Granola Review (2025): I Tested It for 30 Days. Here’s The Honest Truth.

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My Month of Meeting Hell

Last month, I had 87 meetings. That’s 87 hours of trying to listen, contribute, and take coherent notes at the same time. It’s a recipe for burnout, and frankly, I was skeptical that any AI tool could solve what felt like a fundamentally human problem.

I’ve been in the corporate world long enough to see “revolutionary” productivity tools come and go. Most promise the moon and deliver a headache. But after yet another week where I walked out of meetings with scattered notes and half-remembered action items, I decided to run an experiment.

I signed up for Granola—the AI notetaker with the much-hyped “Apple-like” design—and used it for every single meeting for 30 days straight. My goal was simple: Can an AI truly make my meetings calmer and more productive? After a month of real-world testing, I have answers. Some surprised me.

What is Granola? The “Be Present” Philosophy

Granola isn’t just another transcription service trying to replace Zoom’s built-in recorder. The company has built their entire identity around one core promise: helping you be more present in your meetings.

Here’s how it works: Granola sits quietly in your meetings across any platform—Zoom, Teams, Google Meet—and takes comprehensive notes while you focus on the actual conversation happening with real humans. No more frantically typing while someone explains a critical project update. No more asking “sorry, can you repeat that?” because you were buried in your notepad.

The interface feels intentionally calm. Clean lines, thoughtful spacing, and none of the overwhelming dashboards that plague most enterprise software. It’s clear they studied Apple’s design philosophy and applied it to the chaotic world of meeting management. The question is: does the substance match the style?

The 30-Day Test: Granola in Action

The Onboarding: An “Apple-like” Experience

Setting up Granola took exactly 4 minutes. I’m not exaggerating—I timed it. You connect your calendar, choose your meeting platforms, and you’re done. No lengthy tutorials, no feature overload, no confusing permission screens.

Compare this to the last enterprise tool my company rolled out, which required three different IT tickets and a 45-minute “onboarding webinar.” Granola just works, which immediately put it in my good graces.

The first time Granola joined one of my meetings, it introduced itself politely to the other participants and then disappeared into the background. No awkward “AI Assistant has joined the meeting” interruptions every few minutes.

The Core Feature: Real-time Notes & Summaries

The real test came during a complex project planning meeting with seven stakeholders, four different workstreams, and the kind of overlapping conversation that usually results in pages of illegible scribbles.

I forced myself to close my notebook and just listen. It felt unnatural at first—like driving without looking at the speedometer. But within ten minutes, something shifted. I was actually hearing nuances in people’s concerns that I normally missed while frantically trying to capture every detail.

When the meeting ended, Granola delivered a summary that was genuinely impressive. It didn’t just transcribe—it organized. Action items were clearly separated from general discussion. Key decisions were highlighted. Most importantly, it captured the context around decisions, not just the decisions themselves.

The accuracy was roughly 95% in my testing, even with multiple speakers and some technical jargon. Where it occasionally stumbled was with very domain-specific acronyms, but it got better over time as it learned our company’s vocabulary.

A Feature I Didn’t Expect to Love: The Hyperspecific Search

Three weeks into my test, a colleague asked me about a budget discussion from “that meeting a few weeks ago.” In the old days, this would have meant digging through notebooks, trying to remember which meeting it was, and probably coming up empty.

With Granola, I searched “Q4 budget allocation” and immediately found the exact conversation from February 8th, complete with context and the specific numbers we discussed. It’s like having a personal meeting search engine that remembers everything you’ve forgotten.

This feature alone has saved me hours of follow-up emails asking people to repeat information I should have captured the first time.

Granola vs. The Competition: A Head-to-Head Battle

Granola doesn’t exist in a vacuum. To see if it’s really worth the premium price, I compared it directly against the other giants in the meeting-assistant space.

My take: Fathom wins if you need video recording and don’t want to pay anything. Jamie wins if you want something dead simple. Granola wins if you want the best notes and don’t mind paying for quality.

A Deep Dive into Granola’s Pricing

Let’s talk money, because Granola isn’t cheap.

The Free Plan: You get 20 meetings to test the core functionality. It’s genuinely useful for evaluation, not just a teaser. Most people will know within those 20 meetings whether this tool fits their workflow.

The individual Plan ($18/month): This is where Granola makes sense for most professionals. You get unlimited meetings, the powerful cross-meeting search, CRM integrations, and priority support. If you have more than 5 important meetings per week, the time savings alone justify this cost.

The Business Plan ($14/month): Adds team collaboration features and admin controls. Unless you’re managing a team’s meeting notes, the Premium plan is the sweet spot.

My pricing reality check: Yes, $18/month feels expensive compared to free alternatives. But I spend more than that on coffee in a week, and Granola has saved me more time than my espresso machine ever will. For professionals who live in meetings, it’s a business expense, not a luxury.

The Verdict: My Honest Recommendation After 30 Days

After 30 days and 87 meetings, here’s my unvarnished take:

Final Recommendation

So, did Granola make my meetings calmer? Absolutely. By freeing me from the cognitive burden of note-taking, it allowed me to be more present, ask better questions, and actually contribute to conversations instead of just documenting them.

Is it worth $18/month? For me, yes. For a college student or occasional meeting attendee, probably not. Granola is a premium tool with premium pricing, and it doesn’t apologize for either.

Who should buy Granola: Project managers, consultants, sales executives, or anyone who has more than 10 substantive meetings per week and values their mental clarity.

Who should look elsewhere: People who need video recording, teams on tight budgets, or users who have fewer than 5 meetings per week.

Granola isn’t just worth it—it’s a transformative investment in your own productivity and well-being. Just don’t expect it to be the cheapest option on the market. Quality rarely is.

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