Granola vs Fathom (2026): notepad or recorder?

Granola vs Fathom comes down to one question: do you want notes or a recording? Granola is a bot-free notepad that turns your typed notes into a summary and does not store the audio. Fathom is a recorder that keeps the call, joins with a bot by default, and offers bot-free capture only in its Mac app.

Granola never joins the call. Its security page says you start it manually for a meeting, it does not auto-join or auto-record anything, and it listens to your microphone and the meeting audio on your computer. On macOS and Windows it transcribes in real time and does not store the audio; the mobile apps transcribe after the meeting from temporarily cached audio. The pricing page lists audio deletion after transcription on every plan. During the call you type rough notes, and afterwards Granola writes a clean version that combines your notes with what it heard. The upside is a quiet tool nobody else sees. The cost is that there is no recording to replay or clip later.

Fathom started as a bot that joins Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls, and the bot is still its full video path. Its update page now lets you choose per meeting: a bot with video and audio, bot-free video (a limited beta for Zoom), bot-free audio plus transcript, or a bot-free transcript with no recording saved. The bot-free modes live in the Fathom 3.0 desktop app, which Fathom's help center says is only available for Mac. On Windows, bot-free recording is in a limited Microsoft Teams alpha, and Fathom says Windows is next. The pricing page still labels bot-free capture a beta. In return you get the recording itself: replay, clips, highlight playlists and search across calls.

Fathom's free plan is the bigger one on volume: unlimited recordings, transcription and storage, with advanced AI summaries for your first 5 calls each month and a general summary template after that, per Fathom's help center. It also includes HubSpot, Salesforce and Close sync for up to 3 users per email domain. Granola Basic is free with AI notes, speaker tagging, templates, shared folders, Slack and AI chat, but meeting history stops at 30 days and its MCP access covers only your personal notes from the last 30 days. If you want a free archive, Fathom. If you only need this week's notes, Granola Basic is enough.

Granola's output starts from you. What you type during the meeting steers the final note, templates and Recipes shape it, and AI chat answers questions across meetings (Basic uses an automatic model, Business lets you pick the model). Fathom's output starts from the recording: automatic summaries and action items, advanced summaries with over 15 meeting templates such as BANT and Sandler, AI follow-up emails, and Ask Fathom for questions about a call or, in beta, across your account. People who think by typing tend to prefer Granola. People who want to stay fully in the conversation and review later tend to prefer Fathom.

Both connect to AI assistants now. Granola has an MCP connector on every plan for Claude, ChatGPT and others, limited on Basic to your personal notes from the last 30 days, plus an API on Business. Fathom offers MCP integrations for ChatGPT and Claude, a public API, Zapier, Make and Slack. On CRMs, Fathom goes deeper for sales teams: HubSpot, Salesforce and Close sync, with automatic CRM field updates after each meeting on Business. Granola's Business plan connects HubSpot, Attio and Affinity, and its pricing table puts Salesforce on Enterprise.

Granola organises a team around shared folders and workspace notes, with centralised billing on Business and workspace-wide sharing settings, usage analytics and an admin-enforced notice that Granola is in use on Enterprise. Fathom organises a team around recordings: team folders, comments and mentions, highlight playlists, keyword trackers routed to Slack or email, and Deal View on Business. The simplest way to decide: Granola shares notes, Fathom shares recordings and clips.

Both hold SOC 2 Type II: Granola on every plan, per its pricing page, and Fathom, per its security help article, which also lists HIPAA and GDPR. Granola keeps HIPAA-compliant workspaces, SSO and SCIM for Enterprise and stores notes in a US-hosted AWS private cloud. Fathom puts SSO, SCIM and a signed BAA on Enterprise. On training, both say third-party AI vendors may not train on your data, and both use anonymized or de-identified customer data to improve their own models with an opt-out: per user at Granola (off by default on Enterprise), per user or for the whole account at Fathom. The bigger difference is what there is to protect: Granola keeps no audio, while Fathom keeps the recording unless you choose its transcript-only mode.

• You attend your own meetings and like typing notes that AI then cleans up.
• You want no bot in the call on Mac and Windows alike.
• You prefer that no recording of the meeting exists afterwards.
• You need mobile apps: Granola ships iOS, Android and Apple Watch apps.
• You want the cheaper team seat: $14 per user a month on Business.

• You want the recording: replay, clips and highlight playlists.
• You want the bigger free plan: unlimited recordings and storage.
• You run sales calls and want HubSpot, Salesforce or Close sync, CRM field updates and coaching scorecards.
• You are on a Mac and want to choose bot or no bot meeting by meeting, including Slack Huddles.
• You are happy with a visible bot when you want full video capture.

Two other bot-free tools come up next to both. Jamie is a competitor we describe only from its own site; Reline is our product, so read that part as a vendor making its case.

Jamie says it runs on your device with no bot and works across Zoom, Teams, Google Meet and in-person meetings, from a laptop or a phone. Like Granola, its homepage says audio is deleted after transcription. The differences from Granola, per meetjamie.ai: storage and processing stay within the EEA, Switzerland and the UK (Granola stores notes in a US-hosted AWS cloud), Jamie is ISO 27001 certified (Granola holds SOC 2 Type II), and it lists notes and transcripts in 99+ languages against Granola's 31 on desktop. Jamie's free plan allows 10 AI notes a month and meetings up to 30 minutes; Pro is €39 a month and Team €33 per seat a month, both billed annually, with CRM, API and MCP integrations from Pro up. For Granola vs Jamie: Granola if you want Android and Apple Watch apps and a cheaper team seat, Jamie if EU data residency and language coverage matter more.

Reline sits between the two: like Granola, no bot joins the call; like Fathom, the recording is kept. The desktop app records your microphone and the call audio locally on macOS, Windows and Linux (beta), or you record in the browser. Transcription (60+ languages via Soniox), AI and storage run in our cloud. Notes live in a Notion-style page your team edits together in real time, with the summary next to the transcript and a play button on each transcript line. Chat answers questions across your notes, and an MCP server connects Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor. Summaries and action items go to Slack, Linear or Notion, or to Zapier, Make or n8n through signed webhooks. Free is 10 hours of transcription a month (1 hour per note, no card); Professional is $15 per user a month, or $12 billed annually.

Reline is the wrong pick if you need mobile apps (it has none yet), a SOC 2 certificate today, a bot that records full video, native CRM field sync like Fathom Business, or Fathom's unlimited free recording volume.