8 min read
AI meeting assistants have gone from novelty to standard operating procedure for most teams. Two tools consistently come up in the same breath: Granola and Fireflies.ai.
Both capture your meetings, generate notes, and let you search your conversation history. But they're built on fundamentally different assumptions about how people work — and which one is right for you depends on what your team actually needs.
This is an honest comparison. Granola is genuinely good. But good for one use case doesn't mean good for yours.
How They Actually Work (This Matters More Than It Sounds)
Granola is a desktop app that records audio directly from your computer. No bot joins the meeting. No one else in the call sees a notetaker. You can jot rough notes while you talk, and after the meeting, Granola's AI expands and structures them.
Fireflies gives you both options. By default, Fred joins your meeting as a participant — capturing everything in real time, accessible across any browser, mobile app, or the Fireflies Desktop App. But if you'd rather not have a bot visible in your meetings, the Fireflies Desktop App records audio locally from your computer — no bot, no meeting participant, same intelligence. Notes still sync to your full Fireflies workspace so your team gets everything: transcripts, search, analytics, CRM integrations. The botless experience, with the full platform behind it.
This isn't a minor technical distinction. It shapes everything: which meetings get captured, who can access notes, what the AI can do with the data, and how much the tool costs to run across a whole team.
Platform and Device Coverage
Granola runs on Mac and Windows, and recently launched an iPhone app. It records what's playing through your computer's audio — which means it works for whatever platform you're already in: Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, whatever.
The catch for teams is different from what you might expect. Granola captures everyone's audio from one person's machine - so you don't need every participant running it to get a full transcript. The real limitation is around team-wide access: notes are private by default to the person who recorded. Granola's Spaces feature (launched with their Series C) adds shared team workspaces, but it's new and still building out. Fireflies has had team channels, shared notes, and manager-level visibility into team calls for years.
The Fireflies Desktop App works the same way as Granola - it records locally from your computer, no bot joins the call. The difference is what comes with it. The Desktop App connects to your full Fireflies workspace: team channels, CRM integrations, conversation analytics, AskFred, AI Skills, and 90+ integrations. Botless recording, with the full platform behind it.
Fireflies also offers a meeting bot for teams who want automatic capture across every calendar invite without anyone running a desktop app. You can use both together.
Note Quality and AI Intelligence
Both tools produce solid meeting notes. The difference is in what they do with them.
Granola's notes are clean and readable. The hybrid approach - where your rough notes during the meeting get expanded by AI - produces output that feels more intentional than a pure auto-summary. Granola also introduced Recipes: reusable templates you can apply to specific meeting types. A user interview template. A 1:1 format. A sales discovery structure. Good for individuals who run the same meeting types repeatedly.
Fireflies produces full transcripts with speaker-by-speaker attribution, auto-generated summaries, and action items. Granola lets you search your own meeting history with AI - and it works well for personal recall.
Where AskFred goes further: it searches across your meetings and the live web simultaneously, so you can ask questions that combine what was said in your calls with current external information. You can also search across your entire team's meeting history, not just your own - which matters for sales teams tracking accounts or managers reviewing what their reps discussed.
For an individual who wants clean notes on their own meetings: Granola holds its own. For a team that wants to mine their conversation data: Fireflies has significantly more to offer.
Conversation Intelligence
This is where the gap opens up.
Granola doesn't offer conversation intelligence. There's no talk-time analysis, no speaker balance metrics, no sentiment analysis, no call scoring. It's focused on note quality, not performance insights.
Fireflies was built from the ground up as a conversation intelligence platform. Talk-time ratios, filler word frequency, sentiment by speaker, question rates - all of it shows up in the analytics layer. For sales managers running pipeline reviews, this isn't a nice-to-have. It's the data that tells you why deals stall, who's dominating calls, and which reps actually follow the playbook.
If you're evaluating Fireflies because your team needs to get better at selling, recruiting, or running discovery calls - Granola isn't in that conversation.
Real-Time Features During Meetings
Granola does its work after the meeting. Notes are generated once the call ends.
Fireflies has two products that operate during the meeting:
Live Assist surfaces a real-time panel with context, summaries, and suggested responses while the meeting is running. No switching tabs, no lag.
Sales Assist pulls answers from your knowledge base mid-call so reps can respond to pricing questions, compliance objections, or competitor comparisons without putting someone on hold.
"Most tools react after the fact. Live Assist helps you in the moment — when decisions are being made and words actually matter." — Krish Ramineni, CEO, Fireflies.ai
If your use case is "better notes after meetings," both tools do that. If it's "better performance during meetings," only one of them is in the room.
Team and Collaboration Features
Granola introduced Spaces in its Series C launch - team workspaces where folders can be shared, notes pooled, and access controlled. The UI executes it cleanly. Folders auto-suggest relevant names, you can drop external files alongside meeting notes, and everything is queryable with AI.
Fireflies has had team workspaces and collaborative meeting notes for years. Channels let teams organise meetings by project, client, or department. Notes can be shared, commented on, and tagged. The collaboration layer is connected to the intelligence layer - a manager can look at their team's calls in one view, pull coaching insights, and act on them.
Both tools now offer team workspaces. The difference is what you can do once you're inside them.
Integrations
Granola connects to Slack, Notion, HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, and Zapier. It also launched API access and MCP integrations with Claude, ChatGPT, Replit, Lovable, Figma, and others. For technical users and developers who want to pipe meeting context into AI workflows, this is genuinely useful.
Fireflies connects to 90+ tools, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho, Notion, Slack, Google Drive, Dropbox, and more. The CRM integrations are deeper — Autofill CRM can push structured contact data, action items, and deal notes directly into your pipeline without manual entry.
Both tools now have MCP integrations. Granola's MCP connects to Claude, ChatGPT, Replit, Lovable, and Figma - useful for individual developers building personal AI workflows. Fireflies' MCP is focused on team and enterprise use cases, alongside 90+ native connectors. For personal AI automation, both are comparable. For revenue-critical integrations - Salesforce, HubSpot, pipeline sync, CRM autofill - Fireflies has more depth.
Compliance and Security
Granola Enterprise ($35/user/month) includes SSO, model training opt-out, admin controls, and org-wide sharing policies.
Fireflies supports HIPAA-compliant plans with BAA agreements — a requirement for healthcare, legal, and regulated industries. If your industry mandates HIPAA or you need a BAA as part of a vendor agreement, verify Granola's current compliance posture directly before making a decision. This is one area where getting it wrong has real consequences.
Pricing
| Plan | Granola | Fireflies |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Unlimited meetings | 800 min storage, limited AI |
| Individual | $18/user/mo | $18/user/mo (Pro) |
| Team | $14/user/mo | $29/user/mo (Business) |
| Enterprise | $35/user/mo | Custom |
Granola's free plan is now unlimited meetings - a significant move that makes it genuinely competitive for individual users who don't need team features. At the team tier, Granola is still cheaper ($14/user vs $29/user for Fireflies Business).
Fireflies Business includes features that don't have an equivalent in Granola at that tier: conversation analytics, CRM integrations, AI Skills, team dashboards, and higher storage limits. Whether that price difference is justified depends on what your team actually uses.
Who Should Choose Granola
Granola is the right call if:
- You work solo or in a small team where everyone runs the app themselves
- You care about UI cleanliness and a calm, minimal experience
- You prefer no bot in meetings and don't need a full team platform
- Your workflow is primarily Mac-based and you're already in the Claude or AI dev tool ecosystem
- You don't need CRM integrations, call analytics, or real-time meeting features
- Budget is a priority and you want team notes at the lowest per-seat cost
Who Should Choose Fireflies
Fireflies is the right call if:
- You need to capture meetings across a whole team without requiring everyone to install a local app — or you want botless local recording that still syncs to your full workspace
- You run phone calls, uploaded recordings, or meetings that happen outside Zoom, Meet, or Teams
- You need conversation intelligence: talk time, sentiment, call scoring, coaching data
- Your sales team needs CRM sync, pipeline notes, or mid-call support
- You're in a regulated industry that requires HIPAA compliance or BAA agreements
- You want 200+ AI Skills and automations that go beyond note-taking
- You need real-time features during meetings, not just summaries after
The Bottom Line
Granola made a smart bet: start with individuals who care deeply about note quality and UI, build a reputation, then grow into teams and enterprise. That strategy reached a $1.5B valuation for a reason. The product is polished and people genuinely love it.
Fireflies made a different bet: be the platform for teams that need conversation intelligence, not just notes. Over 800,000 organisations use Fireflies because meetings themselves are data — and the value isn't in a cleaner summary, it's in what you can learn and automate from thousands of hours of conversation.
Both bets are defensible. For individuals who want the best notes for their own meetings, Granola is worth a look. For teams that want to get more out of every conversation — and turn those conversations into action — Fireflies is the platform built for that.
And if the "no bot" thing was the reason you were leaning toward Granola: the Fireflies Desktop App is available today. Local recording, no bot, full platform. You don't have to choose.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Granola better than Fireflies?
It depends on your use case. Granola is better for individuals who want clean, minimal notes from their own meetings without a bot joining the call. Fireflies is better for teams that need conversation intelligence, CRM integration, cross-meeting search, and real-time meeting features. For botless recording with full team capabilities, the Fireflies Desktop App offers the same no-bot experience as Granola while keeping everything connected to your workspace.
Does Fireflies have a no-bot option?
Yes. The Fireflies Desktop App records audio locally from your Mac or Windows computer — no bot joins the call, no participant icon appears in the meeting. Transcripts and summaries still sync to your full Fireflies workspace. It's available today on Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans.
How does Granola pricing compare to Fireflies?
Granola's Team plan is $14/user/month. Fireflies Business is $29/user/month. Both individual plans are $18/user/month. Granola is cheaper at the team tier; Fireflies includes conversation analytics, CRM integrations, and AI Skills that Granola doesn't offer at any price tier.
Does Fireflies support HIPAA compliance?
Yes. Fireflies offers HIPAA-compliant plans with BAA agreements for healthcare, legal, and regulated industries. Verify Granola's current HIPAA posture directly with their team before making a compliance-sensitive decision.
Can Fireflies record Slack huddles?
Yes. The Fireflies Desktop App captures any audio playing on your computer, including Slack huddles, which don't support meeting bots. It also captures WhatsApp calls, FaceTime, podcasts, and any other audio playing on your Mac or Windows computer.
RELATED READING
- Fireflies vs Otter.ai: Which AI Notetaker Is Better for Teams?
- How Conversation Intelligence Improves Sales Win Rates
- The Fireflies Desktop App: Record Any Meeting Without a Bot