Granola vs HyNote

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors.

The short answer

Entry price: Granola from $14/seat/mo, HyNote from $6.66/mo — different billing units, so no direct winner
Free plan: Both have one
Public API: Granola has one; not confirmed by us for HyNote
Higher Trust score: Granola — 91 vs 79 for HyNote
Best fit: Granola: Founders, salespeople and consultants in back-to-back external meetings who want a brief before and a summary after · HyNote: Students and consultants capturing lectures, calls and reading in one place

From our own records as of each tool's last check. Anything we have not confirmed is left out rather than guessed. How we verify

GranolaMeeting notepad that captures computer audio without a bot and merges your typed notes with the transcript into a summary.

HyNoteCaptures meetings, calls, PDFs, videos, images and web pages into one notebook with transcripts and summaries.

Side by side

Fact	Granola	HyNote
Category	Meeting Assistants	Note-taking & Second Brain
Pricing model	Freemium	Freemium
Starts at	$14/seat/mo	$6.66/mo
Public API	Yes	Not confirmed
Trust score	91 / 100	79 / 100
Platforms	macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, API	Web, iOS, Android, macOS, Chrome extension
Company	Granola, Inc.	Turing Intelligence LLC
Last verified	Sep 6, 2026	Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

Granola

Granola is the note-taker for people who dislike note-taker bots: nothing joins the call, you keep writing your own shorthand, and the transcript fills in what you missed. The free tier is genuinely usable for an individual as long as you do not need notes older than a month; teams pay $14 a seat for history, integrations and the API, and anyone who wants a searchable archive of every call they ever had should budget for that from day one.

Pros

Bot-free capture through system audio works on every meeting platform and in person
Your typed notes stay the backbone; the AI enhances rather than overwrites them
Native apps on macOS, Windows, iOS, Android and Apple Watch
MCP connector and, on Business, an API and Notion/Zapier/HubSpot integrations
Free tier with unlimited notes and Slack sharing

Cons

Free plan keeps only 30 days of meeting history
Business and Enterprise prices are listed without saying whether they are annual or monthly rates
Model-training opt-out is per user below Enterprise, so a team cannot enforce it centrally
Captures only what the computer hears — a muted colleague's side on a phone call is lost

HyNote

Unusually wide input coverage for the price: audio, phone calls, PDFs, images, YouTube and web pages all land in the same notebook, and the free tier records two hours per session without a card. The paid meter is minutes of transcription, so heavy recorders climb tiers quickly. Speaker identification and real-time transcription are held back to the second tier.

Pros

Ingests audio, phone calls, PDFs, images (OCR), YouTube and web pages into one note store
Free tier allows 120-minute recording sessions with no card
Syncs across web, iOS, Android, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac and a Chrome extension
Mac app offers free unlimited local transcription
30+ output templates and exports to Google Docs and Notion on higher tiers

Cons

Speaker identification and real-time transcription require the $10.83 tier, not the entry plan
All advertised monthly prices are annual-billing rates
No public API

Which one fits

Choose Granola if you need

Founders, salespeople and consultants in back-to-back external meetings who want a brief before and a summary after
People who take their own notes and want them enhanced, not replaced
Teams that cannot have a visible bot in client or candidate calls

Choose HyNote if you need

Students and consultants capturing lectures, calls and reading in one place
People who record on a phone and edit on a laptop
Anyone needing local Mac transcription for privacy