Granola, Otter, or Fireflies: pick by who has to agree to the recording
How Granola, Otter and Fireflies differ on who has to agree to a recording and where the conversation goes afterwards — and which one to switch on for client calls, internal meetings, or a sales pipeline.
Late in July, a Florida resident sued Granola in a California federal court, arguing that software built to capture a meeting without sitting in it breaks the state's all-party recording law. 1 In August, a federal judge let a related claim against Otter.ai proceed, on the theory that Otter collected and kept conversations for its own commercial purposes rather than acting only as the host's transcription tool. 2 On 5 August the New York City Bar Association advised lawyers to get the consent of every other party before recording a call, and to treat declining to record as their default. 3 Complaints against Fireflies in Illinois and over Microsoft Teams' live transcription make the same kind of argument, and none of the cases has been decided yet. 4
Those cases turn a simple tool comparison into a two-part question. Who has to agree before the recording starts, and where does the conversation go once the meeting ends?
Granola, Otter and Fireflies each answer both parts differently, and each sells a first paid tier for under $15 a user a month, so the choice is decidable rather than a matter of taste. Pricing was checked on 29 September 2026.
The quick pick
| If the job looks like this | Start with | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Client, candidate or partner calls, where any one participant can veto being recorded | Granola, with its transparency features switched on | It never appears in the call, and it can post a notice in the meeting chat and stamp a watermark on your video while it transcribes. 13 |
| Ordinary internal meetings that run on Zoom, Meet and Teams, with an archive you can search | Otter | Otter Notetaker joins under its own name, posts the live transcript link in the chat, and keeps the searchable record. 68 |
| A sales or customer-success pipeline whose notes have to reach a CRM | Fireflies | The cheapest paid entry of the three, unlimited transcription, and its participant notices go out by email before anyone joins. 910 |
| A trial before any rollout | The free plan of the tool you already suspect | All three have free tiers with different ceilings, and one real week of meetings tests more than any demo. 169 |
The comparison at a glance
| Dimension | Granola | Otter | Fireflies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who joins the meeting | Nobody. You start it by hand on desktop or mobile, and it reads your microphone and your computer's meeting audio. 2 | Notetaker joins as a named participant in Zoom, Google Meet and Teams, or you start a recording yourself. 68 | A bot joins Zoom, Meet, Teams and a dozen more platforms; a Chrome extension can record without one. 9 |
| How participants find out | Two optional notice features: an automated chat message when transcription starts, and a watermark on your video for the rest of the call. A user can enable them, and an admin can enforce them workspace-wide. 3 | A pre-recording email to every calendar guest, a chat announcement carrying the live transcript link, and on Teams an individual permission page before anyone enters. 8 | An email one hour before the meeting that participants can use to decline, plus a pinned in-meeting chat message; platforms that require opt-in take everyone's yes first. 10 |
| What is kept | The transcript and your notes. Meeting audio is not stored. 2 | The recording and the transcript; a deleted conversation sits in Trash for 30 days. 7 | Recordings, transcripts and summaries, with transcript-only or summary-only modes on the upper tiers. 1011 |
| Training default | Anonymised data by default, switched off in Settings; Enterprise workspaces start opted out. 4 | De-identified data, used automatically; Otter says its AI providers do not train on customer data. 7 | No training. Fireflies says meeting content is never used to train models and its vendors are contractually barred from doing so. 11 |
| What you get afterwards | Notes and chat across meetings, then Notion, HubSpot, Zapier and MCP access on the paid tier. 1 | Search, Otter AI Chat, exports, and Salesforce or HubSpot sync on higher tiers. 6 | Action items, unlimited summaries, thousands of integrations, and conversation analytics on the Business tier. 9 |
| Entry price, 29 September 2026 | Business $14 a user a month, billed monthly; the free tier keeps 30 days of history. 15 | Pro $8.33 a user a month, billed annually; the free tier allows 300 minutes a month. 6 | Pro $10 a seat a month, billed annually, $18 monthly; the free tier gives 400 minutes of team storage. 9 |
Granola: notes with no guest in the room
Granola takes the meeting's audio from your own machine. You press start, it transcribes in real time, and nothing named Granola ever enters the participant list. On desktop it works with whatever platform you use, and the mobile app covers in-person meetings. 2
Its disclosure tools are optional, which puts the decision with you. An automated chat message can announce that transcription has begun, and a watermark can sit on your video for the whole call. A person can switch both on for themselves, and a workspace admin can make them mandatory. 3
Granola stores the transcript and your notes, and leaves the audio behind once it has been transcribed. 2 The training setting is where the three tools part company: Granola may use anonymised data by default, the toggle to stop it lives in Settings, and Enterprise workspaces are opted out with the control in an admin's hands. 4
Notes stay private until you share them, and chat runs inside and across meetings. Notion, HubSpot, Attio, Zapier and MCP access arrive on Business. 1 Business costs $14 a user a month on monthly billing, and Enterprise starts at $35 a user a month with SSO, workspace-wide policy, an audit API and HIPAA-compliant workspaces. 15
TechRepublic's comparison, with prices checked on 28 September, named Granola the best bot-free capture, and Zapier picked it for blending your own notes with the AI's. 1617
Otter: the guest whose name everyone can see
Otter Notetaker joins Zoom, Google Meet and Teams under its own name, so its presence in the participant list is the first notice anyone gets. 8 The company has since built out the layers above that: an email to every calendar guest before the meeting, a chat announcement carrying a link to the live transcript, and, for Teams, a page each person has to acknowledge through the Outlook extension before they can enter. 8
The control you exercise mid-meeting is removal. A host can take Notetaker out the way any participant is removed, and the meeting carries on unrecorded; Otter's guidance is to exclude recurring meetings where someone objects as a standing position. 8
Otter keeps the recording and the transcript, and deletes a trashed conversation after 30 days. 7 Its training answer is the most carefully worded of the three: transcription and summarisation data is de-identified before it reaches the models, the training run is automatic, and the company says no customer data goes into its AI providers' own model training. 7
Afterwards you get search across the archive and Otter AI Chat, with Salesforce and HubSpot sync, API access and webhooks on Business and above. Single sign-on and custom retention also arrive with a Business or Enterprise licence, and Otter's SSO carries a minimum of 100 users. 6
Pro costs $8.33 a user a month billed annually and Business $19.99, while the free tier allows 300 minutes a month with 30 minutes per conversation. 6 TechRepublic rated Otter strongest for live transcription and searchable notes, and Zapier picked it for asking questions about your meetings. 1617 The pending California class action means that a transcript of a meeting you invited Otter into can still become someone else's evidence. 2
Fireflies: notice by email, notes in your CRM
Fireflies sends a bot into Zoom, Google Meet, Teams and more than ten other platforms, and its consent model follows whatever the platform enforces: opt-in meetings wait for everyone's yes, while opt-out meetings proceed unless a participant objects. 10
What it adds is notice before the meeting rather than during it. A compliance notification emails participants an hour ahead with an option to decline, and a declined notice keeps the bot out. A pinned chat message repeats the disclosure for everyone in the room, and teams that cannot hold audio at all can run transcript-only or summary-only mode. 10
On data handling, Fireflies makes the firmest claim of the three: meeting content and personal data are never used to train AI models, vendors are contractually prohibited from training on that data, and meeting content is not retained by third-party vendors after processing. 11 The exception worth reading is voice. Service providers may process voice characteristics to tell speakers apart, that data may count as biometric information in Illinois, and Fireflies publishes a written schedule for destroying it within three years of your last interaction. 411
The paid tiers are where a company gets control. Free gives unlimited transcription, limited summaries and 400 minutes of team storage; Pro at $10 a seat a month billed annually, $18 monthly, adds video recording, task management and unlimited integrations; Business at $19 annually, $29 monthly, adds conversation intelligence and team analytics; Enterprise at $39 adds the rules engine, audit logs, SSO and private storage. 9
TechRepublic picked Fireflies for high-volume teams, and Zapier for collaboration and topic tracking. 1617
Pick by the job it has to finish
Calls that include an outsider. Choose Granola with both transparency features enabled, or Fireflies in transcript-only mode, so that the recording never rests on a participant having missed a small signal. California, Illinois and Florida are the all-party states a buyer is most likely to meet, and the City Bar's August opinion asks professionals to assume the strict rule and get every party's consent. 348
Internal meetings that span platforms. Choose Otter. The named participant is a liability in a client call and a feature in a staff meeting, where the searchable archive and the visible recording notice both do work. 78
A pipeline that ends in a CRM. Choose Fireflies. It is the cheapest paid entry of the three, and its summaries, action items and integrations are built for pushing a call into the next step. 9
In-person and phone-only conversations. Choose Granola's mobile app or Otter's, since both record from the device in the room; Granola's desktop capture reaches the conversations you have at a laptop. 26
The traps that change the choice
Bot-free capture still needs consent
The Granola complaint argues that the design did the hiding for the user, and quotes marketing that sold the invisibility. The company's answer is the pair of transparency features, which it says customers can enable. 13
A vendor can be liable even when you invited it in
Judge Lee allowed the eavesdropper theory against Otter in August, so the meeting host's approval leaves the vendor's own exposure standing. The National Law Review's reading of that ruling turned it into a single question for buyers: does the vendor keep and reuse conversation content for model training? 2
The training defaults give three different answers
Granola trains on anonymised data unless you switch it off, and Enterprise workspaces are off already. Otter describes de-identified training as automatic and points to its AI providers' commitments. Fireflies says it does not train at all. 4711
Voice is the part that outlives the transcript
Speech providers process voice characteristics to separate speakers, which is also how a transcript gets labelled with names. Fireflies documents that processing, its limits and its destruction schedule, and the Illinois biometric statute behind one of the suits gives an individual the right to sue over it. 411
Admin controls sit at the top of the price list
Single sign-on, custom retention and audit logs come with Otter Business or Enterprise, Fireflies Business or Enterprise, and Granola Enterprise. A team of five will not get workspace-wide notice enforcement on the cheap plan. 169
A one-afternoon test with your own worst meeting
Pick the recurring meeting that includes the person most likely to object, and run this before you roll anything out.
- Turn on every disclosure control your candidate offers, then read the notice an outside participant receives.
- Ask that participant, in their own words, whether they knew the meeting would be recorded.
- During the call, find the bot in the participant list, or turn on the watermark, and stop the capture once.
- After the call, find the stored audio and the transcript, then delete one conversation and see what is left.
- Open your account settings and the workspace settings, and change the training setting in both places.
- Run the same meeting once more and check whether the summary caught the decisions and the action items.
Record four things: whether the outside participant learned about the recording without you saying so, how many clicks deletion took, whether the summary was usable unedited, and which free-plan ceiling you hit first.
Bottom line
Choose Granola when the room contains someone who could object and you want the capture kept off the participant list, with the chat notice and watermark switched on so nobody has to take your word for it. Choose Otter when the meetings are internal, the platforms are mixed, and a searchable archive matters more than a clean participant list. Choose Fireflies when the notes have to end up in a CRM and you want the consent step handled by email before anyone joins. Then run one real meeting with the disclosure controls on, and let that settle it.
References
- 1Granola lawsuit raises concerns over AI note-taking app privacy
computerworld.com
- 2
- 3Formal Opinion 2026-2
nycbar.org
- 4AI notetakers at work could leave companies at risk for lawsuits
computerworld.com
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