Otter vs Granola: Bots, Privacy and Pricing Compared on Mac

Otter and Granola show up on the same shortlist for anyone choosing AI meeting notes on a Mac, but they started from opposite ideas. Otter began as a cloud transcription service with a bot that attends your meetings; Granola began as a notepad on your Mac that listens alongside you. Both have since moved toward each other: Otter now has a desktop app that records without the bot, and Granola now runs on more than the Mac. Comparing Otter vs Granola honestly means looking at what each still does differently, and at the one thing they still have in common: your audio goes to the cloud.

In this guide 11 sections

The short answer

• Pick Otter if you want a bot that can attend meetings you skip, long meetings transcribed on a team plan, and a shared workspace where colleagues search each other’s calls.
• Pick Granola if you type your own notes during calls and want the AI to finish them afterwards, with nothing joining the meeting, and you don’t need the audio kept.
• Pick neither if the audio shouldn’t leave your Mac at all. Both transcribe in the cloud. The on-device option is covered at the end.

How each one records a meeting

Otter records in two ways. Its Notetaker bot (formerly OtterPilot) joins Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls from your calendar, showing up as something like “Alex’s Notetaker (Otter.ai)”. Since October 2025 Otter also has a Mac and Windows desktop app that records a call from your computer without the bot. Either way, the recording goes to Otter’s cloud, where it’s transcribed, summarized and kept.

Granola captures your device’s audio with no bot, so nothing appears in the meeting. It transcribes in real time through cloud transcription providers (Granola names Deepgram and AssemblyAI as examples), writes the AI notes with cloud AI services, and stores notes in its US-hosted AWS environment. It doesn’t keep the audio: Granola says meeting audio isn’t stored. Granola lists desktop, iOS, Android and Apple Watch apps on every plan.

The capture model Granola uses is the one explained in the no-bot meeting recorder guide: record the call the computer is already playing, plus your microphone, instead of sending an attendee.

Where Otter is stronger

• It can go to meetings without you. The Notetaker bot can join a call you’re not in and leave a transcript. Granola, which records from your device, can’t.
• Long meetings on Business. Otter’s Business plan transcribes up to 4 hours per meeting with unlimited meeting minutes. That matters for workshops and all-hands calls.
• A team corpus. Otter is built for shared folders and searching across a team’s meetings. If your sales or research team treats transcripts as shared material, this is the reason to pick it.
• The recording is kept. Otter stores the audio with the transcript, so you can listen back to a passage. Granola discards it.

Where Granola is stronger

• Nothing in the meeting. Granola never adds an attendee, so external calls go ahead without anyone asking what the bot is. Otter’s desktop app closes this gap when you use it instead of the bot.
• The notepad. Type rough notes during the call and Granola uses the transcript to fill them out afterwards. If you’re a notes-while-talking person, this suits you better than reading a transcript after the fact.
• No minute meter. Granola’s free plan states no meeting cap; what it limits is note history, to 30 days. Otter’s free plan caps both monthly minutes and minutes per conversation.
• Speaker tagging on every plan. Both tools label speakers. Granola lists speaker tagging on all plans; Otter’s free plan has speaker identification, and higher tiers add naming and shared speakers.

Pricing (checked November 2026)

Prices are per user per month in USD, from each vendor’s own pricing page. Both companies repackage plans often, so check before you buy.

In practice: Otter’s free plan runs out on long meetings, and Granola’s free plan runs out on old notes. Pick the limit you’re less likely to hit.

Privacy: closer than it looks

Granola’s lack of a bot is often read as “more private”. Inside the meeting it is: nobody sees a notetaker. But follow the audio. Otter uploads the recording and keeps it. Granola sends the audio to cloud transcription providers, sends the content to cloud AI services for the notes, and stores the notes on its servers; it just doesn’t keep the audio itself. For most meetings, either is a reasonable choice.

If a client asked you not to upload the call, or your compliance rules make you list every company that processes customer audio, both land in the same bucket: the audio left the laptop. At that point the question isn’t Otter vs Granola anymore.

The option both leave out: everything on the Mac

On macOS Tahoe, Apple ships on-device speech recognition (SpeechAnalyzer, which MacStories’ independent testing in June 2025 found about 55% faster than Whisper Large V3 Turbo) and an on-device language model for summaries. Dictanta is built on that.

It records Mac meetings the same bot-free way Granola does. It spots Zoom, Teams, Webex, Slack and browser calls like Meet, and pre-selects This meeting in the menu bar. The difference is where the rest happens:

• The transcript is written live on the Mac as you record. See on-device meeting transcription.
• The recap (a short summary, action items with owners and deadlines, decisions and open questions) is written on the Mac by Apple Intelligence the moment you stop.
• The audio is kept on the Mac that recorded it and never uploaded. Unlike Granola, you can go back to it: most summary lines show when they were said, and hovering one plays that moment. Lines Dictanta can’t source show no timecode rather than a guess.
• There’s no account and no vendor server. iCloud syncs notes and transcripts to your other Apple devices; the audio is never copied.

The tradeoffs, plainly: Dictanta doesn’t label speakers (the transcript is one mixed stream), it has no team workspace, no calendar integration and no notepad-style typing during the call, and it can’t attend a meeting you’re not in. Summaries cover meetings up to about 2.5 hours. It needs a Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later) on macOS Tahoe 26.4 or later, with Apple Intelligence turned on.

Pricing: the first 3 recordings are free with every feature, then $9.99 a month, $79.99 a year, or $149.99 once for Lifetime. One purchase covers Mac, iPhone and iPad. Nothing is metered per minute.

Side by side

Which should you pick?

Otter if you need meetings recorded when you’re not there, long meetings on a team plan, and a shared, searchable archive. You accept cloud processing and a minute meter.

Granola if your calls are external, you want nothing in the meeting, and the notepad matches how you already work. You accept cloud processing and no audio to go back to.

Dictanta if the deciding factor is that the conversation stays on your Mac: client calls under NDA, sensitive internal meetings, or a plain preference that something recorded on your laptop stays there. If you’re coming from one of them specifically, the Otter alternative for Mac and Granola alternative for Mac guides go deeper, and the first 3 recordings are free to try on real calls.

Bottom line

Otter is a cloud service with a bot that can go to meetings for you and, now, a desktop app that doesn’t need one. Granola is a bot-free notepad that sends the audio to the cloud for transcription and then discards it. Pick by workflow: attendance and team search point to Otter, notes-while-talking points to Granola. Just don’t read Granola’s missing bot as missing cloud. If keeping the audio off other companies’ servers is the real requirement, you need an on-device tool instead.

FAQ

Is Otter or Granola better for Mac users?

It depends on how you work. Granola suits people who take their own notes during a call and want the AI to finish them, with nothing joining the meeting. Otter suits teams that want a bot to attend meetings for them, long per-meeting limits on Business, and a shared workspace. Both have Mac apps that record without a bot, and both transcribe your audio in the cloud.

Does Granola use a meeting bot like Otter does?

No. Granola has never used a bot; it captures your device’s audio. Otter’s Notetaker bot joins Zoom, Meet and Teams calls as a visible attendee, though Otter’s Mac and Windows desktop app can also record without it. In both cases the audio is sent to the cloud for transcription.

Does Granola keep a recording of the meeting?

No. Granola says it doesn’t store meeting audio: it transcribes in real time through cloud transcription providers and keeps the transcript and notes. You can’t play back the moment something was said. Otter keeps the recording in its cloud.

Is there a meeting notes app that doesn’t use the cloud at all?

Yes. Dictanta records Mac meetings without a bot and transcribes and summarizes them on the Mac with Apple Intelligence. The audio is kept on the Mac that recorded it and never uploaded, and there’s no account. The tradeoffs: no speaker labels, no team workspace, and it can’t attend a meeting for you.