Vowen vs Granola.
Meeting notes, and everything else you say.
Granola is a polished, purpose-built meeting notetaker. Vowen captures meetings too — on-device — and extends to dictation, voice commands, and workflows across your whole computer.
What Granola does well.
Granola is one of the best dedicated meeting notetakers around. These are the areas where it shines.
Purpose-built meeting flow
Granola's signature move — you jot rough notes during the call, and it enhances them into a clean summary afterward. For people living in back-to-back meetings, that workflow is genuinely excellent.
Bot-free capture
Nothing joins your call. Granola listens to your computer's audio directly, so there's no awkward meeting bot in the participant list. It's a clean, low-friction capture experience.
Templates for every meeting
Discovery calls, 1:1s, standups, user interviews — Granola's templates are well-designed and tuned for specific meeting types, so summaries come out structured the way you want.
Ask across your notes
Granola's AI chat lets you query your transcripts, and on paid plans it can reason across multiple meetings. As a searchable memory of what was said, it's strong.
How Vowen differs.
Four decisions that separate Vowen's approach from Granola's.
Beyond meetings
Granola lives inside the meeting. Vowen captures meetings too — then keeps working everywhere else: dictate into any app, run Command Mode to turn speech into actions, and trigger voice workflows. One voice layer for the whole computer.
Transcribed on your machine
Granola sends meeting audio to cloud transcription services. Vowen runs Whisper on-device by default, so audio never leaves your computer — and it still works offline. Prefer a larger cloud model for a tough recording? Bring your own key and switch per task.
Your data isn't training data
Granola trains its own models on your data by default — and turning that off org-wide is an Enterprise feature. Vowen doesn't train on your data at all, for anyone, on any plan. There's no setting to find; it's simply the default.
Own it once, no seats
Granola is a per-seat subscription that bills every month. Vowen is a one-time license — pay once, use forever, all future updates included. Nothing to renew, no per-user math as your team grows.
Full comparison.
Everything, side by side.
| Feature | Granola | Vowen |
|---|---|---|
| Scope & capture | ||
| AI meeting notes | ||
| Bot-free capture (nothing joins the call) | ||
| General dictation (anywhere on your computer) | ||
| Voice commands (rewrite, translate, format) | ||
| Voice workflows (launch apps, trigger actions) | ||
| Privacy & processing | ||
| On-device transcription | Default | |
| Audio leaves your machine | Yes | Local mode: no |
| Works offline | Yes (local mode) | |
| Meeting audio retained | Discarded after transcript | Not stored |
| Trains its own models on your data | By default | |
| SOC 2 | Type II | — |
| Meeting notes depth | ||
| Custom templates | ||
| Ask / chat across meetings | ||
| Speaker labels in summaries | Limited | |
| Export to your tools (Notion, Slack, etc.) | ||
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | Available (limited history) | Available |
| Paid plan model | $14–$35 / user / mo | $49 one-time |
| Per-seat | ||
| Year 1 cost (1 user) | $168+ | $49 |
| Lifetime updates | ||
| Platforms | ||
| macOS | ||
| Windows | Maturing | |
| iOS | Coming soon | |
| Android | ||
| Web app | ||
Common questions.
Still deciding? Ask us anything.
Is Vowen a Granola alternative?
Does Vowen do meeting notes as well as Granola?
Where does my meeting audio go?
I'm on Windows — is Vowen a real option?
Try Vowen.
Free to install. No account needed. Capture a meeting, then see what voice can do everywhere else.