Fireflies.ai vs Granola: pricing, features and which to choose

Fireflies.ai was founded by Krish Ramineni and Sam Udotong, established in 2016, and launched as a product in 2018. TechCrunch reported a $14 million round led by Khosla Ventures in 2021, following an earlier $5 million seed round. The Hindu BusinessLine reported in 2025 that Fireflies had reached 500,000 companies, employed 120 people across more than 40 cities, and said it had achieved a $1 billion valuation through a tender offer. Those scale and valuation figures were company reported in that interview, not audited public company disclosures. Fireflies positions itself as a meeting memory layer, turning conversations into searchable records, analysis, tasks, and connections with business systems. Its breadth is aimed at organizational use rather than only personal note taking.

Fireflies supports a broad capture workflow. It can join Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and other conference calls, while mobile and desktop applications cover conversations outside scheduled meetings. Users can upload MP3, MP4, WAV, and M4A files, connect dialers including Aircall and RingCentral, or use the API. After capture, the service generates a transcript, summary, action items, and searchable meeting record. AskFred answers questions across stored conversations. Conversation intelligence adds speaker talk time, sentiment, questions, topic trackers, and team insights. Integrations send results into CRM, collaboration, and workflow tools. This supports sales reviews, recruiting interviews, customer conversations, and internal meetings, although broader capture also increases consent, retention, and permission responsibilities.

Fireflies is broad, but that breadth makes billing and administration more complex than a simple notetaker. AI Skills, AskFred, custom summaries, and soundbites can consume credits beyond the subscription. Fathom is easier for individuals wanting unlimited free recordings and a focused summary workflow. Otter.ai remains a straightforward live transcription alternative, while Gong and Avoma target revenue teams with deeper sales workflows. Fireflies does not offer self hosted deployment, so hosted service requirements matter. Pick Fireflies if your organization needs dialers, uploads, mobile capture, multilingual transcription, conversation analytics, an API, and administrative controls. Choose a simpler competitor if predictable individual use, minimal configuration, or uncomplicated billing is the priority.

Granola is designed around meetings rather than a general project database. Its desktop and mobile apps capture device audio and produce transcripts, summaries, decisions, action items, and reusable note formats. It can work without a conspicuous bot joining a video call, supporting local notetaking, though organizations still need consent and recording practices. Features include AI chat across meetings, shared folders, custom templates, multilingual support, recipes, pre-meeting briefs, follow-up emails, and integrations. Basic costs $0 per user per month, Business costs $14, and Enterprise costs $35. Business adds advanced models, collaboration and CRM integrations, MCP, and API access. Enterprise adds SSO, administration, retention, analytics, support, audit API, SCIM, HIPAA-compliant workspaces, and organization-wide controls. Granola suits meeting-focused teams needing searchable notes and shared context.

Granola offers Basic, Business, and Enterprise plans. Basic is free at $0 per user per month and includes AI meeting notes, 30 days of history, AI chat, shared folders, templates, multilingual support, Slack integration, and per-user training opt-out. Business costs $14 per user per month with monthly billing, adding unlimited history, advanced AI models and features, pre-meeting briefs, follow-up emails, a workspace dictionary, integrations with Notion, Zapier, HubSpot, Affinity, and Attio, centralized billing, MCP, and API access. Enterprise costs $35 per user per month through a monthly or annual contract and adds SSO, security and administration, priority support, analytics, retention policies, sharing controls, audit API, SCIM, HIPAA-compliant workspaces, and organization-wide training opt-out. Choose it if you need meeting-focused notes, collaboration, integrations, or enterprise controls.

Granola was founded in March 2023 by Chris Pedregal and Sam Stephenson. Announcements identify a $4.25 million seed round in 2023, a $20 million Series A in October 2024, and a $43 million Series B in May 2025 led by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross's NFDG. Reported funding reached $67 million, with a $250 million valuation reported at the Series B. Granola's 2.0 announcement described a collaborative team workspace direction. Compared with ClickUp Brain, Granola is narrower and more meeting-focused. Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai provide comparable transcription and meeting intelligence, while Notion AI begins within a broader workspace. Granola's bot-free capture and editable notepad distinguish its workflow, making it a fit for professionals and teams that need searchable meeting notes, shared context, and integrations.