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.
Local or cloud, your call
Granola sends meeting audio to cloud transcription services, full stop. Vowen lets you choose: run Whisper on-device so audio stays on your machine, or bring your own key for a larger cloud model on tougher recordings. You decide where transcription happens.
Private by design
Vowen doesn't store your recordings and doesn't require an account. Choose on-device transcription and your audio stays on your machine — only the transcript you send for summarizing reaches the AI model you connect. Privacy isn't a paid tier; it's the starting point.
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 | Optional | |
| Audio leaves your machine | Yes | Local mode: no |
| Meeting audio retained | Discarded after transcript | Not stored |
| 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.