Granola vs Hedy: Two Bot-Free Notetakers, One Big Difference

Granola and Hedy get compared more than any other pair in our inbox, and for a good reason. They are the two best-known notetakers that never put a bot in your meeting. Both capture audio from your own device. Both work on Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, and anything else that plays sound through your computer. Both now run on Mac, Windows, iPhone, and Android.

So the usual first question, “does it join my call?”, gets the same answer from both: no. The question that separates them is the next one. Where does the audio go once it leaves your microphone, and who gets to keep it?

Granola sends it to the cloud for its AI step and, by default, uses de-identified meeting data to train models unless you turn that off. Hedy can run the whole pipeline (transcription, summaries, and live coaching) on your own hardware, with nothing sent to a server at all. Until this summer that read like a preference. Since 30 July 2026 it has also been the subject of a proposed class action against Granola, and the comparison reads differently now.

In our rankings, Hedy scores 4.7 overall and Granola 3.4. Here is where that gap comes from, and where Granola is still the better pick.

How each one feels to use

Granola is a notepad first. You type rough notes while the meeting runs: a name, a number, “pricing pushback?”. When the call ends, Granola reads your notes against the transcript and rewrites them into something complete. The output keeps your priorities because it starts from what you chose to write down. People who like taking notes tend to love it. It is also one of the best-designed apps in the category, and that counts for something you open ten times a day.

Hedy does most of its work while you are still talking. It transcribes live, and its coaching layer surfaces suggestions, follow-up questions, and context from earlier meetings during the conversation. On a negotiation, an interview, or a sales call, that is a different job from tidying up notes afterwards. You can type your own notes in Hedy too, and they feed the AI, but the product’s center of gravity is the live meeting rather than the cleanup after it.

If you want to stay the author of your notes and have AI polish them, Granola’s model fits. If you want help while the conversation is still happening, Hedy is the one built for it.

Where the audio goes

Both tools capture locally, and both get credit for that in our recording-method scores. The fork comes after capture.

Granola processes in the cloud. Audio is cached during the meeting and deleted once transcription is done, but the transcript and notes stay on Granola’s servers indefinitely unless a retention policy is set. Its privacy policy, last updated 8 September 2026, says it uses de-identified data to train AI models unless you opt out. Any user on any plan can switch that off in Settings, which is often reported wrong. On the $35 Enterprise tier, training is off by default and an admin can enforce it for the whole company. The same policy says data already used in training “will not be removed from those models and datasets,” so the toggle only protects what you record after you flip it.

Hedy offers Local AI Processing, released in May 2026, which runs transcription, summaries, detailed notes, chat, and real-time coaching on your device. It works on Apple Silicon Macs, Windows machines with a capable GPU, iPhone 15 Pro and newer, M-series and A17 Pro iPads, and, since September, Android phones with a supported GPU and about 8 GB of memory. It works offline. When you use Hedy’s cloud features instead, its AI providers are contractually barred from training on your content, and you choose EU or US data residency at signup.

That is why Granola scores a 2 on our retention-and-training criterion and Hedy a 5. It is also the main reason for the privacy gap (3 vs 5) and the offline gap (1 vs 5).

The lawsuit, briefly

Chamberlain v. Granola, Inc., No. 3:26-cv-07926, was filed in the Northern District of California on 30 July 2026. The plaintiff never used Granola. She says another participant’s copy recorded her on a Teams or Zoom call without notice, and that Granola used the content to train its models. The complaint quotes Granola’s own marketing that other people in the room “won’t know” it is there.

These are allegations at the pleading stage, and no court has found that Granola broke any law. We covered the filing in detail in Granola’s Lawsuit Tests the Bot-Free Privacy Argument. For this comparison, the part that matters is the legal theory. In August, a federal judge let a similar case against Otter.ai proceed on the basis that a vendor which independently collects, retains, and uses recordings for its own purposes can be treated as a third-party eavesdropper (our write-up). That theory has nothing to do with bots. It is about whether the vendor keeps a copy and uses it.

With Local AI on, Hedy never receives a copy to keep. That is a structural difference rather than a promise in a policy.

One thing the lawsuit does not change, for either tool: if you record people, you have to tell them. Silent capture is not consent, and in all-party-consent states and under GDPR the obligation is yours. That applies to Hedy as much as to Granola.

Where Granola is ahead

Granola does some things better, and you should know which.

Note quality for note-takers. The blended notes are excellent. If you already take good notes, Granola makes them better without changing how you work.

Team knowledge. Spaces, the People and Companies views, and AI chat across every past meeting (on the free plan too) make Granola a strong shared memory for a team. Hedy’s Topics feature carries context across related meetings and drafts prep notes before the next one, so it is a close race, and Granola’s team workspace is the more developed of the two.

Native integrations. Granola’s Business plan connects directly to Notion, Slack, HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, and Zapier. Hedy reaches most of the same tools through Zapier, a verified n8n node, a REST API, and webhooks, but deep two-way CRM sync still runs through those rather than native connectors. Both have an MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT, and similar assistants.

Design. Granola is a pleasure to use. That is a real advantage.

Where Hedy is ahead

On-device AI and offline use. This is the main difference and the main reason for the score gap. Hedy works on a plane, in a secure facility, and in a basement conference room with no signal. Granola has no offline mode.

Live coaching. Granola’s intelligence mostly arrives after the meeting. Hedy’s arrives during it, and on an Apple Watch you can glance at it without looking at your phone.

Training default. Hedy does not train on your meetings. Granola does unless you or your admin turn it off.

Data residency on every paid tier. Granola’s security documentation is strong in places. It holds SOC 2 Type II, which is a step beyond Hedy’s Type I, and it deletes meeting audio once transcription finishes. But all Granola data sits on AWS in the United States, with no EU or UK option, and HIPAA support with a Business Associate Agreement is limited to the Enterprise plan. Hedy lets you pick EU or US residency at signup on Pro and Team. For a European team, that difference settles the shortlist before features come up. On HIPAA the two are closer than they look: both sign a BAA only on Enterprise, and Hedy’s Enterprise plan has a 200-seat minimum.

A web app and public recaps. Hedy runs in the browser. Granola still does not. Since late August, Hedy Pro can also publish a finished session as a link that someone without an account can open, with audio always left out.

Pricing

	Hedy	Granola
Free plan	5 hours of meetings per month	Limited notes, 30-day history
Paid entry	$12.99/month or $99.99/year (Pro)	$14/user/month (Business)
Enterprise	Custom	$35/user/month
Lifetime license	$299 one-time	Not offered
Training on your data	No	Yes by default, opt-out in Settings

Granola’s free Basic plan includes AI notes and chat, but it only shows the last 30 days of meetings, and unlimited notes start on Business. Hedy’s 5 free hours renew every month. On paid plans the two are close for one person, and Hedy’s $299 lifetime license works out cheaper than either subscription after a couple of years.

Quick comparison

	Hedy	Granola
Bot in the meeting	No	No
AI processing	On-device (supported hardware) or EU/US cloud	Cloud
Works offline	Yes	No
Real-time coaching	Yes	No
Note style	Live transcript, coaching, structured recap	Your notes, expanded with the transcript
Platforms	Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, web, Apple Watch	Mac, Windows, iOS, Android
Integrations	Zapier, n8n, REST API, webhooks, MCP	Notion, Slack, HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, Zapier, MCP, API
HIPAA BAA	Enterprise plan only (200-seat minimum)	Enterprise plan only ($35/user)
SOC 2	Type I	Type II
Data residency	EU or US, your choice	US only
Overall score	4.7	3.4

Which one should you choose?

Choose Granola if you like writing your own notes and want AI to finish them, your team will use the shared workspace and native CRM links, and your meetings are not sensitive enough for a cloud copy to be a problem. Turn the training toggle off on day one, and make sure everyone on the team does the same.

Choose Hedy if the conversations are confidential (clients, patients, candidates, deals), you want help during the meeting and not just a summary afterwards, you need it to work offline, or you would rather not have a vendor-held copy of your meetings at all.

For a side-by-side of all 13 scores, see the Granola vs Hedy comparison table. If Granola’s training default or the lawsuit is what brought you here, our Granola alternatives page ranks the rest of the bot-free field.