COMPARE:
Granola or Fireflies for a meeting archive
Granola and Fireflies both do keeping a searchable record of every meeting, and this page puts them on the same seven questions. Mamba Labs builds Apify actors. We have nothing of our own in this category, so this page is two products and no pitch.
If you only read one part
Fireflies is an archive with an API over it. Granola is a notepad. If the point is that somebody can search last quarter's calls, Granola is the wrong shape.
Dimension by dimension
| Granola | Fireflies | |
|---|---|---|
| What it actually does | Records the meeting audio on your machine and turns your own rough notes into a finished set. | Joins the call, transcribes it, and files the result into a searchable archive of every meeting. |
| Coverage and hit rate | Any audio your Mac can hear, so it covers a call on any platform without joining it. | The main platforms, plus dial in numbers and uploads, across a long list of languages. |
| What it costs | Per seat per month, with a free tier limited by how many meetings it will process. | Per seat per month, with the archive length and the AI credits set by the tier. |
| How it fits a workflow | It sits over whatever is on screen. Notes export to the usual documents and the API is new. | A real API and a broad integration list, so the transcripts can be worked with elsewhere. |
| Where the data comes from | The audio and your typing. Nothing is fetched from a calendar integration to fill gaps. | The recorded call, with speaker separation applied afterwards. |
| What it takes to set up | Install it and grant the microphone permission. Nothing else. | Connect the calendar and pick which meetings it joins. Minutes. |
| Where it stops | Mac first, and there is no bot to send to a meeting you are not personally attending. | A bot in every meeting, and the storage and search limits arrive sooner than the seat price suggests. |
The same seven questions are asked on every compare page here, in this order, so two of these pages can be read against each other.
What each is actually better at
- Granola wins on what it actually does, where the data comes from. A Mac notepad that listens to the call and writes the notes around what you typed.
- Fireflies wins on coverage and hit rate, how it fits a workflow. A meeting recorder with a searchable archive and an API over it.
- Nobody wins on what it costs, what it takes to set up, where it stops. Granola and Fireflies give the same answer on those, and we are not going to invent a difference.
Both products
The honest answer
Ask what happens to the notes. If they are read once and then closed, Granola is better at the reading. If they feed a team process or a support handover, Fireflies has the storage, the search and the API to build on. Granola does not. Watch the storage limits on the cheaper Fireflies tiers, because an archive that quietly stops keeping things is worse than no archive. A team can reasonably run both, with one person's notes local and the shared record central.