Fireflies.ai vs Granola: A Team Call Library or Private Notes

The short answer: if six people run customer calls and the team wants every one kept, searchable and clippable, Fireflies.ai fits, at 6 x $10 = $60 a month on Pro billed annually; if you want your own notes finished after each meeting and no recording left to account for, Granola fits, for $14 per person each month on Business (it bills monthly only), after a free Basic plan that shows 30 days of history (Fireflies pricing, Granola billing article; figures checked on 26 October 2026). Choose Fireflies.ai if your job is a shared library of what customers said. Choose Granola if your job is leaving each meeting with notes and nothing else stored.

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What Granola changes is what exists once the call ends. It sends nothing into the meeting: it transcribes your microphone and system audio once you open the meeting's note, writes notes from your typing and that transcript, and saves no audio or video (transcription guide). The note stays private until you share it. It wins the job of the founder or marketing lead in back-to-back meetings who needs decisions on paper before the next call.

Fireflies.ai wins the other job. Fred, its meeting bot, sits in on Zoom, Google Meet and Teams calls, and recording, transcript and summary land in a workspace the team searches, with AskFred and AI Skills on top (homepage). It no longer needs the bot to do that: the Chrome extension records Google Meet without Fred, and Take Notes in the desktop app captures a call from your own machine (pricing page, consent guide). So the bot is not the dividing line any more. The archive is.

What decides it:

1. The seat bill, done both ways. For example, a company of 15 where 6 people hold customer calls. Fireflies bills the teammates added to its workspace and lets anyone else open a recap link free, so Pro billed annually comes to 6 x $10 = $60 a month (pricing FAQ). Granola charges every active member of a workspace: 15 x $14 = $210 a month for one shared workspace, or 6 x $14 = $84 for a workspace of six whose notes the other nine cannot see (billing article).
2. The recordings you already hold. Zoom cloud files and webinar exports can go into Fireflies as MP3, MP4, WAV or M4A (homepage); Granola transcribes live meetings only and imports no file (transcription guide). If last quarter's calls matter, that settles it.
3. The number to read after two weeks. For Fireflies, how many stored calls someone other than the host opened again. For Granola, how many notes left the app without being retyped. A library nobody reopens is only a cost.

Side by side, from the vendors' own pages

Where a stored recording changes your notice

For a team in the EU, this is where the two part ways. Article 6(1) of the GDPR makes processing lawful only on one of its listed grounds, such as the person's consent under point (a) or a legitimate interest under point (f). Article 13 then lists what people must be given when their data is collected from them, including who receives it, in 13(1)(e), and how long it will be stored or how that period is set, in 13(2)(a) (GDPR on EUR-Lex, read on 26 October 2026).

A Fireflies call leaves a recording in a team workspace, so your notice names the colleagues who can open it and how long it stays; custom retention is an Enterprise feature (pricing). A Granola call leaves a transcript in your account, with auto-deletion from 1 day to 1 year (auto-deletion article). Less is kept, so there is less to explain. Neither tool picks your lawful basis, and the customer calls use case covers what changes once quotes from recorded calls feed your marketing.

What a year costs

Checked on 26 October 2026; US dollars, one seat, one month. Fireflies.ai: Free at $0; Pro at $10 billed annually or $18 monthly; Business at $19 or $29; Enterprise at $39, annual only (pricing). Granola: nothing for Basic; $14 for a Business seat, invoiced monthly, because annual billing is kept for Enterprise contracts, which start from $35 (billing article, pricing).

For example, six callers for 12 months: Fireflies Pro billed annually is 6 x $10 x 12 = $720, and Granola Business 6 x $14 x 12 = $1,008. Granola is the dearer seat and the smaller footprint.

Storage is where a recorder earns its upgrades. The Fireflies pricing page gives Free 400 minutes of storage per team and Pro 8,000 minutes a seat, and Business removes the cap (pricing), so every call Fred keeps by default moves the account closer to the tier above. Decide which meetings deserve a recording before the bot starts collecting.

One agent step on each side

Fireflies documents an MCP server, reachable at https://api.fireflies.ai/mcp, with a tool that reads a full transcript and another that creates a soundbite from a transcript ID plus start and end times (MCP tools). A weekly step: ask your assistant for the three moments in this week's demos where a prospect described the problem in their own words, with a proposed soundbite for each. You play every clip before it reaches the sales channel, because a clip shares a customer's voice.

Granola cannot clip, since it holds no audio. Its MCP server instead returns screenshots of screens shared in a meeting through get_meeting_attachment (MCP article); check any figure an assistant reads off a slide against your own notes before you repeat it.

Choose Fireflies.ai if

• Sales, success and the marketer who writes the pages need the same calls.
• You need the recording itself, as video, a clip or a download.
• Calls arrive as files, or in a language outside Granola's list.

Choose Granola if

• The notes are yours and stay private until you share them.
• A recording would change the conversation: an investor, a candidate, a partner who dislikes bots.
• You want as little as possible stored about each meeting.

Try both before paying either

A week costs nothing on either side: Granola Basic for internal meetings, Fireflies Free on external calls only. The Fireflies free plan gives three transcriptions until Auto Join is on (free plan article), so set which meetings Fred may join before you flip that switch. Then read the two numbers from the list above and pay for the tool that got used.

FAQ

Does Granola keep a recording I can replay?

No. On desktop it saves no audio; on iPhone it caches audio during the meeting and deletes it once transcription ends (consent page).

Can Fireflies.ai capture a call without Fred joining?

Yes. The Chrome extension records Google Meet, and Take Notes in the desktop app captures calls from your computer; its "AI Taking Notes" camera badge and a spoken notice about 10 seconds in are both switched on by default (consent guide).

Which one handles an in-person meeting?

Both, from a phone. The Fireflies mobile app transcribes in-person conversations (homepage). Granola's iPhone and Android apps, free to use on any plan, record from the phone's microphone and tell speakers apart (mobile transcription, billing article).