HumlaCompare
Humla vs Granola
Both skip the meeting bot. Only one keeps your audio on your Mac — and it's free.
- Free, no account
- Open source, MIT
- Apple Silicon, macOS 13 or later
In short
Which should you pick?
- Pick Humla for privacy, on-device processing, and price.
- Pick Granola for integrations and a mobile app.
Side by side
How they compare
An honest look. Humla wins on privacy, price, and openness; Granola leads on integrations and mobile.
| Humla | Granola | |
|---|---|---|
| No bot joins the call | ||
| Runs fully on your device | — | |
| Open source (auditable) | — | |
| Bring your own AI key / model | — | |
| Speaker labels (who said what) | Weak in 3+ | |
| AI summaries & action items | ||
| App integrations (Slack, CRM…) | — | |
| Mobile app | — | |
| Price | Free | $14–35/user/mo |
Reflects each product's standard plans as of 2026. Check their sites for the latest.
Why Humla
What you get instead
- On-device, not cloud. Granola sends audio to third-party transcription and LLM providers and stores your notes in its US cloud. Humla can run transcription and summaries entirely on your Mac — nothing leaves.
- Nothing to train on. Granola can use anonymised customer data to improve its product — opt-out is available on every plan, and Enterprise admins can enforce it org-wide. Humla couldn't do the same if it wanted to — your notes and audio never reach it.
- Free and unlimited. Granola runs $14–35/user/month with a capped free tier. Humla is free forever; optional team sync is $5/user/month — a third of Granola's entry price.
- Open source. Audit every line instead of trusting a privacy promise — and keep local audio so you can re-listen.
- Speaks your language. Around 99 languages via Whisper — on-device or with your own key — plus a dedicated Norwegian model and per-language routing.
See it work
One meeting, from agenda to recap
Write the agenda, record the call, press Summarize. Your note stays on the left while the transcript and the recap fill in on the right.
Humla
PersonalAdd team
Search notes⌘K
HomeAll notes5ChatImport audio
Folders
Brightleaf2Fjordline1Internal1
TrashSettings
Brightleaf kickoff
Agenda
Six pages, maybe a new CMS?
Keep the brand palette
Who signs off the budget?
Notes
Hanna approves budget, wants qu
Version history
SummaryTranscriptChat
English3 speakers
Recordingmic 14s · sys 14s · 6 chunks0:01
So the scope is six pages, and we move you off the old CMS while we're in there.
That works. Can we keep the current palette? People know the colours.
We'd only tighten the type. Budget sign off sits with Hanna.
Speakers are identified when you stop.
Being fair
When to pick Granola instead
Humla isn't for everyone. Choose Granola if:
- You want polished first-party integrations (Notion, HubSpot, Slack) and a mobile app today.
- You'd rather have fully managed cloud and don't need on-device processing.
Head to head
Granola vs the field
Weighing Granola against another tool? These honest head to heads put Humla up as the third option.
Learn the terms
Related reading
- What is Meeting bot?A meeting bot is an automated participant that joins a video call to record and transcribe it, appearing in the attendee list like another guest.
- What is On-device transcription?On-device transcription converts speech to text entirely on your own computer, with no audio sent to a cloud service.
- What is Speaker diarization?Speaker diarization is the process of splitting an audio recording into segments by who is speaking, so a transcript can show “who said what.”
- What is AI notetaker vs AI notepad?An AI notetaker records and transcribes a meeting for you; an AI notepad is one you write in yourself while the AI augments your notes with the transcript.
Keep your meetings on your Mac.
Free and open source. Apple Silicon, macOS 13 or later.