Meeting Notes
BB Recorder vs Granola
Granola's notes. Plus the recording, the bot, and no cloud required.
BB Recorder matches Granola on meeting notes — enhanced summaries, templates, AI chat — and keeps local video and audio, records with or without a bot, and runs 100% locally when you want it to. Plus dictation, screen recording, and Plaud recorders in the same app.
BB Recorder
100% local option · BYO keys + models
Meeting recorder, dictation, and screen recording in one app. Free forever.
Granola
The AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings.
Free tier limited · $14/mo Business · $35/mo Enterprise
Key differences
Record on the go
Traveling, driving, or stuck on your phone? Send the BuildBetter bot to the call and it's recorded and transcribed anyway. Granola has no bot, so it can only capture what your own device hears.
Bot or no bot, your call
Granola only records without a bot. BB Recorder records locally with no bot, or hands off to the BuildBetter bot mid-call. Your local recording keeps going and the bot's live transcript shows up in the app.
Local video and audio of every call
Granola keeps no audio or video. BB Recorder captures Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams calls with full video and audio on your computer, with no bot on the call.
Full-audio + full-transcript, locally
Granola stores a transcript on their cloud. BB Recorder saves both the audio file and the transcript on your Mac — delete or export any time.
Same enhanced notes workflow
Jot rough notes during the call. When the meeting ends, BB Recorder enhances them into a clean summary — the Granola pattern you love, running on the model of your choice.
Custom templates, same idea
Discovery calls, 1:1s, standups, user interviews — all the template-based summary formats Granola ships, plus the ability to author your own.
Bring your own AI
Granola picks the model for you. BB Recorder lets you run Apple Intelligence, Whisper, Ollama, or bring your own keys for OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq — even drop a GGUF file.
Three products, one app
Granola is meeting notes only. BB Recorder also ships dictation and screen recording, sharing the same library and hotkeys.
Free forever, unlimited
No meeting cap, no history limit, no paywall on advanced models. Granola's free tier limits history; Business is $14/mo/user.
Feature comparison
| Feature | BB Recorder | Granola |
|---|---|---|
| Privacy & Data | ||
| 100% local option (no cloud required) | Yes | No |
| Works fully offline / air-gapped | Yes | No |
| No account required to use core features | Yes | No |
| No bot joining the call | Yes | No |
| Recording audio never leaves device (in local mode) | Yes | No |
| Never trains on your meetings | Yes | Enterprise only |
| Meeting workflow | ||
| Bot and no-bot recording in one app | Yes | No |
| Send a bot to record when you're away from your computer | Yes | No |
| Local video recording of calls | Yes | No |
| Enhance rough notes into summaries | Yes | Yes |
| Custom summary templates | Yes | Yes |
| AI chat with transcript | Yes | Yes |
| Calendar-aware auto-start | Yes | Yes |
| Meeting relink + unlink | Yes | partial |
| Catch-me-up (last 5 min) | Yes | No |
| Full audio file export | Yes | No |
| Speaker diarization | Yes | Yes |
| AI engine | ||
| Bring your own API keys | Yes | No |
| Bring your own .bin or GGUF model file | Yes | No |
| Swap transcription + chat providers freely | Yes | No |
| Local-only inference supported | Yes | No |
| Pick any cloud provider | Yes | No |
| Scope | ||
| Meeting notes | Yes | Yes |
| Voice-to-text dictation in any app | Yes | No |
| Screen recording | Yes | No |
| Import from Plaud recorders | Yes | No |
| Team library via BuildBetter (optional) | Yes | No |
| Pricing | ||
| Free forever for core | Yes | limited history |
| Unlimited recordings | Yes | No |
| No paywall on advanced models | Yes | No |
When Granola is the better pick
If you want a zero-config, fully-hosted editorial experience with polished cloud-only polish and don't care about running anything locally, Granola's UX is superb.
Try it on your next call.
Free. Works offline. No account required.
Rolling it out to a team? BuildBetter adds SSO, admin controls, and a shared workspace.
