The short answer
Granola is an AI notepad for meetings. Its site says it uses your computer audio and your microphone rather than inviting a bot, and turns the conversation into notes and action items. Its setup guide says it runs on macOS 14 or later, Windows, iPhone and Android. Its help center says the app passes that audio to its transcription provider and does not record or save it during the call. Its security page says the transcript and the notes are kept on servers in the United States.
Fraze is not a notepad. It shows live captions of any audio your computer plays, or of your microphone, with a translation under each line. Speech recognition and translation both run on your own machine, so no audio or transcript text is uploaded, and it works with Wi-Fi off.
If what you want is the written summary at the end, Granola is the better tool and this page will not argue otherwise. Fraze writes no notes at all.
What Granola does
- AI notes. You can type a few rough lines, and the docs say Granola uses them with the transcript to add context, summaries and structure once the call ends.
- No meeting bot. The help center says the app captures your microphone and system audio itself, so no extra attendee appears in the call.
- Any meeting software, because it listens to the computer. The docs say it cannot isolate one app's audio, so anything else playing is transcribed too.
- Speaker tags with names: the docs list them for Google Meet on macOS and Windows and for Zoom on macOS. Elsewhere the transcript says Me and Them.
- Chat within and across meetings, templates and a Slack link on every plan. Paid plans add Notion, Zapier, several CRMs and pre-meeting briefs.
- Live conversations only: the docs say Granola cannot import pre-recorded audio files.
From Granola's own site and help center, on the day at the top of this page.
Granola's plans at the time of checking
Granola's help center lists three plans. Basic is free, with no daily transcription limit, but only the last 30 days of notes are visible in the app and Slack is the only integration. Business is listed at $14 per user a month and adds unlimited history, the other integrations and API access. Enterprise is listed from $35 per user a month and adds admin controls and, for teams of 50 or more, single sign-on. The mobile apps are free.
Where the audio actually goes
| What you get | Where the audio goes | Live translation | Cost | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Granola Basic | AI notes, last 30 days | To its transcription provider | None found in its docs | $0 |
| Granola Business | AI notes, full history | To its transcription provider | None found in its docs | $14 per user a month |
| Fraze | Live captions, no notes | Stays on your computer | About 50 languages | $29.99 once or $2.99 a month |
Worth being exact about, because "no bot" and "on your device" are two different claims. Granola's help center says the app captures the audio itself, then passes it directly to its transcription provider. Its security page names transcription providers such as Deepgram and Assembly, and AI providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic that summarize the meeting. The same page says Granola does not store meeting audio: the desktop apps transcribe in real time, and the phone apps transcribe after the meeting from temporarily cached audio, which the help center says is deleted once transcription is complete. What is kept is the transcript and the notes, on servers in the United States. The security page also says third parties may not train their models on your data, that Granola itself trains on anonymized data to improve the product, and that you can opt out in Settings.
In Fraze there is no provider in the middle. Recognition and translation both happen on your computer.
Languages, and what Fraze does instead
Granola's help center lists 31 transcription languages on desktop and 17 on mobile, and says summaries come out in English or in the language most of the meeting was in. So you can read a French meeting summarized in English, after it ends.
Fraze puts the translation on screen while the person is still talking, about half a second to a second after they pause. Point it at system audio, at a single app on macOS, or at your microphone, then pick the two languages. It transcribes 25 European languages, and more on macOS 26 or later including Japanese, Korean and Chinese, and translates about 50 languages to or from English. A caption window can float over the call, and transcripts are saved on your own computer.
The first 30 minutes are free on every account, with no card. After that it is $29.99 once or $2.99 a month, both unlimited. In some places you have to tell people before you transcribe a conversation, whichever tool you use. Granola makes the same point in its own writing about going without a bot.
When Granola is the better pick
- You want notes and action items. That is Granola's entire job, and Fraze does not do it.
- You need a searchable history of past meetings that a team can share.
- You want to see who said what. Fraze has no speaker labels.
- You want it on a phone, synced with your calendar, or exported into Slack, Notion or a CRM.
If you want summaries and sharing in a browser and in more languages, Verli is the cloud sibling of Fraze, at verli.app. The trade is the one Granola makes: the audio goes to a server.
Questions
What is the best Granola AI alternative?
It depends which part of Granola you are replacing. For notes and summaries, look at another AI notetaker. For reading what is being said as it is said, without the words leaving your machine, Fraze captions and translates on your own computer and writes no notes.
Is there a Granola alternative for Windows?
Granola itself runs on Windows. Its setup guide has Windows install steps and its home page lists macOS, Windows, iOS and Android, so if Windows was your only reason to look elsewhere, you may not need to. Fraze does the other job, live captions and translation, and on Windows it needs Windows 11 on x64 with a 4-core AVX2 processor and 8 GB of memory.
Do any Granola AI competitors work offline?
Fraze does, once the language files are downloaded. You can turn Wi-Fi off and it keeps captioning. Granola's network guide says transcription requires an outbound secure connection to its transcription hosts. Its help center does say notes are cached on your device so you can open and edit them offline, and that the Apple Watch app can record offline and make the notes once it syncs.
Does Granola translate meetings in real time?
We found no live translation feature in Granola's documentation at the time of checking. The help center describes a transcription language setting and a summary language setting, says an old transcript cannot be translated, and says Granola Chat can translate quotes or rewrite your notes in another language afterwards. Fraze shows a translation under each line while the meeting is going.
Does Fraze write meeting notes like Granola?
No. Fraze writes down what is said and, if you want, translates it. There are no summaries, no action items, no speaker names, no sharing links, no calendar integration and no mobile app. Those are all reasons to stay on Granola.