Fellow vs Granola AI: Bot & Botless Recording, CRM Integrations & More (2026)

The AI meeting notes space has exploded, and Granola has earned a loyal following among some individuals for its clean, minimalist approach. It's a genuinely appealing product if all you need is a personal notepad that listens to your calls.

But the moment you need meeting intelligence to flow across a team (into your CRM, your project management tools, your organizational knowledge base, or AI automation tools) Granola's limitations become hard to ignore.

Fellow is the stronger choice for teams and organizations. It offers everything Granola does (including bot-free recording), plus audio/video playback, action item tracking that syncs to project management tools, organization-wide meeting intelligence, and the enterprise security and privacy controls that IT and procurement teams require.

As Aron Kantor from The Business Dive noted after years of testing 20+ AI note-takers:

Granola's AI output "was a bit too basic for me compared to Fellow, where I get more advanced meeting notes."

Another detailed teardown, which scored Fellow 84/100 versus Granola's 66/100, reached a similar conclusion — Fellow wins on integrations, collaboration, and security.

Feature comparison at a glance

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Recording and transcription: bot-free isn't the whole story

Granola built its entire product around the idea that meeting bots are awkward. It captures audio directly from your device's system audio, transcribes in real-time, and discards the source audio. No bot joins the call, no one else knows you're taking notes.

Fellow offers that same bot-free experience through its botless recording feature — but it also gives teams the option of bot-based recording, which provides automatic disclosure to meeting participants. Both modes operate under the same enterprise governance and privacy controls.

The critical difference: Fellow stores the actual audio and video recording, giving teams a verifiable source of truth. If a transcription captures something inaccurately, you can go back to the original. With Granola, as individual reviewers have pointed out, only the transcript remains — there's no way to verify what was actually said.

As one Head of Finance who switched to Fellow explained: "I need video recording capabilities which Granola lacks. We have the original audio and video to reference, unlike with Granola where only the transcript remains."

AI meeting intelligence: single meetings vs. your entire organization

Granola's AI is focused on the individual meeting experience. You can chat with your notes, ask questions about what was discussed, and use templates ("Recipes") to structure your output. For a single meeting, it works well.

Fellow's Ask Fellow takes a fundamentally different approach. It queries across all meetings you have access to: surfacing patterns, tracking commitments, and generating outputs like "Where are projects getting blocked?" or "What did the client say about the timeline across our last three calls?" This cross-meeting intelligence is what turns meeting notes from a personal reference into organizational knowledge.

Fellow treats meetings as collaborative workspaces between the meeting attendees with shared agendas, action items that carry forward to recurring meetings, and real team workflows.

Integrations: where the gap is widest

This is consistently the top reason organizations move from Granola to Fellow.

• Fellow connects natively to over 50 tools: including Salesforce, HubSpot, Asana, Jira, Linear, ClickUp, Google Docs, Notion, Slack, and more.

• Action items don't just sit as text in a note; they sync directly to project management tools, CRMs, or AI automation tools with due dates and assignees.

• Fellow also offers an API and MCP Server for connecting meeting intelligence to AI tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor.

As of February 2026, Granola has been adding integrations: HubSpot, Slack, Notion, Attio, Affinity, and Zapier are now available — but individual reviewers consistently flag the gap.

One online review noted Granola scored 6/10 on integrations, citing "missing Teams/Zapier" (Zapier has since been added) and limited native connections. For teams that need meeting notes to flow into CRM records, project boards, or custom workflows, the difference is significant.

→ Try Fellow's 50+ integrations · Start your 14-day trial today

Security and compliance: enterprise-ready vs. evolving

• Fellow is SOC 2 Type II certified, GDPR compliant, and HIPAA compliant.

• It never trains on customer data.

• Privacy controls include permission-based access aligned to organizational roles, admin-managed recording policies, and a dedicated Security and Trust Centre.

Granola achieved SOC 2 Type II certification in July 2025, and the company is GDPR compliant. However, several areas give enterprise buyers pause.

• Granola is not HIPAA compliant and won't sign a BAA, which disqualifies it for healthcare organizations and others handling protected health information.

• Granola trains its AI on user data by default — only Enterprise plan customers get automatic opt-out, while users on other plans must manually disable it in settings. And in 2025, security researchers identified two separate vulnerabilities: an exposed API key that made beta user transcripts accessible, and a session logout flaw affecting 187 users whose Google Workspace accounts had been deactivated.

Granola disclosed these incidents transparently in public post-mortems — which is commendable — but as one independent privacy reviewer concluded, the platform "is still maturing" on enterprise security.

Quotes from real Granola users who switched to Fellow

"Granola can't connect with Salesforce" — CRM integration gaps

Organizations using Salesforce or HubSpot as their system of record need meeting notes to flow directly into account records. Granola's limited CRM connectivity forces workarounds.

"We were generally satisfied with Granola, but encountered integration challenges when trying to connect it to Salesforce, requiring middleware connections they deemed too complicated, so we switched to Fellow." — Marketing Director

"Granola can't connect with Salesforce... I need direct Salesforce integration to upload meeting notes to account records without complex intermediary steps." — Marketing Lead

"Fellow's summaries are significantly better" — AI output quality

"Granola runs CPU intensive, crashes frequently, and doesn't always provide the notes I'm looking for... Fellow's summaries are significantly better." — Business Advisor

"Granola is not HIPAA compliant" — compliance blockers

"Granola is not HIPAA compliant and won't sign a BAA, which is required as a healthcare company handling PHI." — CFO, Healthcare Startup

"We're forcing this complete switch over to Fellow" — scaling beyond individual use

When organizations try to move from individual tools to a team-wide platform, Granola's limitations surface quickly.

"I rolled Fellow out for my entire department, which is like 45 people. We're essentially forcing this complete switch over to Fellow." — IT Leader

"The interface is actually remarkably similar to Granola, which I think will just also reduce change management." — CFO, Healthcare Startup

"I want one platform" — system consolidation

"I want multimodality and system consolidation — using one platform for both organized Zoom meetings and informal, mobile, in-person conversations instead of managing bot and bot-free recordings separately." — Technology Lead

Pricing comparison and value breakdown

Fellow's Team plan at $7/user/month is half the cost of Granola's Business plan at $14/user/month — and includes deeper integrations, action item syncing, and cross-meeting intelligence. At the Enterprise tier, Fellow is $25/user/month versus Granola's $35/user/month, while offering HIPAA compliance and a no-training-on-data policy that Granola reserves for its Enterprise plan.

For organizations evaluating total cost of ownership, the pricing math favors Fellow at every tier.

→ Start your 14-day free trial of Fellow

Who should choose Fellow vs. Granola

Choose Fellow if you need:

• A team or organization-wide meeting platform

• CRM integration (Salesforce, HubSpot) with automatic note syncing

• Audio/video recording for verifiable meeting records

• Cross-meeting AI intelligence (Ask Fellow)

• HIPAA compliance or strict data governance

• Action items that sync to PM tools (not just text)

• Support for 92 languages

• Both bot and botless recording under the same governance

Granola may work for you if:

• You're a solo user who wants a lightweight, personal notepad

• You don't need CRM integrations or project management tool syncing

• You're comfortable with a tool that trains on your data by default (unless on Enterprise)

Frequently asked questions

Is Granola better than Fellow for meeting notes?

Granola produces clean, minimalist meeting notes for individual use. However, Fellow delivers more advanced AI meeting notes with structured summaries, action item detection, and the ability to query across all your meetings with Ask Fellow. For teams that need meeting notes to integrate with CRM and project management tools, Fellow is the stronger choice. As Aron Kantor from The Business Dive noted after testing both: Granola's AI output "was a bit too basic" compared to Fellow's more advanced notes.

Does Granola have a Salesforce integration?

As of early 2026, Granola does not offer a native Salesforce integration. It connects to HubSpot, Attio, and Affinity for CRM, plus Zapier for broader connectivity. Fellow integrates natively with both Salesforce and HubSpot, syncing meeting notes and action items directly to account records without middleware.

Is Granola HIPAA compliant?

No. Granola does not offer HIPAA compliance and will not sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). Organizations handling protected health information should consider Fellow, which is HIPAA compliant alongside SOC 2 Type II and GDPR certifications.

Does Granola record meetings?

Granola transcribes meetings in real-time but does not store audio or video recordings. Only the transcript and your notes are retained. Fellow offers both bot and botless recording with full audio/video playback, giving teams a verifiable record of what was said.

Can I use Granola for a whole team or organization?

Granola has added team features including shared folders, consolidated billing, and admin controls. However, it lacks the depth of organizational features that tools like Fellow provide — such as permission-based access controls, cross-meeting intelligence, pre-meeting AI briefs, action item syncing to PM tools, and native integrations with 50+ workplace applications. Organizations rolling out meeting AI at scale consistently cite these gaps as reasons for choosing Fellow.