The verdict, before the list
Granola does the hard part of its job well: botless capture that just notices the call starting, notes that write themselves, an interface people genuinely like. If your meetings are back-to-back, your team runs on shared notes, and “cloud” is a preference rather than a risk, staying (or paying to unlock your own history) is a rational choice, and the comparison page says where Granola is better than us without being talked into it.
People leave for four concrete reasons, and each opens a different group below. They are documented, not vibes:
- The history window. The free plan, as of February 2026, shows only the last 30 days of meeting history. Your older notes exist, but not in reach.
- No audio to verify against. Granola keeps transcripts and notes, not recordings, which reviewers note leaves transcript errors unchecked (their security page describes the retention model directly).
- Where processing happens. Audio goes to cloud transcription providers and note text to OpenAI or Anthropic; nothing runs locally (security documentation).
- Training policy. Unless you opt out, anonymised data can train models; the off-by-default position is Enterprise only.
That is a specific shape of complaint: “I want my meeting records as files on my machine, transcribed here, visible forever.” Only one product on this page currently finishes that sentence (ours, invite-only), and two come at it from the open-source and one-time-payment directions. Everyone else is a different trade with better polish or better teamwork.
Three questions that sort the tools faster than features
Before reading a single comparison grid, answer these about your actual meetings, because they cut the market three ways:
- Where does the audio and text go? On your device, or to a service. This decides your retention, your training exposure and your outage risk. It is the axis this page groups by, and it is the honest first question rather than a slogan about privacy.
- Who sees the recorder? A bot in the participant list is visible consent; botless capture means the disclosure duty is yours alone. Neither is free of responsibility, and recording without agreement is illegal in many places. Laws differ by country and state; check the rules that bind you before switching to anything.
- What is the artifact? A page in someone’s workspace, or a file in a folder you own. Pages are searchable across a team; files survive the team tool. Granola sits in the first category even though its notes feel like text: there is no .md on your disk, and the 30-day window is the sharp edge of that choice.
The groups below follow answer one. Answers two and three then separate you from individual products inside the group, and every card’s facts row links to the vendor page it came from, dated October 3, 2026.
Reading the groups
On your device is one name (Meetily) and honestly the whole reason this page exists: open-source, botless, local transcription, still young. Recorders and transcribers (Talat, MacWhisper) share the machine-local model but assume you will hand them audio as well as live calls; MacWhisper’s one-time payment is the rare non-subscription deal in this market.
In the cloud, no bot keeps Granola’s participant-list experience and changes the retention story: Jamie with European hosting and a stated no-training commitment, Zoom’s Companion if your whole life is Zoom already, Notion’s if the notes must land in the company wiki (at Business-tier prices). In the cloud, with a bot (Fireflies, Otter, Fathom) buys you generous free tiers and team features with a visible attendee and vendor-hosted transcripts; Fathom’s “unlimited recordings, free” is the strongest value line in that group, for the workflow it targets. Notes apps adds Reflect, the file-first alternative that treats meetings as one more input rather than the product.
And if your real problem is the notes you already typed after a meeting, not the audio: the meeting record builder sorts pasted text into decisions, actions and open questions in your browser, right now, whatever app you stay on.
When staying is the honest answer
If you need Windows, iPhone, Android or Watch apps; meetings in more than 13 languages; shared spaces; or notes that hit a CRM the day they are written, Granola is the best-tested experience in this category and paying $14 a user a month to see your own history is cheaper than the time you would lose re-learning anything. The switching reasons above are not defects; they are the price of the cloud model. The only mistake is switching for a reason you have not actually felt.
Our pick, disclosed
1. Oyma
Best for: Macs where meetings should land as plain files, transcribed on the machine
Oyma is the alternative here that runs meetings the way its critics want them run: capture is on your Mac (your microphone plus the call audio, no bot joining), transcription is Whisper on your machine across 13 languages, and summaries or Ask run through Ollama or your own Anthropic or OpenAI key. Every record lands as plain Markdown in the vault you choose, with no history window and no training on your content, because there is no service to train on. It keeps no cloud. What it does not have yet, stated plainly: it is invite-only during the private beta, Apple silicon Macs only, no Windows, phone or Watch apps, no shared team spaces or CRM integrations, no speaker names, and it does not sync. Judge it on the file and the machine, not on the team features.
On your Mac · No bot · Plain Markdown files · Free during the beta · Apple silicon only
On your device
2. Meetily
Best for: A free, open-source, local Granola-shaped app
Meetily is the closest philosophy match on this list: a private-first desktop assistant that captures meetings botless, transcribes on your device, and summarises locally through Ollama or a bring-your-own key. The Community Edition is free and open source (MIT); the $10 a month Pro tier adds Markdown, PDF and DOCX export, which is the thing to check before committing if files matter to you. It runs on macOS, Windows and Linux but has no mobile apps. Test the diarization and accuracy on your own audio, because local models vary more than managed services do, and this page does not claim to have benchmarked them.
On your device · No bot · Not plain files · Free: Community Edition free and open source (MIT) · From $10/user/month billed annually ($120/yr) source
Recorders and transcribers
3. Talat
Best for: Everything local, transcribed offline, including recordings you already have
Talat is a local transcription app for live meetings, dictation and existing recordings, with on-device processing and exports to Markdown, Obsidian, PDF or webhooks. Summaries can run on a built-in small local model, or through Claude, OpenAI or Ollama if you plug one in. There is no free plan (a 10-hour trial, no account needed) and it needs macOS 15 or later on Apple silicon, or Windows 10. It suits people whose workflow is "record now, transcribe later" and who treat the transcript as a file they own rather than a page in someone's workspace.
On your device · No bot · Not plain files · Free: No free plan; 10 hours free trial, no account required · From $9/month source
4. MacWhisper
Best for: Transcribing lectures, podcasts and files on the Mac, cheaply
MacWhisper started as bulk local transcription of existing audio and video files, and grew meeting features on top: on-device Whisper, exports to Markdown, PDF, DOCX and SRT, and optional AI summaries through cloud models you choose. A free version exists and Pro is a one-time 64 euro payment with lifetime updates, the opposite of a seat subscription. Its centre of gravity is still files you already have rather than back-to-back live calls, so weigh it on your real mix: if most of your meetings happen in your browser with nobody sending you recordings, a live-capture tool fits better.
On your device · No bot · Not plain files · Free: Free version forever · From €64 one-time, lifetime updates source
In the cloud, no bot
5. Jamie
Best for: Botless notes with European hosting and a stated no-training line
Jamie is a botless cloud notetaker hosted in the EEA, Switzerland and the UK, with chat across your meetings, templates and a published commitment not to train models on your data. The free tier is real but small (10 AI notes a month, meetings capped at 30 minutes), and Plus is 21 euros a month billed annually. If your objection to Granola is where the text goes rather than that a cloud processes it, Jamie answers that objection with its own hosting model. If your objection is the cloud itself, it does not, and the local group above is the honest answer.
Cloud · No bot · Not plain files · Free: Free €0: 10 AI notes/month, 30-minute meeting cap, 1 custom template · From €21/month billed annually source
6. Zoom AI Companion
Best for: Meeting notes that cost nothing extra if Zoom is already your office
Zoom AI Companion is botless, native to the calls you already hold there, and included on Zoom plans with usage limits: the free Basic tier covers summaries for three hosted meetings a month with capped queries, and paid add-ons expand it. Audio is processed for transcription and then deleted, with notes living in your Zoom account. The trade is gravity: its knowledge is your Zoom meetings, not a portable file set you own, and exports are Zoom-format pages. For single-platform teams it is the cheapest possible switch; for a notes library it is a silo wearing a familiar face.
Cloud · No bot · Not plain files · Free: Basic (free): meeting summaries for 3 hosted meetings/month, My Notes 3 uses/month, 20 AI queries; 40-minute meetings · From starting at $8.33/user/month source
7. Notion AI Meeting Notes
Best for: Meetings that should end up inside a team wiki
Notion's AI meeting notes are botless on desktop (it records your microphone and system audio) and land as Notion pages wired into your workspace, with Q&A across meetings and action items in sixteen languages. Be precise about the costs: it is not available on the Free or Plus plans (Business from $20 a seat monthly billed yearly), audio is uploaded to and stored on Notion servers until you delete it, and speaker labels cover English only. If your meeting output belongs in a shared company brain, this is the switch people actually make; if it belongs in a personal vault, you will be copying text forever.
Cloud · No bot · Not plain files · Free: Not available on Free or Plus; requires Business or Enterprise · From $20 per seat/month billed yearly, $24 monthly source
In the cloud, with a bot
8. Fireflies.ai
Best for: The broad free tier, when a visible bot is acceptable
Fireflies offers unlimited transcription and AI summaries on its free plan with 400 minutes of storage per team, and paid seats from $10 a month billed annually unlock downloads and the heavier features: AskFred chat, AI Skills, Live Assist, CRM integrations. It can join as a bot (the classic behaviour) or run botless, which changes what participants see. The free plan's detail that matters: no transcript downloads, so your history lives where they keep it. A bot in the participant list is a consent conversation every time; decide whether your meetings can carry one before this tool is even comparable to the others.
Cloud · Bot or no bot · Not plain files · Free: Free: unlimited transcription and AI summaries, 400 minutes of storage per team, no transcript downloads · From $10/seat/month billed annually, $18 monthly source
9. Otter.ai
Best for: Long-running transcripts to search across, on a familiar free plan
Otter's Basic plan is free with 300 minutes of transcription a month and 30 minutes per conversation, and the paid tiers (Pro from $8.33 per user a month billed annually) add AI chat across meetings, specialised agents and an MCP connector. It joins calls as a bot by default and can also record live. The framing to check against your habit: Otter sells you a searchable conversation history in their product. That is real value for meeting-heavy roles and close to the opposite promise of the file-first tools on this page. Decide which shape you want before comparing price lines.
Cloud · Bot or no bot · Not plain files · Free: Basic: free, 300 minutes/month, 30 minutes per conversation, 3 lifetime imports · From $8.33/user/month billed annually, $16.99 monthly source
10. Fathom
Best for: Unlimited recording and summaries on a free-forever tier
Fathom's free plan is unusually generous for sales-style work: unlimited recordings and transcriptions with instant AI call summaries, and Premium from $16 a month billed annually adds account-wide chat, scorecards and CRM sync. The old caveats are the current shape: a bot joins the call, the transcript lives in Fathom cloud, and the free tier's headline (unlimited) is why sales teams standardise on it. For a personal notes library that wants files and quiet, its value proposition barely applies; for pipeline hygiene across a team, it solves a problem most tools on this list ignore.
Cloud · Bot or no bot · Not plain files · Free: Free forever: unlimited recordings and transcriptions, instant AI call summaries; Ask Fathom limited · From $16/month billed annually, $20 monthly source
Notes apps
11. Reflect
Best for: Notes as plain files, with meetings handled by your own AI key
Reflect is a notes app first: ordinary .md files in folders you choose, synced by iCloud Drive or Git, open source on the Mac. Its meeting features (transcription, summaries, Q&A with sources) run through bring-your-own keys to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or OpenRouter, so meeting text goes to your provider, not Reflect's servers. Capture is microphone-based; it is not a system-audio call recorder. If the endgame is a permanent notes library where meetings are one more source rather than the product, Reflect keeps Obsidian-style file hygiene and adds meeting help on your terms.
Device + cloud · Mic only · Markdown files · Free: Reflect Open is free and open source on Mac (MIT) · From Paid subscription, price set per region through the App Store source
How we chose
We grouped products by how they work, because that decides what happens to your recordings: on your device, in the cloud without a bot, or in the cloud with a bot that joins the call. Prices and plans come from each vendor’s own pages on the date above. Read our privacy architecture to see the same scrutiny applied to us.
Questions
What is the cleanest free local alternative to Granola?
Meetily's Community Edition is free, open source and runs transcription on your device. Two honest caveats: exports are behind the paid tier, and accuracy depends on which local model you wire up, which a comparison page has not benchmarked for you.
Why does keeping no audio actually matter?
Because a transcript with no recording has nothing to check it against. When a line looks wrong, there is no tape to settle it. Granola's own security page describes keeping notes and text while not retaining audio. If you regularly need to verify exact quotes, pick a tool that keeps the recording or keep one yourself, lawfully and with consent.
Can I get my Granola notes out and into another app?
There is no importer anywhere in this list that claims to preserve Granola's structure. Copying a note as Markdown and pasting it into a real .md file is the honest path, which also works for typed notes via the free meeting record builder on this site. The free plan's 30-day visible window means export what matters before it disappears from view.
Is a visible meeting bot worse than a hidden one?
It is a different trade, not a moral failing. A bot announces itself to every participant and needs no extra consent choreography from you. Botless capture records the audio on your machine or uploads it to a service, and the disclosure duty falls entirely on you. Laws differ by place; check yours.
Does Oyma keep my meetings as files?
Yes. Notes and transcripts land in the plain .md file in the folder you chose, transcription runs on your Mac, and local-only mode blocks all network access. It is invite-only during the private beta, Apple silicon only, with no sync, no mobile apps and no team spaces yet.
