Comparison

Amlin vs Granola

Both are meeting notepads: you jot rough notes during the call, no bot joins, and AI writes them up afterward. They differ on price, platforms, privacy details, and how much of your workday they cover.

Facts checked August 2026 against each company's public pricing and documentation. Spot something outdated? Tell us.

The short answer

Granola is built for teams and runs everywhere: Mac, Windows, iPhone, and Android, with shared notes and integrations, at $14 per user per month on the Business plan. Its free plan limits how far back you can revisit notes.

Amlin is built for one person on a Mac at $10 a month, and folds dictation and a self-filling to-do list into the same app. Its free plan limits monthly meeting-hours and keeps your history forever.

What mattersAmlinGranola
Price $10 / month, or $108 / year Business: $14 / user / month. Enterprise from $35.
Free plan 4 meeting-hours per month. Full note history, kept forever. Dictation included, never metered. Unlimited meetings, but access to older notes is restricted until you upgrade.
Meeting audio Never stored. Streamed for live transcription, discarded on the spot. Only text remains. Transcribed by cloud providers (Granola lists Deepgram and AssemblyAI). See Granola's privacy policy for retention details.
Voice dictation System-wide. Hold a key in any app, speak, get clean text. Runs on-device. None.
To-do list One list across every meeting, with owners and due dates, split into yours and what you're waiting on. Action items appear inside each note. A Chat command can round up to-dos across recent meetings, but there's no standing list with owners or due dates.
Bot joins your call? No. System-level audio capture. No. System-level audio capture.
Note enhancement Your rough notes plus the transcript become a structured summary the moment the call ends. Your typed notes are enhanced into a summary using cloud AI models.
Ask / chat over meetings One meeting or your whole history, with citations back to the source line. Chat across your meetings.
Platforms macOS 13+ (Apple silicon) Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android, Apple Watch
Integrations None yet. Notes copy out cleanly. Notion, HubSpot, Slack, Zapier, and an MCP connector on paid plans.
Team features Single-user today. Team Spaces for shared notes and cross-meeting chat.

Highlighted rows are where Amlin pulls ahead: price, privacy, and how much of your workday one app covers. Granola pricing and features change; treat their official site as the source of truth. We update this page when we notice a change.

Which one fits you

Choose Amlin if…

  • You work on a Mac and want notes, dictation, and to-dos handled by one $10 app instead of two or three subscriptions.
  • "We never store your audio" and on-device dictation matter to you or to your clients.
  • You want every commitment from every call collected into a single list with owners and due dates.
  • You want your full note history on the free plan while you evaluate.

Choose Granola if…

  • You need Windows, iPhone, or Android alongside (or instead of) a Mac.
  • Your team shares meeting notes, and you want them flowing into Notion, HubSpot, or Slack.
  • You want unlimited meetings on a free plan and don't mind losing easy access to older notes.

Questions, answered

Is Amlin a good Granola alternative?

If you work solo on a Mac, yes. Amlin covers the same core job (bot-free meeting notes enhanced by AI) at $10 a month instead of $14, and adds system-wide dictation and a cross-meeting to-do list. If you need Windows, iPhone, or Android apps, or team features like shared notes and Notion or HubSpot integrations, Granola is the better fit.

Does Granola or Amlin send a bot into meetings?

Neither. Both apps capture audio from your computer at the operating-system level, so no bot participant joins the call and other attendees have nothing to install.

Can I try both for free?

Yes, and you probably should. Granola's free Basic plan allows unlimited meetings but restricts how far back you can revisit notes until you upgrade. Amlin's free plan includes 4 meeting-hours per month (about 5 or 6 meetings), unmetered dictation, and keeps your full note history.

Does Amlin work on Windows or iPhone?

No. Amlin is a macOS app (macOS 13 or later, Apple silicon) and that's the honest limit of this comparison: if your work happens outside a Mac, Granola is the one to pick today.

Try the $10 one first.

Download Amlin, run it in your next meeting, and see whether the notepad writes itself up the way you'd want.

Download for Mac

Free to start · macOS 13+ · Sign in with Google