Comparison
Granola showed that you don't need a meeting bot to get great notes, and echo99 works the same way. Where they differ is what happens to your audio afterwards: Granola sends it to cloud transcription providers, while echo99 never lets it leave your Mac.
Granola is an AI notepad for meetings: it captures your Mac’s audio without joining the call (the same botless approach echo99 uses), sends the audio to cloud transcription providers (Deepgram, AssemblyAI) in real time, and uses cloud AI (OpenAI, Anthropic) to blend your typed notes into polished, template-driven summaries. It is a well-made product. If AI note quality is your first priority and cloud processing is acceptable, Granola is hard to beat.
| Feature | echo99 | Granola |
|---|---|---|
| How it records | Captures your mic and your Mac's audio output locally, with no bot in the call | Same botless approach: captures meeting audio on-device |
| Transcription | On-device after the call, in 25 languages; works offline after a one-time model download | Cloud transcription in real time: audio is sent to Deepgram / AssemblyAI while the meeting runs |
| AI notes | On-device summaries (overview, key points, decisions, action items, open questions) written by a local language model; the transcript never leaves your Mac | Granola's main strength: polished LLM notes, templates, and typed-note blending, processed by OpenAI / Anthropic in the cloud |
| Raw audio | Keeps mic.wav + system.wav as separate tracks you own | Audio is not retained after transcription; only the transcript and your notes are stored |
| Speaker labels | Me + Them-1, Them-2, … plus on-device speaker recognition that remembers the names you assign across recordings | Me / Them by default; participant names via speaker tags on Google Meet, Zoom, and Teams calls (Mac and Windows apps) |
| Account | None | Account required |
| Price | Free | Free Basic plan with limited meeting history; Business from $14/user/month |
| Platform | macOS 14.4+, Apple silicon and Intel | macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android |
| Sharing & integrations | Local WAV + JSON transcripts; Markdown export; no built-in integrations | Built-in sharing, templates, and integrations with Notion, Slack, HubSpot, and more |
Comparison last verified September 2026. Check both products for current details.
You want polished AI meeting notes with minimal effort, you work across macOS, Windows, iOS, or Android, and cloud processing of your meeting audio is acceptable under your confidentiality obligations. Granola’s note quality and workflow polish are ahead.
You want to keep the recording itself. Granola deletes the audio once it is transcribed, so there is nothing to play back when a quote is disputed; echo99 keeps both tracks as WAV files next to the transcript. It also fits when your calls must not be processed in anyone’s cloud, when you need transcripts that work offline, or when you’d outgrow a free tier with limited meeting history. echo99 is free.
Compare echo99 with other tools: Otter alternative, Fathom alternative, tl;dv alternative
Related guides: Speaker identification, Meeting summaries, Local transcription
Free download. No account. Recording and transcription stay on your Mac.
Free · macOS 14.4+ · Apple silicon & Intel · Notarized by Apple