Granola vs Fathom, and where Wavenote fits

Both are meeting recorders with a free tier and both write the summary for you. Granola takes the call from your own Mac and lets nothing into it. Fathom will send a bot, records unlimited meetings for nothing, and has the paperwork a company asks for.

The honest read on Granola

Granola is the quieter of the 2 and the better fit for a call you would rather not announce. It hears the meeting from your machine with no participant added, keeps the notes around what you typed while it ran, and its chat across your notes costs nothing. It runs on Windows, iPhone, Android and a watch, and shares folders with colleagues. There are 2 things to know before picking it: the free tier limits how far back your meetings go, and although the capture is local the transcription is not, with Deepgram and Assembly named on its own security page. It holds SOC 2 Type 2 and states outright that it cannot sign a HIPAA BAA.

The honest read on Fathom

Fathom is the one that does not run out. The free plan is unlimited recordings, transcripts and summaries, with no expiry and no minute count, and its bot joins from your calendar so the record exists whether you are there or not. It labels each speaker, syncs to a CRM on the paid tiers, turns a call into a blog or social post, and it holds SOC 2 Type II and signs a HIPAA BAA. It will also record without the bot, from the Mac, either with the audio or as a transcript alone. Everything is processed on Fathom's servers, and its subprocessor list names Anthropic, OpenAI and Google.

What actually decides it

Ask whether the meetings you care about are ones you attend. Fathom's bot and its unlimited free plan are worth more than anything else on this page if the answer is no, and they are worth nothing if the answer is yes and a bot in a client call is not acceptable. Compliance settles the rest: only one of these 2 will sign a BAA.

Side by side

Where Wavenote fits

Both of these decided the same thing about the recording and only differ on who else hears it, so Wavenote is the entry that answers the question neither of them asks: the meeting becomes text on the Mac that recorded it, and nothing is sent anywhere to make that happen. It hears your microphone and what your Mac is playing, asks for the permission macOS calls System Audio Recording Only, and never asks to record your screen. The notes are files in a folder you picked, so they outlive any subscription, and the same $4.90 is a dictation key in every other app. Against Fathom's free plan there is no price argument to make, and against either of them there is no bot, no speaker names and no compliance paperwork.

Which one to pick

Granola

You are in your meetings, you want the best notes out of them, and you do not want a bot in the participant list.

Fathom

You want unlimited recording for nothing, a bot that covers the calls you miss, or a signed BAA before legal will let you record at all.

Wavenote

The audio is not allowed to leave the machine, and the notes have to be files you keep.

• Granola compared with Wavenote →
• Fathom compared with Wavenote →