# Granola vs Otter: pricing, features, and which is better

> Granola and Otter.ai compared across pricing, capture, speaker labels, recordings, notes, sharing, automations, integrations, AI-agent access, and administration.

- Canonical HTML: https://circleback.ai/compare/granola-vs-otter-ai
- Structured JSON: https://circleback.ai/compare/granola-vs-otter-ai.json
- Comparison directory: https://circleback.ai/compare
- Language: en-US
- Editorial perspective: Neutral competitor comparison. Circleback appears only as a clearly labeled third option.

## Short answer

Granola turns a few human notes into a polished document and deletes the audio. Otter prioritizes live transcription, phone capture, playback, and a searchable transcript history.

The useful buying test is to run both products on the same external call, internal planning session, and noisy in-person meeting. Compare the result, the sharing defaults, and the work that still has to happen by hand.

## Granola at a glance

Granola is intentionally calm: no meeting bot, no recording library, and a polished collaborative notepad. It now has Windows, iOS, Android, Apple Watch, integrations, an API, and MCP—so the old “Mac-only solo app” framing is wrong—but it remains a personal, document-first layer rather than an automatic company-wide meeting system.

**Best for:** People and small teams who actively take lightweight notes during calls and want AI to expand them into polished documents without saving audio or video.

**Less ideal for:** Companies that need recordings and clips, automatic capture, consistent named-speaker transcripts across every device, workspace-enforced sharing, bulk transcript export, service-account agent access, or operational automations across every function.

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

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.

### Granola strengths

- A calm bot-free experience that combines human notes with AI-generated structure.
- No durable source recording: audio is processed for transcription and then deleted, which some privacy-sensitive teams prefer.
- Windows, iOS, Android, Apple Watch, person/company pages, cross-meeting chat, integrations, API, and MCP make it much more capable than early reviews imply.
- Granola can extract source-linked action-item text with owner and date labels, and paid users can route note output into task systems through Zapier.

### Granola tradeoffs

- No replayable audio/video, timestamped moments, or clips after processing.
- Android and Apple Watch now cover in-person capture, but their launch pages do not document the same multi-speaker labeling that Granola explicitly documents for iPhone. iPhone also cannot capture audio from another calling app; integrations and several settings remain desktop-oriented.
- Automatic start for all meetings is still under consideration. Transcript segments can now be copied and redacted, which corrects an older product limitation.
- Bulk CSV export omits transcripts, and admins cannot export the entire workspace; each person exports only their own notes.
- MCP is OAuth-only, has no service-account/API-key path, and cannot directly access Team-space folders. Users must move a note to My Notes and share it explicitly, which changes its default visibility.
- Free and Business accounts permit anonymized customer data to be used for Granola model improvements by default unless users opt out. An administrator-enforced organization-wide opt-out is an Enterprise feature.
- Notes and transcripts are retained indefinitely by default. Configurable transcript retention is Enterprise-only; SSO is also Enterprise-only and documented for organizations with at least 50 seats.
- Granola deliberately aims for a concise collaborative document. In our editorial judgment, the result is often too thin for a coworker who was not in the meeting and needs the notes to stand alone.
- Granola can extract owner and date text into a note, but it does not automatically create and assign native action items to users. Actions remain note content unless a team builds a Zapier handoff; there is no workspace-wide task board with assignees, status, due dates, and completion tracking.

### Choose Granola when

- You want a notepad first and do not want to retain source recordings.
- Your users are on Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android, or Apple Watch and are happy to start notes themselves.
- The quality and feel of the final note matters more than a large automation and media system.

## Otter.ai at a glance

Otter remains one of the easiest names to recognize in live transcription. It now offers meeting agents, automatically assigned action items, workflows, cross-meeting chat, desktop/mobile apps, two-way AI Chat connectors, MCP, and CRM connections, while minute caps and enterprise-only video/API features shape the real value.

**Best for:** Students, individuals, and teams that prioritize live text, simple mobile capture, an inexpensive Pro plan, and a familiar transcript-first experience.

**Less ideal for:** Teams needing broad multilingual support, video replay on ordinary plans, unlimited usage without caveats, deep operational automations, or mature whole-company context.

**Price:** Free; Pro from $8.33/user/month annually

Basic includes 300 transcription minutes per month, a 30-minute cap per conversation, three lifetime file imports, and access to the 25 most recent conversations. Paid prices are per user/month: Pro is $8.33 with annual billing or $16.99 month-to-month, with 1,200 in-app minutes, 90-minute meetings, and ten monthly imports; Business is $19.99 or $30 and adds unlimited in-app meetings, four-hour meetings, and more administration. Enterprise is custom and gates API/webhooks, video replay, SSO/SCIM, and some compliance options.

**Free option:** Yes: 300 minutes per month, 30 minutes per conversation, three lifetime imports, and a 25-conversation visible history.

### Otter.ai strengths

- Polished live transcript, speaker identification, mobile apps, playback, and cross-meeting chat.
- The macOS and Windows desktop app can detect Zoom, Teams, Meet, and other browser calls, then either prompt or begin bot-free recording automatically.
- A useful free plan and inexpensive Pro entry point for lower-volume users.
- Meeting agents and custom workflows broaden it beyond simple transcription, while MCP makes notes available to AI tools.
- Otter automatically assigns detected action items and gives each person a cross-meeting list for editing, reassignment, source lookup, and completion.
- Conversations can be exported individually in TXT, DOCX, PDF, SRT, and MP3; Business adds bulk export and Enterprise adds granular media/transcript retention controls.

### Otter.ai tradeoffs

- Basic and Pro have monthly minute, per-meeting, and import limits that matter for meeting-heavy professionals; Basic only exposes the 25 most recent conversations.
- Video replay is an Enterprise feature and is limited to supported Zoom and Google Meet recordings.
- API/webhooks, SSO/SCIM, and HIPAA options are Enterprise-gated.
- Transcription covers six languages; German and Simplified Chinese are beta, and only French can switch automatically with English in the same conversation.
- AI Chat connectors work only in Advanced mode and vary by plan. Outlook email actions remain unsupported, the mobile app still uses the older AI Chat experience, and several Enterprise exports or integrations need account-manager setup.
- The global action-item view is personal rather than manager-wide: users can see tasks assigned to themselves, but not a workspace-wide board of everyone’s work.
- On ordinary plans, Otter says it trains proprietary models on de-identified audio and transcripts. Enterprise workspaces are opted out by default; third-party AI providers are prohibited from training on customer data.

### Choose Otter.ai when

- Live transcription and easy mobile capture matter more than retaining video.
- Your usage fits comfortably inside the free or Pro minute limits.
- You want an established transcript-first product with lightweight workflows and agent access.

## Feature comparison

| What matters | Granola | Otter.ai |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capture options | Available with limits — 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. | Broad support — Meeting agent or automatic bot-free desktop capture, plus mobile. Otter can join major meeting platforms, capture from its apps, and show text live. Its desktop app can detect Zoom, Teams, Meet, and other browser calls from microphone activity, then stay off, prompt the user, or start recording automatically for each meeting type. Scheduling and limits depend on the chosen plan. |
| Desktop and mobile | Broad support — 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. | Broad support — Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. Broad app coverage makes Otter easy to use in virtual or room conversations. The desktop app now supports configurable automatic recording for detected calls. Feature parity and allowances differ between in-app and imported usage. |
| In-person capture and speaker labels | Broad support — 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. | Broad support — Strong mobile live transcription. iOS and Android are mature room-recording tools with live text. Otter separates voices after processing and can learn previously tagged speakers, but new or uncertain voices remain Speaker 1 or Unknown until tagged. Live platform-name labels are a separate Notetaker behavior, strongest on Zoom. |
| Recordings, playback, and clips | Not documented — 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. | Available with limits — Audio playback broadly; video replay on Enterprise. Audio is synchronized to text on ordinary plans. Video replay requires Enterprise and currently applies to supported Zoom and Google Meet recordings rather than every capture path. |
| Notes, action items, and search | Broad support — 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. | Broad support — Live transcript, search, and automatically assigned action items. Otter’s transcript experience is mature. It automatically detects and assigns action items, links generated work back to transcript evidence, and gives each user a cross-meeting list with edit, reassign, and completion controls. That list only shows work assigned to the signed-in person, rather than a workspace-wide manager view. Allowances and advanced custom workflows vary by plan. |
| People, companies, and context | Available with limits — 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. | Available with limits — Cross-meeting search and chat. Otter can answer across conversations, but does not emphasize full relationship pages combining meetings, email, calendar, people, companies, and future events. |
| Automatic sharing and workspace defaults | Narrow or indirect — 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. | Available with limits — User auto-share and Enterprise workspace defaults. Individuals can auto-share by calendar audience and use channels. Enterprise admins can choose the options members see and set a default, but ordinary audience defaults are not fully locked; admins can only force privacy by leaving “Don’t share” as the sole option. External auto-share channels are also Enterprise-only. |
| Automations | Narrow or indirect — 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. | Available with limits — Meeting agents and custom workflows, with plan differences. Otter automatically detects and assigns action items, tracks each person’s work across meetings, can create Jira issues with assignees and due dates, and uses custom workflows, Zapier, and AI Chat actions for role-specific output and downstream work. The personal action view does not give a manager one board for every assignee, and connector or workflow eligibility varies by plan. |
| Integrations | Available with limits — 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. | Broad support — Meeting platforms, CRM, Zapier, Slack, Jira, work-app connectors, and Enterprise exports. Paid plans connect Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zapier. AI Chat’s Advanced mode can read and act in Gmail, Google Drive, Notion, and Jira, with Salesforce context available separately. Slack can post summaries and action notifications, while Enterprise supports account-manager-enabled SharePoint and automatic Drive exports. Availability and setup vary substantially by plan. |
| API, MCP, CLI, and data portability | Available with limits — 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. | Available with limits — MCP broadly; API and webhooks on Enterprise. MCP is listed even on Basic and can access meetings captured by or shared with the authenticated user. It currently has no public API-key setup for arbitrary AI applications. The public API and webhooks require Enterprise and account-manager enablement. |
| Security, privacy, and admin | Available with limits — 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. | Available with limits — Business administration; advanced security on Enterprise. Business adds centralized features and bulk export. Enterprise adds SSO, SCIM, API access, video replay, granular retention, no-training by default, and HIPAA options. Several advanced controls—including retention and automatic Drive export—require account-manager setup. |
| Languages | Available with limits — 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. | Narrow or indirect — Six transcription languages, two still in beta. Otter transcribes English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and spoken Mandarin with Simplified Chinese output. German and Chinese are beta. It normally handles one language per conversation; French can auto-switch with English, and other mixed-language pairs are not supported. |

Ratings describe documented breadth rather than overall product quality:

- **Broad support:** Broad native support across the product or relevant paid plans.
- **Available with limits:** Documented support with meaningful scope, mode, or plan limits.
- **Narrow or indirect:** Narrow, indirect, beta, or substantially plan-gated support.
- **Not documented:** No current first-party documentation for a native option.

## Detailed analysis

### Capture options

**Otter has broader documented support for capture options.**

**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.

Evidence: [Granola transcription](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/taking-notes/transcription), [Granola feature requests](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/feature-requests).

**Otter.ai:** Meeting agent or automatic bot-free desktop capture, plus mobile. Otter can join major meeting platforms, capture from its apps, and show text live. Its desktop app can detect Zoom, Teams, Meet, and other browser calls from microphone activity, then stay off, prompt the user, or start recording automatically for each meeting type. Scheduling and limits depend on the chosen plan.

Evidence: [Otter pricing](https://otter.ai/pricing), [Otter desktop automatic recording](https://otter.ai/blog/never-miss-the-conversation-introducing-automatic-recording-in-otter-desktop).

### Desktop and mobile

**Both products document broad support for desktop and mobile, with different scope and plan limits.**

**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.

Evidence: [Granola iOS](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/ios/getting-started), [Granola Android launch](https://www.granola.ai/blog/introducing-granola-for-android), [Granola Apple Watch launch](https://www.granola.ai/blog/granola-for-apple-watch), [Granola transcription](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/taking-notes/transcription).

**Otter.ai:** Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. Broad app coverage makes Otter easy to use in virtual or room conversations. The desktop app now supports configurable automatic recording for detected calls. Feature parity and allowances differ between in-app and imported usage.

Evidence: [Otter pricing](https://otter.ai/pricing), [Otter desktop automatic recording](https://otter.ai/blog/never-miss-the-conversation-introducing-automatic-recording-in-otter-desktop).

### In-person capture and speaker labels

**Both products document broad support for in-person capture and speaker labels, with different scope and plan limits.**

**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.

Evidence: [Granola iOS](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/ios/getting-started), [Granola Android launch](https://www.granola.ai/blog/introducing-granola-for-android), [Granola Apple Watch launch](https://www.granola.ai/blog/granola-for-apple-watch), [Granola transcription](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/taking-notes/transcription).

**Otter.ai:** Strong mobile live transcription. iOS and Android are mature room-recording tools with live text. Otter separates voices after processing and can learn previously tagged speakers, but new or uncertain voices remain Speaker 1 or Unknown until tagged. Live platform-name labels are a separate Notetaker behavior, strongest on Zoom.

Evidence: [Otter pricing](https://otter.ai/pricing), [Otter speaker identification](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/21665587209367-Speaker-Identification-Overview).

### Recordings, playback, and clips

**Otter has broader documented support for recordings, playback, and clips.**

**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.

Evidence: [Granola transcription](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/taking-notes/transcription).

**Otter.ai:** Audio playback broadly; video replay on Enterprise. Audio is synchronized to text on ordinary plans. Video replay requires Enterprise and currently applies to supported Zoom and Google Meet recordings rather than every capture path.

Evidence: [Otter pricing](https://otter.ai/pricing), [Otter conversation export](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/360047733634-Export-conversations).

### Notes, action items, and search

**Both products document broad support for notes, action items, and search, with different scope and plan limits.**

**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.

Evidence: [Granola transcription](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/taking-notes/transcription), [Granola spaces and folders](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/folders/spaces-and-folders), [Granola action-item extraction](https://www.granola.ai/blog/meeting-action-items-ai-extraction).

**Otter.ai:** Live transcript, search, and automatically assigned action items. Otter’s transcript experience is mature. It automatically detects and assigns action items, links generated work back to transcript evidence, and gives each user a cross-meeting list with edit, reassign, and completion controls. That list only shows work assigned to the signed-in person, rather than a workspace-wide manager view. Allowances and advanced custom workflows vary by plan.

Evidence: [Otter pricing](https://otter.ai/pricing), [Otter action items](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/25983095114519-Action-Items-Overview), [Otter automatic action-item assignment](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/5093228433687-Conversation-Page-Overview).

### People, companies, and context

**Both products support people, companies, and context, with different scope and plan limits.**

**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.

Evidence: [Granola workspaces](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/workspaces), [Granola spaces and folders](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/folders/spaces-and-folders).

**Otter.ai:** Cross-meeting search and chat. Otter can answer across conversations, but does not emphasize full relationship pages combining meetings, email, calendar, people, companies, and future events.

Evidence: [Otter pricing](https://otter.ai/pricing).

### Automatic sharing and workspace defaults

**Otter has broader documented support for automatic sharing and workspace defaults.**

**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.

Evidence: [Granola workspaces](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/workspaces), [Granola spaces and folders](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/folders/spaces-and-folders), [Granola sharing controls](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/consent-security-privacy/sharing-controls), [Granola note sharing](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/sharing-notes).

**Otter.ai:** User auto-share and Enterprise workspace defaults. Individuals can auto-share by calendar audience and use channels. Enterprise admins can choose the options members see and set a default, but ordinary audience defaults are not fully locked; admins can only force privacy by leaving “Don’t share” as the sole option. External auto-share channels are also Enterprise-only.

Evidence: [Otter automatic sharing](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/20424842990999-Manage-auto-share-settings), [Otter workspace auto-share controls](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/32589333117591-Manage-Workspace-auto-share-settings).

### Automations

**Otter has broader documented support for automations.**

**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.

Evidence: [Granola integrations](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/integrations/integrations-with-granola), [Granola spaces and folders](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/folders/spaces-and-folders), [Granola Zapier](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/integrations/zapier).

**Otter.ai:** Meeting agents and custom workflows, with plan differences. Otter automatically detects and assigns action items, tracks each person’s work across meetings, can create Jira issues with assignees and due dates, and uses custom workflows, Zapier, and AI Chat actions for role-specific output and downstream work. The personal action view does not give a manager one board for every assignee, and connector or workflow eligibility varies by plan.

Evidence: [Otter pricing](https://otter.ai/pricing), [Otter action items](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/25983095114519-Action-Items-Overview), [Otter automatic action-item assignment](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/5093228433687-Conversation-Page-Overview), [Otter Jira integration](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/40485786582551-Connect-Jira-to-Otter-ai), [Otter AI Chat connectors](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/19682180167575-Otter-AI-Chat-Overview).

### Integrations

**Otter has broader documented support for integrations.**

**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.

Evidence: [Granola integrations](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/integrations/integrations-with-granola), [Granola Zapier](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/integrations/zapier).

**Otter.ai:** Meeting platforms, CRM, Zapier, Slack, Jira, work-app connectors, and Enterprise exports. Paid plans connect Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zapier. AI Chat’s Advanced mode can read and act in Gmail, Google Drive, Notion, and Jira, with Salesforce context available separately. Slack can post summaries and action notifications, while Enterprise supports account-manager-enabled SharePoint and automatic Drive exports. Availability and setup vary substantially by plan.

Evidence: [Otter pricing](https://otter.ai/pricing), [Otter AI Chat connectors](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/19682180167575-Otter-AI-Chat-Overview), [Otter Jira integration](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/40485786582551-Connect-Jira-to-Otter-ai), [Otter Slack integration](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/13627121851799-Connect-Slack-to-Otter-ai), [Otter SharePoint export](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/38533740881175-Connect-Microsoft-SharePoint-to-Otter-ai).

### API, MCP, CLI, and data portability

**Both products support API, MCP, CLI, and data portability, with different scope and plan limits.**

**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.

Evidence: [Granola MCP](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/integrations/mcp), [Granola API](https://docs.granola.ai/introduction), [Granola data export](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/exporting-notes).

**Otter.ai:** MCP broadly; API and webhooks on Enterprise. MCP is listed even on Basic and can access meetings captured by or shared with the authenticated user. It currently has no public API-key setup for arbitrary AI applications. The public API and webhooks require Enterprise and account-manager enablement.

Evidence: [Otter MCP server](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/35287607569687-Otter-MCP-Server), [Otter public API](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/4412365535895-Does-Otter-offer-an-open-API).

### Security, privacy, and admin

**Both products support security, privacy, and admin, with different scope and plan limits.**

**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.

Evidence: [Granola pricing](https://www.granola.ai/pricing), [Granola subscriptions and billing](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/managing-your-account/subscriptions-and-billing), [Granola security and data FAQ](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/consent-security-privacy/security-privacy-data-faqs).

**Otter.ai:** Business administration; advanced security on Enterprise. Business adds centralized features and bulk export. Enterprise adds SSO, SCIM, API access, video replay, granular retention, no-training by default, and HIPAA options. Several advanced controls—including retention and automatic Drive export—require account-manager setup.

Evidence: [Otter pricing](https://otter.ai/pricing), [Otter workspace auto-share controls](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/32589333117591-Manage-Workspace-auto-share-settings), [Otter privacy and model training](https://otter.ai/privacy-security), [Otter Enterprise controls](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/13352505516695-Enterprise-Admin-Controls-Overview), [Otter retention policy](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/19500988656279-Set-a-custom-Data-Retention-policy), [Otter conversation export](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/360047733634-Export-conversations).

### Languages

**Granola has broader documented support for languages.**

**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.

Evidence: [Granola transcription](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/taking-notes/transcription).

**Otter.ai:** Six transcription languages, two still in beta. Otter transcribes English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and spoken Mandarin with Simplified Chinese output. German and Chinese are beta. It normally handles one language per conversation; French can auto-switch with English, and other mixed-language pairs are not supported.

Evidence: [Otter supported languages](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/26660468516631-Transcribe-conversations-in-English-Spanish-French-German-Japanese-or-Chinese-Simplified).

## A third option to consider: Circleback

Circleback turns online meetings, in-person conversations, and imported calls into one shared company memory. Record with a bot, with the botless desktop app, from an iPhone or Android phone, or on Apple Watch. Every route produces the same speaker-labeled record, detailed notes designed to stand alone, and automatically assigned action items. Sharing rules and automations carry the useful parts into the teams and tools that need them. Circleback is built for people and AI agents: the complete meeting record available to a person is also available programmatically through its API, MCP, and CLI.

Circleback can also search connected apps and take action in them. It is built for people and AI agents: the same complete meeting data available to a person is available programmatically to ChatGPT, Claude, other agents, and internal tools through the API, MCP, and CLI. Free; Pro from $15/user/month annually; Business from $25/user/month annually; Enterprise $35/user/month, billed annually.

## Frequently asked questions

### Which is better: Granola or Otter.ai?

Granola turns a few human notes into a polished document and deletes the audio. Otter prioritizes live transcription, phone capture, playback, and a searchable transcript history.

### Which is less expensive, Granola or Otter.ai?

Granola: Free; Business $14/user/month; Enterprise from $35/user/month, billed monthly. Otter.ai: Free; Pro from $8.33/user/month annually. Compare the paid seats, included usage, recording access, and admin features you actually need.

### Can Granola and Otter.ai record without a bot?

Granola: Manual bot-free desktop, phone, and Apple Watch capture. Otter.ai: Meeting agent or automatic bot-free desktop capture, plus mobile. 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. Granola: Private by default; sharing starts with a note or folder. Otter: User auto-share and Enterprise workspace defaults.

### Can I access and move the full meeting data?

Granola: MCP and API on Business+; material export and scope limits. Otter: MCP broadly; API and webhooks on Enterprise. 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.

## Methodology

Circleback reviews first-party pricing pages, product pages, help docs, and release notes. Prices and capabilities move, so check the linked sources when a detail is important to your decision.

Every feature dimension links to the exact first-party documents used for that claim. Ratings describe documented breadth, not an overall score or winner.

This page is a neutral competitor-to-competitor comparison. There are no paid placements or affiliate rankings.

## First-party sources

### Granola sources

- [Granola pricing](https://www.granola.ai/pricing): Basic, Business, and Enterprise prices and feature gates.
- [Granola subscriptions and billing](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/managing-your-account/subscriptions-and-billing): 30-day free history, workspace privacy, plan uniformity, and removal behavior.
- [Granola integrations](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/integrations/integrations-with-granola): Notion, Slack, CRM, Zapier, MCP, and API integrations.
- [Granola Zapier](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/integrations/zapier): Paid-plan manual and folder triggers, note payload, workspace sharing, and task handoff across Zapier destinations.
- [Granola action-item extraction](https://www.granola.ai/blog/meeting-action-items-ai-extraction): Automatic extraction of source-linked commitments, owners, and due dates from the transcript and human notes.
- [Granola workspaces](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/workspaces): Private-by-default notes and team-space collaboration behavior.
- [Granola sharing controls](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/consent-security-privacy/sharing-controls): Personal link defaults and Enterprise-enforced workspace link restrictions.
- [Granola note sharing](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/sharing-notes): No attendee auto-sharing, note and integration sharing, and limited transcript visibility on public note links.
- [Granola spaces and folders](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/folders/spaces-and-folders): Shared folders, recurring-meeting auto-add, and automatic posting to connected tools.
- [Granola feature requests](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/feature-requests): Current product-request status, including automatic meeting start.
- [Granola iOS](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/ios/getting-started): In-person/outbound calls and mobile limitations.
- [Granola Android launch](https://www.granola.ai/blog/introducing-granola-for-android): Android in-person capture and cross-device note access.
- [Granola Apple Watch launch](https://www.granola.ai/blog/granola-for-apple-watch): One-tap in-person capture, reminders, syncing, availability, and watchOS requirement.
- [Granola transcription](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/taking-notes/transcription): Desktop “Me/Them” behavior, iPhone diarization, transcript copying, segment deletion, and lack of prerecorded-file support.
- [Granola data export](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/exporting-notes): Individual and bulk exports, CSV transcript omission, and the absence of workspace-wide admin export.
- [Granola MCP](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/sharing/integrations/mcp): OAuth access, plan gates, transcript tool, 30-day Basic history, and Team-space folder limitation.
- [Granola API](https://docs.granola.ai/introduction): Personal beta keys, Enterprise keys, permitted-note scope, transcripts, and meeting data.
- [Granola security and data FAQ](https://docs.granola.ai/help-center/consent-security-privacy/security-privacy-data-faqs): Model-improvement defaults, individual opt-out, and Enterprise organization-wide enforcement.

### Otter.ai sources

- [Otter pricing](https://otter.ai/pricing): Current free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise allowances and feature gates.
- [Otter Basic-plan limits](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/360047538094-Conversation-import-and-app-limits-on-the-Basic-free-plan): Monthly minutes, per-conversation duration, lifetime imports, and 25-conversation history.
- [Otter desktop automatic recording](https://otter.ai/blog/never-miss-the-conversation-introducing-automatic-recording-in-otter-desktop): August 2026 automatic detection, reminders, and bot-free recording behavior for Zoom, Teams, Meet, and other browser calls.
- [Otter automatic sharing](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/20424842990999-Manage-auto-share-settings): Workspace defaults for automatic audience, collaborator permissions, and meeting-level overrides.
- [Otter supported languages](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/26660468516631-Transcribe-conversations-in-English-Spanish-French-German-Japanese-or-Chinese-Simplified): Six-language scope, beta languages, one-language behavior, French/English switching, and reprocessing limits.
- [Otter speaker identification](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/21665587209367-Speaker-Identification-Overview): Post-processing diarization, learned speaker names, generic labels for new voices, and live Zoom behavior.
- [Otter action items](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/25983095114519-Action-Items-Overview): Cross-meeting personal action-item view, transcript links, editing, reassignment, completion, and the lack of a workspace-wide all-assignees view.
- [Otter automatic action-item assignment](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/5093228433687-Conversation-Page-Overview): Automatic detection and assignment of meeting action items to relevant workspace members.
- [Otter AI Chat connectors](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/19682180167575-Otter-AI-Chat-Overview): Advanced-mode Gmail, Google Drive, Jira, Notion, and Salesforce connector capabilities plus plan and mobile-version caveats.
- [Otter Jira integration](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/40485786582551-Connect-Jira-to-Otter-ai): Automatic Jira issue creation from meeting actions with assignees, due dates, projects, source links, and AI Chat access.
- [Otter Slack integration](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/13627121851799-Connect-Slack-to-Otter-ai): Summary posting, recurring-meeting delivery, rich previews, access handling, and action-item notifications.
- [Otter SharePoint export](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/38533740881175-Connect-Microsoft-SharePoint-to-Otter-ai): Enterprise automatic transcript, summary, and metadata export plus administrator and account-manager setup.
- [Otter workspace auto-share controls](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/32589333117591-Manage-Workspace-auto-share-settings): Enterprise eligibility, selectable defaults, user overrides, and the privacy-lock exception.
- [Otter MCP server](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/35287607569687-Otter-MCP-Server): Authenticated meeting scope, shared meetings, supported clients, and lack of a public MCP API key.
- [Otter public API](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/4412365535895-Does-Otter-offer-an-open-API): Enterprise-only public API availability and account-manager enablement.
- [Otter privacy and model training](https://otter.ai/privacy-security): Proprietary-model training on de-identified recordings and transcripts, plus third-party provider no-training and zero-storage commitments.
- [Otter Enterprise controls](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/13352505516695-Enterprise-Admin-Controls-Overview): Enterprise no-training default, 2FA, export controls, audio removal, and advanced governance.
- [Otter retention policy](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/19500988656279-Set-a-custom-Data-Retention-policy): Account-manager configured retention for full conversations, recordings, or transcripts.
- [Otter conversation export](https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/360047733634-Export-conversations): Individual and Business bulk exports across text, subtitle, and audio formats.