Gong
vs
Granola

Gong vs Granola

A practical look at price, capture, notes, workflows, and what each product is actually good at.

The short answer

Which one fits better?

Best fit

Gong

Revenue forecasting, deal inspection, and rep coaching

Price

Custom quote: per-user licenses plus a platform fee

Pricing details

Gong does not publish a self-serve price. Its pricing page says cost combines a per-user license with a platform fee, and capabilities such as Forecast, Engage, Enable, and Data Cloud are organized as additional packages.

Free option: No self-serve free plan or free trial is advertised; request a demo and quote.

Good for

  • Sales analytics and forecasting
  • Enterprise coaching workflows

Watch for

  • Opaque pricing + platform fee
  • Follow-up tasks require Engage

Best fit

Granola

A calm personal notepad without saved recordings

Price

Free; Business $14/user/month; Enterprise from $35/user/month, billed monthly

Pricing details

Granola currently bills monthly rather than offering an annual discount. Basic is free but only the last 30 days of history remain accessible. Business adds unlimited history, advanced AI, integrations, MCP, API, billing, and user management. Enterprise adds SSO, retention, organization sharing/API controls, training defaults, and participant notifications. A workspace uses one tier and every active member of a paid workspace is a paid seat, although someone who only opens a shared note link does not need a seat.

Free option: Yes, with a rolling 30-day accessible history.

Good for

  • Writing notes as you meet
  • A polished final document

Watch for

  • Thin notes assume you attended
  • No auto-created, assigned action items

Side by side

The details that matter.

Ratings show documented breadth, not overall product quality. Open a row for specifics.

Capture options

GongBroad support
GranolaAvailable with limits

Gong

Meeting bot, native Zoom recording, telephony, and mobile capture

Gong captures supported web meetings, calls, and email. Eligible company-hosted Zoom calls can use Zoom-native recording with no Gong bot; other web-conferencing paths generally use the bot. Its mobile app records scheduled or ad-hoc face-to-face conversations.

EvidenceGong web-conferencing captureGong mobile recording

Granola

Manual bot-free desktop, phone, and Apple Watch capture

Granola listens locally without a bot and combines typed notes with the transcript. It does not currently offer an “always automatically start every meeting” setting.

EvidenceGranola transcriptionGranola feature requests

Desktop and mobile

GongAvailable with limits
GranolaBroad support

Gong

Web plus iOS and Android; sales workflows are cloud-first

Mobile apps support recording and review. Gong is primarily an enterprise web platform rather than a general-purpose botless desktop recorder; only its Zoom integration offers native provider recording without the Gong bot.

EvidenceGong web-conferencing captureGong mobile recording

Granola

macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, and Apple Watch

Desktop is the full experience. iOS and Android cover in-person conversations, and Apple Watch can start an in-person note with one tap and sync it to the phone and desktop apps. iPhone also supports outbound speakerphone calls but cannot capture another app’s audio; integrations and several workspace settings remain desktop-oriented.

EvidenceGranola iOSGranola Android launchGranola Apple Watch launchGranola transcription

In-person capture and speaker labels

GongAvailable with limits
GranolaBroad support

Gong

Mobile face-to-face audio recording

iOS and Android can capture scheduled or ad-hoc room meetings. Gong separates speakers, but same-room voices may appear as room-name Speaker 1, Speaker 2, and so on until someone edits them; noisy rooms can reduce quality.

EvidenceGong mobile recordingGong speaker identification

Granola

Phone, Apple Watch, and laptop room capture

The iPhone app handles in-person conversations, identifies up to ten speakers, and can place outbound speakerphone calls. Android and Apple Watch also capture in-person meetings, though their launch pages do not promise the same speaker-label behavior. Desktop does not diarize individual voices: its transcript uses Me and Them for microphone versus system audio. iPhone cannot transcribe another calling app running on the same phone.

EvidenceGranola iOSGranola Android launchGranola Apple Watch launchGranola transcription

Recordings, playback, and clips

GongBroad support
GranolaNot documented

Gong

Rich call playback, libraries, snippets, and coaching review

Recording review is a core Gong workflow, with synchronized transcript, comments, snippets, libraries, trackers, and manager coaching tools.

EvidenceGong plans and seatsGong data retention

Granola

No retained audio or video

Granola deliberately deletes audio after transcription. That is a privacy benefit for some teams and a hard limitation for anyone who needs playback, evidence, clips, or coaching review.

EvidenceGranola transcription

Notes, action items, and search

GongBroad support
GranolaBroad support

Gong

Sales summaries, next steps, account search, and conversation intelligence

Gong excels at finding deal moments, objections, topics, rep behaviors, and next steps. With Engage, recommended meeting follow-ups become due-dated to-dos that can be completed, dismissed, reviewed by managers, and acted on through email or calls. A recommendation can auto-dismiss after seven days if no other completion rule fires. The experience is optimized around customer and revenue questions rather than general company knowledge.

EvidenceGong plans and seatsGong recommended to-dosGong team to-do management

Granola

Concise attendee notes, extracted actions, and cross-meeting chat

Human notes influence the generated document, and paid plans support broad chat across meetings, folders, people, and companies. Our editorial judgment is that the output is polished but thin and assumes the reader attended, rather than documenting enough context to stand alone. Granola can extract owner- and deadline-aware action-item text with transcript citations, but it does not create and assign native tasks to users. Those actions remain note content rather than a workspace task system, and there is still no source recording for playback.

EvidenceGranola transcriptionGranola spaces and foldersGranola action-item extraction

People, companies, and context

GongBroad support
GranolaAvailable with limits

Gong

Deep account and deal history for GTM teams

Calls, meetings, and email roll into account and deal context. This is powerful for revenue work but is not positioned as a shared memory for every internal and external company conversation.

EvidenceGong plans and seats

Granola

People and company pages built from calendar contacts

Granola groups meetings around people and companies, with chat across those groups. Directory entries are inferred from calendar data and cannot be manually added, so imperfect associations can happen.

EvidenceGranola workspacesGranola spaces and folders

Automatic sharing and workspace defaults

GongAvailable with limits
GranolaNarrow or indirect

Gong

Permissioned call, snippet, and folder sharing

Calls and snippets can be shared internally or externally, and shared folders can grant access to every call they contain. Gong documents automatic capture rules, while post-meeting distribution centers on direct shares, folders, teams, accounts, and coaching libraries.

EvidenceGong call and folder sharing

Granola

Private by default; sharing starts with a note or folder

Notes are not auto-shared with attendees. A user shares a note or adds it to a team-space folder; recurring meetings can auto-add to a folder and new folder notes can auto-post to connected tools. Enterprise can enforce how links work across the workspace, but it still does not provide conditional rules that automatically distribute each matching meeting to the right internal people or teams.

EvidenceGranola workspacesGranola spaces and foldersGranola sharing controlsGranola note sharing

Automations

GongBroad support
GranolaNarrow or indirect

Gong

Purpose-built revenue workflows and engagement sequences

Gong automates CRM activity, deal signals, alerts, coaching, and sales engagement. Engage flows and AI-recommended to-dos centralize rep work and let managers inspect team queues. It is highly capable inside revenue operations, but this task system is package-gated and less open-ended for arbitrary company workflows.

EvidenceGong automation rulesGong recommended to-dosGong team to-do management

Granola

Folder and manual Zapier triggers; less of a native workflow canvas

Paid users can trigger Zapier when a note is added to a chosen folder or manually shared, then create tasks in Linear, Asana, Trello, Monday, and thousands of other apps. This is useful, but there is no automatic every-meeting trigger in the documented integration and Granola does not center conditional custom extraction and multi-action workflows in the product itself.

EvidenceGranola integrationsGranola spaces and foldersGranola Zapier

Integrations

GongBroad support
GranolaAvailable with limits

Gong

Deep CRM, calendar, conferencing, and sales-stack integrations

The integration strategy is strong where revenue teams live: CRMs, dialers, calendars, meeting platforms, and sales engagement systems.

EvidenceGong plans and seats

Granola

Notion, Slack, Attio, HubSpot, Affinity, Zapier, API, and MCP

The catalog is now credible, particularly on Business. Zapier can turn folder notes into tasks across 8,000+ apps, while the native catalog remains smaller and more destination-oriented than systems with broad action libraries.

EvidenceGranola integrationsGranola Zapier

API, MCP, CLI, and data portability

GongBroad support
GranolaAvailable with limits

Gong

Mature APIs, exports, data cloud, and a focused MCP server

Gong exposes calls, full speaker-segmented transcripts, users, CRM-linked objects, exports, and data-warehouse tables. Its 2026 MCP server supports personal or organization-wide authorization for ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and custom agents, but is read-only and limited to account/deal questions and generated briefs—not raw meeting retrieval. Those MCP tools and some AI APIs consume Gong credits. There is no documented first-party CLI.

EvidenceGong transcript APIGong API overviewGong MCP serverGong MCP setupGong AI creditsGong transcript downloadsGong media downloads

Granola

MCP and API on Business+; material export and scope limits

Personal API keys are beta on Business/Enterprise and can return transcripts for notes the key owner may access; Enterprise organization keys can cover Team-space notes. MCP also has a transcript tool, but uses OAuth, has no service-account key, and cannot directly access Team-space folders. Bulk CSV export excludes transcripts and admins cannot export every member’s notes, so programmatic access exists but workspace portability is not complete.

EvidenceGranola MCPGranola APIGranola data export

Security, privacy, and admin

GongBroad support
GranolaAvailable with limits

Gong

Mature enterprise administration and governance

Gong supports large deployments, granular access, SSO/SCIM, retention configuration, deletion, and compliance workflows. Standard retention is the shorter of three years or the customer term and data is deleted 30 days after the relationship ends; company-library calls sit outside the standard rule.

EvidenceGong plans and seatsGong data retention

Granola

User management on Business; retention and organization controls on Enterprise

SSO, retention, enforced sharing/API controls, participant notification, and organization training defaults require Enterprise; Granola documents SSO for organizations with at least 50 seats. There is no native password or MFA system—authentication delegates to Google, Microsoft, or Enterprise SSO. Notes and transcripts persist indefinitely unless deleted or covered by Enterprise retention, and admins do not get a one-click workspace export.

EvidenceGranola pricingGranola subscriptions and billingGranola security and data FAQ

Languages

GongBroad support
GranolaAvailable with limits

Gong

More than 70 languages; some AI features remain English-only

Gong documents more than 70 transcription languages plus AI translation. Email labels, red-flag alerts, Gong-recommended to-dos, and example-based smart trackers are still English-only, so global teams should verify the exact workflow rather than relying on the headline count.

EvidenceGong language support

Granola

Multilingual transcription

Granola supports multiple languages, but it does not publish the same 100+ headline count as several rivals. Test switching, accents, and domain vocabulary on real calls.

EvidenceGranola transcription

Worth a look

Circleback

If neither Gong nor Granola quite fits, Circleback covers a different job: capturing online and in-person meetings and sharing them by rule. It is built for people and AI agents, with the same full meeting data available through its API, MCP, and CLI.

Every meeting

Bot, botless desktop app, iPhone, Android, or Apple Watch. Speaker labels every time; recording optional.

Shared company memory

Detailed notes, automatic sharing, and people and company context across every team.

People and AI agents

Assigned actions and automations for people; the same full meeting data for agents through API, MCP, and CLI.

Sources

First-party pricing, product docs, help articles, and release notes.

Gong sources18 first-party references
  • Gong pricing

    Custom pricing structure, per-user licenses, platform fee, and package model.

  • Gong web-conferencing capture

    Bot capture across providers and native bot-free recording for eligible Zoom meetings.

  • Gong transcript API

    Documented call-transcript endpoint, pagination, filters, and authorization scope.

  • Gong API overview

    Calls, full transcripts, analyzed conversation data, users, activity, and CRM-linked API capabilities.

  • Gong MCP server

    Read-only account/deal questions and brief generation for external AI clients.

  • Gong MCP setup

    Paid-seat requirement, personal or shared authorization, OAuth setup, and official MCP endpoint.

  • Gong AI credits

    Shared annual credit pool and consumption behavior for MCP, AI APIs, and continuous AI processing.

  • Gong transcript downloads

    Per-call transcript download and synchronized transcript behavior.

  • Gong media downloads

    Permissioned audio, video, and snippet downloads on any Gong plan.

  • Gong plans and seats

    Foundation platform and Enable, Forecast, Engage, and Data Cloud packages.

  • Gong mobile recording

    iOS and Android in-person recording behavior and quality considerations.

  • Gong speaker identification

    Speaker separation, same-room generic labels, platform behavior, and optional voice identification.

  • Gong data retention

    Standard and custom retention behavior.

  • Gong language support

    More than 70 transcription languages, AI translation, and the AI capabilities that remain English-only.

  • Gong call and folder sharing

    Company permissions for external call sharing and internal shared folders.

  • Gong automation rules

    Plan availability, supported triggers and actions, and future-only rule application.

  • Gong recommended to-dos

    Engage eligibility, AI meeting follow-ups, source timestamps, due dates, completion rules, seven-day expiry, and language limits.

  • Gong team to-do management

    Personal and manager task views, filters, due dates, bulk completion, CRM context, and execution controls.

Granola sources18 first-party references
  • Granola pricing

    Basic, Business, and Enterprise prices and feature gates.

  • Granola subscriptions and billing

    30-day free history, workspace privacy, plan uniformity, and removal behavior.

  • Granola integrations

    Notion, Slack, CRM, Zapier, MCP, and API integrations.

  • Granola Zapier

    Paid-plan manual and folder triggers, note payload, workspace sharing, and task handoff across Zapier destinations.

  • Granola action-item extraction

    Automatic extraction of source-linked commitments, owners, and due dates from the transcript and human notes.

  • Granola workspaces

    Private-by-default notes and team-space collaboration behavior.

  • Granola sharing controls

    Personal link defaults and Enterprise-enforced workspace link restrictions.

  • Granola note sharing

    No attendee auto-sharing, note and integration sharing, and limited transcript visibility on public note links.

  • Granola spaces and folders

    Shared folders, recurring-meeting auto-add, and automatic posting to connected tools.

  • Granola feature requests

    Current product-request status, including automatic meeting start.

  • Granola iOS

    In-person/outbound calls and mobile limitations.

  • Granola Android launch

    Android in-person capture and cross-device note access.

  • Granola Apple Watch launch

    One-tap in-person capture, reminders, syncing, availability, and watchOS requirement.

  • Granola transcription

    Desktop “Me/Them” behavior, iPhone diarization, transcript copying, segment deletion, and lack of prerecorded-file support.

  • Granola data export

    Individual and bulk exports, CSV transcript omission, and the absence of workspace-wide admin export.

  • Granola MCP

    OAuth access, plan gates, transcript tool, 30-day Basic history, and Team-space folder limitation.

  • Granola API

    Personal beta keys, Enterprise keys, permitted-note scope, transcripts, and meeting data.

  • Granola security and data FAQ

    Model-improvement defaults, individual opt-out, and Enterprise organization-wide enforcement.

Questions people usually ask

Which is better: Gong or Granola?

Gong is a managed revenue system with recordings and analytics. Granola is a quiet personal notepad that keeps no source recording and asks the user to shape the note.

Which is less expensive, Gong or Granola?

Gong: Custom quote: per-user licenses plus a platform fee. Granola: Free; Business $14/user/month; Enterprise from $35/user/month, billed monthly. Compare the paid seats, included usage, recording access, and admin features you actually need.

Can Gong and Granola record without a bot?

Gong: Meeting bot, native Zoom recording, telephony, and mobile capture. Granola: Manual bot-free desktop, phone, and Apple Watch capture. The useful check is whether your required capture mode keeps video, a recording, and speaker names.

Which is better for a whole company?

First ask who gets each note automatically; otherwise useful context stays with the recorder. Then compare permissions, retention, and enforced defaults. Gong: Permissioned call, snippet, and folder sharing. Granola: Private by default; sharing starts with a note or folder.

Can I access and move the full meeting data?

Gong: Mature APIs, exports, data cloud, and a focused MCP server. Granola: MCP and API on Business+; material export and scope limits. Check the selected plan, authentication model, transcript scope, export format, and retention window for the workflow you need.

How was this comparison researched?

We use first-party pricing pages, product pages, help docs, and release notes for both products. The sources are linked below.