Screenpipe vs Granola in 2026 — Meeting Notes vs Full Screen Memory
Screenpipe vs Granola — Meeting Notes vs Full Screen Memory
Granola has a clever concept: you take rough notes during a meeting, and AI fills in the gaps using the audio transcript. The result is better than either pure transcription or manual notes alone.
Screenpipe takes a completely different approach. It captures your entire screen and audio 24/7 — meetings are just one piece.
These tools solve different problems. Here's how they compare.
Side-by-Side
| Screenpipe | Granola | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | 24/7 screen + audio | Meetings only |
| Screen capture | ✅ All monitors, OCR | ❌ |
| Audio | System + mic, always-on | Meeting audio only |
| Note-taking approach | AI generates from captured data | AI enhances your rough notes |
| Data storage | 100% local | Cloud-based |
| Open source | ✅ MIT | ❌ |
| Works offline | ✅ | ❌ |
| Platforms | Mac, Windows, Linux | Mac, Windows |
| API access | ✅ Full REST API | ❌ |
| Requires Google Workspace | No | Yes |
| Price | $400 lifetime | $10/mo |
What Granola Does Well
Granola's hybrid approach is genuinely smart:
- You open Granola before a meeting and jot rough notes as the conversation happens
- Granola records the audio in the background
- After the meeting, your rough notes become the structure, and the AI fills in details from the transcript
The result is meeting notes that reflect your priorities (you chose what to write down) enriched with everything else (the AI heard it all). For meetings specifically, this is a thoughtful product.
The Limitations
Meetings Only
Granola doesn't capture anything outside of meetings. The rest of your workday — code reviews, Slack conversations, research, emails, browsing — is invisible. If you think of note-taking as only a meeting activity, that's fine. If you want to capture and recall information from your entire day, Granola covers maybe 15% of it.
Google Workspace Required
No Gmail? No Granola. This is a hard dependency that excludes anyone using Outlook, self-hosted email, or other providers. Screenpipe has no such requirements — it works with whatever tools you already use.
Cloud-Dependent
Your meeting audio and notes go through Granola's cloud. Advanced privacy controls are locked behind the Enterprise tier. For teams handling sensitive conversations, this is a real limitation.
No Screen Content
When someone shares a spreadsheet and says "look at the Q3 numbers," Granola transcribes the words but misses the actual numbers on screen. When a URL gets dropped in Zoom chat, Granola doesn't capture it. Audio-only tools miss the visual half of most meetings.
What Screenpipe Does Differently
Screenpipe captures everything — screen content via OCR and audio via transcription — continuously. You don't need to start it before a meeting or write notes during. It's always running.
For meetings specifically:
- Full audio transcript without a bot joining the call
- Screen content captured — slides, shared screens, chat messages, URLs
- Ask the AI afterward: "Summarize my 2pm meeting and list action items"
Beyond meetings:
- Everything you see on screen becomes searchable
- Automatic daily summaries piped to Obsidian or Notion
- Developer API for custom workflows
- Works offline, 100% local, open source
The Trade-Off
Granola gives you more polished meeting notes because it combines your manual input with AI. Screenpipe gives you more complete capture because it records everything automatically.
If your main pain point is "my meeting notes aren't detailed enough," Granola is a good fit.
If your pain point is "I can't find things I saw or heard throughout the day," Screenpipe is the answer.
For the full technical comparison, see Screenpipe vs Granola. For more on meeting capture specifically, check the AI meeting notes use case.