Granola vs Otter vs Fireflies for Meeting Notes in 2026

Granola, Otter.ai, and Fireflies.ai are the three dominant AI meeting notes apps in 2026. Granola ($18/month) enhances your own notes with AI structure. Otter ($16.99/month) provides live transcription with a meeting bot. Fireflies ($10/user/month) automatically joins meetings and pushes structured summaries to CRM systems. For private on-device transcription: Nemos.

Granola

Granola is an AI-augmented notepad. You type your own notes during a meeting (or leave them blank), and after the meeting Granola combines your notes with AI analysis to generate a clean structured summary. There is no bot that joins the meeting. The recording and transcription happen on your Mac (not a cloud bot), so Granola is more privacy-friendly than Otter and Fireflies.

Best for: solo professionals and consultants who prefer to take their own notes and want AI to enhance them. Does not support real-time live captions.

Cost: $18/month. Mac app required; iOS companion.

Otter.ai

Otter.ai provides real-time live transcription during meetings with shared editing and AI summaries. OtterPilot (Zoom/Teams/Meet bot) requires Pro plan. Free tier includes 300 minutes/month without bot features.

Best for: teams that need real-time shared transcripts and action item extraction during calls. Strong Zoom and Google Meet integration.

Cost: Free (300 min), Pro $16.99/month, Business $19.99/user/month.

Fireflies.ai

Fireflies automatically joins your calendar meetings as a bot, records, transcribes, and pushes summaries to Salesforce, HubSpot, Notion, and Slack. The most integrated option for sales teams.

Best for: sales teams wanting CRM auto-updates from meetings. Requires joining every meeting as a bot (may be off-putting to clients).

Cost: Free (limited), Pro $10/user/month, Business $19/user/month.

Nemos: On-Device Alternative

For personal meeting notes with no audio sent to a cloud transcriber: Nemos records on iPhone and, once you turn on “Transcribe on this device”, transcribes on-device. No bot joins the call. Works for in-person meetings, phone calls, and situations where a cloud bot is not appropriate. Free to start; Pro makes recording unlimited.