AI meeting notes have gone from novelty to standard practice. If you’re still manually typing meeting notes, you’re leaving an easy productivity win on the table.
The top three tools — Granola, Otter.ai, and Fireflies — each take a different approach. After testing all three on 30+ real meetings, here’s the breakdown.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | Granola | Otter.ai | Fireflies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform | Mac (app) | Web + mobile | Web (bot joins calls) |
| Transcription method | System audio | Bot or upload | Bot joins meeting |
| Notetaking style | Enhances your notes | Full transcript + AI | Full transcript + AI |
| Summary quality | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Action items | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Integrations | Google Calendar, Notion | Zoom, Teams, Slack | Zoom, Teams, Hubspot |
| Privacy | High (local audio) | Standard | Bot visible to all |
| Free tier | Yes (limited) | Yes (300 min/mo) | Yes (800 min/mo) |
| Pro price | $18/mo | $16.99/mo | $18/mo |
Granola: The “Enhance Your Notes” Approach
Granola works differently from the other two. Instead of transcribing everything and then summarizing, Granola:
- Captures your meeting audio silently in the background
- You take rough notes during the meeting (optional but valuable)
- After the meeting, Granola uses your rough notes + the transcript to generate clean, structured notes
This approach produces dramatically better output. When you’ve jotted down “John — concerned about Q3” during the meeting, Granola can expand that into a proper action item with context from the conversation. The combination of human-signaled importance + AI-processed transcript is the key innovation.
What makes Granola stand out:
- Mac app: Runs natively, captures system audio without visible bots
- Your notes + AI: The best notes come from human + AI collaboration, not AI alone
- Privacy: Audio processed locally or on Granola’s servers, no visible bot that “joins” calls
- Templates: Meeting type templates (1:1, standup, design review) guide the output format
- Action item quality: Because you’ve highlighted important points, action items are more accurate
Limitations:
- Mac only (Windows coming)
- Requires you to take at least minimal notes for best results
- Less useful for people who want 100% passive note-taking
Otter.ai: The Transcript Giant
Otter is the most established player, and its transcript accuracy is excellent. It supports Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, and most other platforms. The free tier is generous enough (300 minutes/month) to evaluate properly.
What Otter does well:
- Comprehensive transcripts with speaker identification
- Live transcription visible during the meeting
- Chat with the meeting transcript post-meeting
- Good Zoom/Teams integration
- OtterPilot auto-joins your calendar meetings
Otter’s weaknesses:
- Summary quality is good but not as contextually smart as Granola’s
- The interface feels cluttered — lots of features that aren’t always needed
- OtterPilot bot is visible to other participants (can be awkward in some contexts)
- Action items require more manual extraction than Granola
Fireflies: The CRM-Focused Choice
Fireflies differentiates on integrations. It connects to HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack, Notion, and dozens of other tools, making it the best choice for teams that want meeting intelligence flowing into their workflows automatically.
What Fireflies does well:
- Best integrations in the category (HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack)
- “Ask Fred” — ask questions about your meeting transcripts
- Meeting analytics (who talked the most, sentiment tracking)
- Generous free tier (800 minutes/month)
- Good for sales teams where meeting notes need to flow into CRM
Fireflies’ weaknesses:
- The bot joining the call is visible and slightly odd-looking to participants
- Summary quality doesn’t match Granola’s enhanced notes approach
- UI can be overwhelming
Transcript Accuracy Test
We recorded the same 30-minute meeting with each tool and compared accuracy:
| Condition | Granola | Otter | Fireflies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clear audio | 98% | 97% | 96% |
| Background noise | 89% | 87% | 85% |
| Multiple speakers | 92% | 94% | 90% |
| Technical jargon | 85% | 88% | 83% |
All three are excellent in good conditions. Otter edges ahead slightly on multi-speaker accuracy due to its more mature speaker diarization.
Summary Quality Comparison
This is where Granola wins significantly. We compared summaries of the same meeting:
Otter: Comprehensive bullet-point summary of everything discussed. Good completeness, but you’re still reading through a lot.
Fireflies: Similar to Otter. Clean format, good action item detection.
Granola: Because we’d taken notes during the meeting, Granola’s output was more focused — it surfaced the things we’d flagged as important and built the rest around them. Much faster to act on.
Who Should Use Which
Use Granola if:
- You’re on Mac and don’t mind taking light notes during meetings
- Summary quality matters more than raw features
- You’re in lots of 1:1s and small team meetings
- Privacy (no visible bot) is important in your meeting culture
Use Otter.ai if:
- You want live transcription visible during the meeting
- You’re on Windows (or need cross-platform)
- You want 300 free minutes/month to properly evaluate
- Good Zoom/Teams integration is important
Use Fireflies if:
- You need meeting data flowing into HubSpot or Salesforce
- You’re a sales team wanting meeting analytics
- You want the most generous free tier (800 min/mo)
- You do lots of external customer/prospect calls
Verdict
Granola wins for most individual users, particularly Mac users who take even minimal notes during meetings. The note-enhancement approach produces better output than pure transcription + AI summarization.
Otter.ai is the best cross-platform choice and has the most mature transcription technology.
Fireflies wins for sales teams and anyone where CRM integration is the primary use case.
All three have free tiers worth testing. Start with Granola if you’re on Mac; start with Fireflies if CRM integration matters.