# tl;dv vs Granola: pricing, features, and which is better

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

- Canonical HTML: https://circleback.ai/compare/tldv-vs-granola
- Structured JSON: https://circleback.ai/compare/tldv-vs-granola.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

tl;dv is for people who want a durable recording, clips, and cross-call reports. Granola is for people who want a private notepad and deliberately do not want saved media.

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.

## tl;dv at a glance

tl;dv combines unlimited meeting recording on its free tier with clips, reels, recurring reports, playbooks, and sales coaching. Its newer bot-free desktop mode broadens capture, but that mode is audio-only and drops video, screen share, and chat.

**Best for:** Individuals and customer-facing teams that want a generous free recorder, easy clips, recurring multi-meeting reports, and optional sales playbooks.

**Less ideal for:** Teams that need a mature mobile rollout, video in bot-free mode, stable API contracts, durable free-plan retention, or one cross-functional company context layer.

**Price:** Free; Pro from $18/user/month annually; Business from $29 annually

Free includes unlimited recordings and transcripts, but recordings are retained for three months, older recordings are archived shortly after processing, advanced AI credits are lifetime-limited, and after the first ten meetings generated notes cover only the first ten minutes. Paid prices are per user/month: Pro is $18 with annual billing or $29 month-to-month; Business is $29 or $39. Enterprise is quoted separately.

**Free option:** Yes: unlimited recordings and transcripts, with retention, archive, AI-note, credit, duration, and concurrency limits.

### tl;dv strengths

- One of the broadest free recording and transcription allowances, despite meaningful retention and AI-output limits.
- Strong clips, reels, highlights, multi-meeting reports, playbooks, and sales coaching workflows.
- Bot and bot-free macOS/Windows capture now sit beside an early mobile recorder for in-person conversations.
- Recurring AI reports and conditional Slack workflows are particularly good at turning many calls into a compact digest with decisions and owner/deadline action lists.

### tl;dv tradeoffs

- Bot-free capture is audio-only: no video, screen sharing, or meeting chat is preserved.
- The newly documented mobile recorder is still described as an early-stage testing experience rather than a mature production path.
- Free recordings are retained for three months and quickly archived; after the first ten meetings, generated notes cover only the first ten minutes.
- The public API is labeled v1alpha1, and MCP searches typically return at most 50 meetings per query.
- There is no bulk meeting export in the product. Individual recording downloads require both owner and downloader to be on a paid plan, plus editor or admin access.
- The domain-level Organization is automatic rather than a governed tenant: any same-domain user can join it and the Organization itself cannot be deleted. Paid Teams provide the actual admin hierarchy.
- Several advanced AI, sales, and multilingual capabilities are reserved for higher plans.
- tl;dv can extract assigned action lists and send them elsewhere, but it does not document a native workspace-wide task system with assignee queues, status, due dates, and completion tracking.

### Choose tl;dv when

- Unlimited free recording matters more than unlimited AI notes.
- Your workflow revolves around clips, playlists, sales playbooks, and recurring topic reports.
- You are comfortable using a bot when video, screen share, and chat need to be retained.

## 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.

## Feature comparison

| What matters | tl;dv | Granola |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capture options | Broad support — Meeting bot or bot-free desktop recording. macOS and Windows can capture system audio from any meeting platform without a bot. The bot remains the richer mode for supported conferencing platforms. | 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. |
| Desktop and mobile | Available with limits — Web, Chrome, macOS, Windows, and an early mobile app. Desktop capture is broad. tl;dv now documents a mobile app for in-person meetings, but describes it as recently launched, early-stage, and available for testing. | 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. |
| In-person capture and speaker labels | Available with limits — Desktop microphone or early-stage mobile recording. A laptop can capture room audio and the newer mobile app can record in-person meetings. tl;dv documents speaker identification generally but does not explain whether the early mobile path preserves the same naming behavior, so test it before a broad rollout. There is no documented Watch capture. | 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. |
| Recordings, playback, and clips | Broad support — Rich playback, clips, and reels—with a botless video caveat. Bot recordings support video, transcript, clips, reels, and shareable moments. Bot-free recordings are audio-only and omit video, screen sharing, and chat. | 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. |
| Notes, action items, and search | Broad support — AI notes, action digests, multi-meeting reports, and topic tracking. The product is particularly good at synthesizing multiple meetings and turning recurring prompts into reports, including action lists grouped by person and date. Those are report or checklist outputs rather than a native task lifecycle with workspace queues and completion state. Free accounts get a limited number of AI notes. | 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. |
| People, companies, and context | Available with limits — Meeting library and multi-meeting synthesis. tl;dv can query and report across accessible meetings, but it does not present a broader email/calendar/person/company relationship memory as its core model. | 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. |
| Automatic sharing and workspace defaults | Broad support — Granular team privacy defaults and automatic sharing. Teams can automatically share with participants, publish to a team or organization library, and apply admin privacy rules using meeting context such as title, internal or external type, and team role. Sensitive categories can remain private by rule. | 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. |
| Automations | Broad support — Recurring AI reports and sales workflows. Automated multi-meeting reports, playbooks, CRM updates, and conditional Slack posts are useful, especially for customer-facing teams. Slack workflows can format decisions and action items with owners and deadlines, but team workflow scope excludes team admins and billing-group admins, and the overall system is less open-ended than a general meeting condition/action builder. | 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. |
| Integrations | Available with limits — CRM and collaboration integrations on paid plans. tl;dv connects to common CRMs and work tools; exact access varies by plan. The catalog is oriented around GTM and collaboration workflows. | 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. |
| API, MCP, CLI, and data portability | Available with limits — MCP on Pro+ and a public alpha API. MCP can search meetings and participants, with typical result sets capped at 50. A subtle access rule matters: viewing a shared meeting is not enough if its organizer is on Free—the organizer must have Pro or higher before that meeting is available through MCP or the API. The API is documented as v1alpha1 and includes recording downloads, so integration teams should expect contract evolution. | 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. |
| Security, privacy, and admin | Available with limits — Paid Team controls, with a looser domain Organization layer. Paid Teams add roles, billing administration, and forward-looking defaults; team settings do not override Team Admins. The separate domain-based Organization has no organization-wide admin defaults, any same-domain user can join it, and it cannot be deleted. Multi-team management is Business-only. | 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. |
| Languages | Available with limits — Multilingual transcription; advanced multilingual mode is plan-gated. Language selection behavior varies by capture mode, and the multilingual Whisper option is documented for Business and Enterprise. | 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. |

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

**tl;dv has broader documented support for capture options.**

**tl;dv:** Meeting bot or bot-free desktop recording. macOS and Windows can capture system audio from any meeting platform without a bot. The bot remains the richer mode for supported conferencing platforms.

Evidence: [tl;dv bot-free recording](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/14433337-recording-without-a-bot).

**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).

### Desktop and mobile

**Granola has broader documented support for desktop and mobile.**

**tl;dv:** Web, Chrome, macOS, Windows, and an early mobile app. Desktop capture is broad. tl;dv now documents a mobile app for in-person meetings, but describes it as recently launched, early-stage, and available for testing.

Evidence: [tl;dv bot-free recording](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/14433337-recording-without-a-bot), [tl;dv mobile app](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/8490450-mobile-app).

**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).

### In-person capture and speaker labels

**Granola has broader documented support for in-person capture and speaker labels.**

**tl;dv:** Desktop microphone or early-stage mobile recording. A laptop can capture room audio and the newer mobile app can record in-person meetings. tl;dv documents speaker identification generally but does not explain whether the early mobile path preserves the same naming behavior, so test it before a broad rollout. There is no documented Watch capture.

Evidence: [tl;dv mobile app](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/8490450-mobile-app), [tl;dv speaker identification](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/6171907-speaker-identification-in-transcript).

**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).

### Recordings, playback, and clips

**tl;dv has broader documented support for recordings, playback, and clips.**

**tl;dv:** Rich playback, clips, and reels—with a botless video caveat. Bot recordings support video, transcript, clips, reels, and shareable moments. Bot-free recordings are audio-only and omit video, screen sharing, and chat.

Evidence: [tl;dv bot-free recording](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/14433337-recording-without-a-bot), [tl;dv free-plan limits](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/8919450-what-are-the-limits-of-the-free-plan).

**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).

### Notes, action items, and search

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

**tl;dv:** AI notes, action digests, multi-meeting reports, and topic tracking. The product is particularly good at synthesizing multiple meetings and turning recurring prompts into reports, including action lists grouped by person and date. Those are report or checklist outputs rather than a native task lifecycle with workspace queues and completion state. Free accounts get a limited number of AI notes.

Evidence: [tl;dv pricing](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/6082483-what-is-tl-dv-s-pricing), [tl;dv free-plan limits](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/8919450-what-are-the-limits-of-the-free-plan), [tl;dv AI prompts](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/9235713-ai-prompts-inspiration).

**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).

### People, companies, and context

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

**tl;dv:** Meeting library and multi-meeting synthesis. tl;dv can query and report across accessible meetings, but it does not present a broader email/calendar/person/company relationship memory as its core model.

Evidence: [tl;dv MCP](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/15322415-mcp).

**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).

### Automatic sharing and workspace defaults

**tl;dv has broader documented support for automatic sharing and workspace defaults.**

**tl;dv:** Granular team privacy defaults and automatic sharing. Teams can automatically share with participants, publish to a team or organization library, and apply admin privacy rules using meeting context such as title, internal or external type, and team role. Sensitive categories can remain private by rule.

Evidence: [tl;dv team privacy defaults](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/15033798-team-privacy-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).

### Automations

**tl;dv has broader documented support for automations.**

**tl;dv:** Recurring AI reports and sales workflows. Automated multi-meeting reports, playbooks, CRM updates, and conditional Slack posts are useful, especially for customer-facing teams. Slack workflows can format decisions and action items with owners and deadlines, but team workflow scope excludes team admins and billing-group admins, and the overall system is less open-ended than a general meeting condition/action builder.

Evidence: [tl;dv pricing](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/6082483-what-is-tl-dv-s-pricing), [tl;dv Slack workflows](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/5946410-set-up-the-slack-integration).

**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).

### Integrations

**Both products support integrations, with different scope and plan limits.**

**tl;dv:** CRM and collaboration integrations on paid plans. tl;dv connects to common CRMs and work tools; exact access varies by plan. The catalog is oriented around GTM and collaboration workflows.

Evidence: [tl;dv pricing](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/6082483-what-is-tl-dv-s-pricing).

**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).

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

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

**tl;dv:** MCP on Pro+ and a public alpha API. MCP can search meetings and participants, with typical result sets capped at 50. A subtle access rule matters: viewing a shared meeting is not enough if its organizer is on Free—the organizer must have Pro or higher before that meeting is available through MCP or the API. The API is documented as v1alpha1 and includes recording downloads, so integration teams should expect contract evolution.

Evidence: [tl;dv MCP](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/15322415-mcp), [tl;dv API](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/11583137-api), [tl;dv download limits](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/5946213-how-to-download-your-recording).

**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).

### Security, privacy, and admin

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

**tl;dv:** Paid Team controls, with a looser domain Organization layer. Paid Teams add roles, billing administration, and forward-looking defaults; team settings do not override Team Admins. The separate domain-based Organization has no organization-wide admin defaults, any same-domain user can join it, and it cannot be deleted. Multi-team management is Business-only.

Evidence: [tl;dv pricing](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/6082483-what-is-tl-dv-s-pricing), [tl;dv team privacy defaults](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/15033798-team-privacy-defaults), [tl;dv organization and team model](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/8975481-organization-vs-team-what-s-the-difference), [tl;dv permission levels](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/10131073-understanding-permission-levels).

**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).

### Languages

**Both products support languages, with different scope and plan limits.**

**tl;dv:** Multilingual transcription; advanced multilingual mode is plan-gated. Language selection behavior varies by capture mode, and the multilingual Whisper option is documented for Business and Enterprise.

Evidence: [tl;dv pricing](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/6082483-what-is-tl-dv-s-pricing), [tl;dv bot-free recording](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/14433337-recording-without-a-bot).

**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).

## 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: tl;dv or Granola?

tl;dv is for people who want a durable recording, clips, and cross-call reports. Granola is for people who want a private notepad and deliberately do not want saved media.

### Which is less expensive, tl;dv or Granola?

tl;dv: Free; Pro from $18/user/month annually; Business from $29 annually. 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 tl;dv and Granola record without a bot?

tl;dv: Meeting bot or bot-free desktop recording. 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. tl;dv: Granular team privacy defaults and automatic sharing. Granola: Private by default; sharing starts with a note or folder.

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

tl;dv: MCP on Pro+ and a public alpha API. 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.

## 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

### tl;dv sources

- [tl;dv pricing](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/6082483-what-is-tl-dv-s-pricing): Official Free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise pricing and plan scope.
- [tl;dv free-plan limits](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/8919450-what-are-the-limits-of-the-free-plan): Recording retention, archive behavior, AI-note coverage, lifetime credits, meeting duration, and concurrency.
- [tl;dv mobile app](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/8490450-mobile-app): Recently launched early-stage mobile recording for in-person meetings.
- [tl;dv speaker identification](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/6171907-speaker-identification-in-transcript): General automatic speaker identification; the article does not document mobile-mode parity.
- [tl;dv bot-free recording](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/14433337-recording-without-a-bot): Desktop capture and the audio-only limitation.
- [tl;dv MCP](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/15322415-mcp): Plan eligibility, tools, access model, and result behavior.
- [tl;dv API](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/11583137-api): Pro/Business eligibility and v1alpha1 status.
- [tl;dv team privacy defaults](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/15033798-team-privacy-defaults): Admin-controlled automatic sharing, workspace-library publishing, and privacy rules for sensitive meetings.
- [tl;dv download limits](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/5946213-how-to-download-your-recording): No bulk export plus paid-plan, ownership, and permission requirements for individual recording downloads.
- [tl;dv organization and team model](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/8975481-organization-vs-team-what-s-the-difference): Automatic same-domain Organization membership, absence of Organization-wide admin defaults, and the paid Team hierarchy.
- [tl;dv permission levels](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/10131073-understanding-permission-levels): Team roles, admin behavior, and the non-deletable domain Organization.
- [tl;dv AI prompts](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/9235713-ai-prompts-inspiration): Cross-meeting action-item reports grouped by participant and date plus common analysis workflows.
- [tl;dv Slack workflows](https://intercom.help/tldv/en/articles/5946410-set-up-the-slack-integration): Conditional automatic summaries, decisions, and owner/deadline action lists plus the team-admin scope exception.

### 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.