Pricing breakdown
Granola AI pricing, and what you actually pay
Granola has a free tier and two paid ones. The number most people want is $14 per user per month. The part that decides it for most people is not the number, it is what the free tier stops doing after a while. Here is the whole picture, checked against Granola's own pricing page.
Granola's plans, as published
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | AI meeting notes, limited meeting history, AI chat, shared folders, templates. |
| Business | $14 / user / month | Unlimited notes and history, advanced models, integrations, API access. |
| Enterprise | $35 / user / month | Adds SSO, admin controls, priority support, org-wide retention rules. |
Read off granola.ai/pricing on 19 September 2026. Granola shows no annual price on that page. Prices change, so check the source before you buy.
Is Granola free? Yes, until your history runs out
The free tier is not a demo. You get AI meeting notes, AI chat across your meetings, shared folders, custom templates and multi-language support, and you can opt out of model training. For a light user that is genuinely enough.
The limit is meeting history. Granola's free tier keeps a limited window of it. Your notes from a while back stop being something you can open and search. If you use meeting notes the way most people end up using them, which is looking something up months later, that window is the thing that eventually pushes you onto the $14 plan.
That is a fair business model and it is how most of this market works. It is worth naming plainly though, because "free" and "free forever, with everything you recorded" are two different offers.
What the whole market charges
| Product | Free tier | Entry paid price |
|---|---|---|
| Ghosty Notes | Unlimited local meetings, full history | Pro $5 / month, $54 / year |
| Granola | Limited meeting history | Business $14 / user / month |
| Otter | 300 minutes a month, 30 minutes a call | Pro $8.33 annual, $16.99 monthly |
| Fathom | Unlimited recordings and transcripts | Team $15 annual, $19 monthly |
| Fireflies | Limited transcription credits | Pro $10 annual, $18 monthly |
All competitor prices read off each vendor's own pricing page on 19 September 2026, except Fireflies, whose price table is rendered in JavaScript and was taken from Fireflies' own knowledge base. Ghosty Notes pricing comes from this site's own pricing contract.
When paying Granola is the right call
- You are on Windows, or you need a phone app. Ghosty Notes is macOS on Apple Silicon only.
- Your team wants shared notes, central billing and admin controls.
- You want Notion, Slack, HubSpot or Zapier integrations out of the box.
- You are happy for your meeting audio to be processed in the cloud.
When $5 buys you more than $14
- You are on an Apple Silicon Mac and you work mostly alone or in a small team.
- You want every meeting kept, not a rolling history window.
- Your audio should not leave your machine. Transcription runs on the device.
- You want your notes as plain markdown files in a folder you chose.
- You query your notes from Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Codex over MCP.
Questions people actually ask
- Is Granola AI free?
- There is a free tier, and it is a real one. It gives you AI meeting notes, AI chat, shared folders and templates. The catch is meeting history: the free tier only keeps a limited window of it, so older meetings stop being reachable. Unlimited history starts at the Business plan, $14 per user per month.
- How much does Granola AI cost?
- Granola Business is $14 per user per month and Granola Enterprise is $35 per user per month. Those are the two paid tiers listed on granola.ai/pricing, checked on 19 September 2026. No annual price is shown on that page.
- Is there a Granola AI coupon, promo code or student discount?
- Granola does not publish a coupon, a promo code or a student discount on its pricing page. If you find one advertised elsewhere, check it against granola.ai directly before trusting it.
- What is the cheapest alternative to Granola?
- Ghosty Notes is $5 a month for Pro, which is about a third of Granola Business at $14 per user per month, and the free tier keeps unlimited local meetings with no history window. The trade-off is real: Ghosty Notes runs on Apple Silicon Macs only, and it has no mobile app.
- Does Granola charge per user?
- Yes. Both paid tiers are priced per user per month, so a team of five on Business is $70 a month. Ghosty Notes Pro is priced per person at $5 a month with no seat minimum.
Want the feature-by-feature version? Read Ghosty Notes vs Granola, or compare every competitor. Our own prices are on thepricing page. Looking for something free? Seethe free AI note takers, compared honestly.
Same bot-free notes. A third of the price.
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