Steno vs Granola
Like Granola, but data never leaves your premises.
Granola popularised the bot-free meeting notetaker — it captures system audio instead of sending a bot into your call. Steno works the same way, with one structural difference: Granola transcribes and summarizes your audio on cloud servers, while Steno runs the entire pipeline on your own device. No audio upload, no account, no subscription.
| Steno | Granola | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — everything included | Free plan with limited meeting history; paid from $14/user/month |
| Open source | Yes — MIT license | No — proprietary |
| Transcription | 100% on your device (Parakeet, Whisper) | In the cloud — audio is streamed to Granola's servers |
| AI summaries | On your device — bundled local models, no setup | Cloud LLMs run on your transcripts |
| Audio leaves your device | Never | Yes — for cloud transcription |
| Bot joins your meetings | No bot — captures system audio directly | No bot — also captures system audio |
| Works with | Any meeting app, plus in-person | Any meeting app |
| Usage limits | None — unlimited meetings and minutes | Free plan caps meeting history |
| Account required | No account, no sign-up | Yes |
| Platforms | macOS (Apple Silicon) · Windows (alpha) | macOS, Windows, iOS |
Granola details taken from its public website and documentation, verified July 2026. Pricing and features change — check their site for current terms.
Granola is a polished cloud notetaker without the bot. Steno is the same idea taken to its conclusion: if the notes can be made without a bot, they can be made without a server too. Everything — recording, transcription, summaries, chat — runs on your device, free.
Choose Steno if
- Your meetings involve confidential, legal, medical, or client material that shouldn't transit third-party servers
- You want unlimited meetings without a per-user subscription
- You need it to work offline — planes, secure sites, flaky Wi-Fi
- You (or your security team) want to audit the code that touches your audio
Choose Granola if
- You want an iPhone app for in-person meetings on the go
- You rely on cloud sync across several devices
- Your team lives in its integrations — Notion, Slack, HubSpot, Zapier
- You're comfortable with cloud processing and want the most polished template ecosystem
Questions
Granola avoids the meeting bot, which is a real privacy improvement over Otter-style tools. But your audio is still streamed to cloud servers for transcription, and cloud LLMs process your transcripts. Steno removes that layer entirely: transcription and summarization run locally, and your recordings, transcripts, and notes never leave your device. (Steno makes no network calls with your meeting content; anonymous usage telemetry is on by default and can be switched off in Settings.)
Yes. Steno captures system audio and microphone simultaneously, so both sides of a Zoom, Teams, or Meet call are transcribed without anything joining the meeting. It also works for in-person conversations.
Granola's paid plans start at $14/user/month ($168/user/year), with a free plan that limits meeting history. Steno is free and open source (MIT) — there is no paid tier, and nothing is held back.
No — Steno is a desktop app for macOS (Apple Silicon) and Windows (alpha). If phone-first capture matters more to you than on-device privacy, Granola's iPhone app is the better fit today.
Steno ships a lineup of open-weight models (up to GPT-OSS 20B) that run on your machine, and you can optionally plug in your own cloud API key if you want a frontier model. For meeting summaries and action items, well-prompted local models are strong — and you can verify the results because you keep the full transcript.
More comparisons: Steno vs Otter.ai · Steno vs Fireflies.ai
Start keeping private notes.
Free. Open source. No account needed.
macOS 14.4+ (Apple Silicon) · Windows 10/11 (x64, alpha — unsigned) · ~4 GB for the default model