home / rankings / ai meeting notetakers / grain alternatives Grain alternatives 13 tools we tested head to head against Grain, ranked — and what each one actually does differently.
last reviewed 29 jul 2026 · from our best 14 ai meeting notetakers · list curated by Onur Ozcan x in
first — what you'd be leaving Grain ranks #8 of 14 in our ai meeting notetakers testing. no-bot capture that leans on zoom's own consent disclosures — and says nothing at all about training..
70 /100 a smart approach to consent — reuse the platform's own — paired with a complete silence on whether it trains on your calls.
why people look for an alternative
− no statement anywhere about model training − no published retention window − us-only hosting with no eu option − free plan capped at 20 meetings total stay with Grain if no-bot desktop capture with a recording disclaimer is the thing you care about most — nothing below beats it on that.
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Fireflies.ai #1 in ai meeting notetakers · zero-day retention and a flat refusal to train on your meetings — both documented, in two places.
88 /100 verdict the only tool here that answers both hard questions with an unqualified no, and puts it in writing twice.
Fireflies.ai vs Grain
Grain Fireflies.ai price $19/seat/mo $10/user/mo free tier yes yes capture on-device, no bot not documented trains on you not addressed no — blanket commitment retention not published zero-day for meeting content eu hosting no enterprise storage choice price/user/mo $19 starter $10-39
switch for anyone recording conversations that belong to clients, patients or colleagues rather than to them.
pros
+ zero-day retention documented on two separate pages + blanket no-training commitment, not an opt-out + hipaa baa available on enterprise + 10+ platforms and 100+ languages cons
− doesn't state whether its recorder is visible in meetings − no consent mechanism for other participants − enterprise 'private storage' isn't full self-hosting − eu residency only via the enterprise storage option 2
Bluedot #2 in ai meeting notetakers · no bot, no calendar access, and a plain statement that your data never trains anything.
85 /100 verdict the cleanest combination of no-bot capture and an unscoped no-training promise — with the least said about where anything is stored.
Bluedot vs Grain
Grain Bluedot price $19/seat/mo $14/user/mo free tier yes yes capture on-device, no bot on-device, no bot trains on you not addressed no — unscoped retention not published not specified eu hosting no not committed price/user/mo $19 starter $14-32
switch for people who want notes without a bot appearing in the participant list.
pros
+ no bot and no calendar access required + unscoped no-training commitment + covers in-person meetings and any platform + only bills users who record cons
− no stated data-residency commitment − retention is a vague four-year contract clause − no signal to other participants that it's running − free tier is 5 meetings lifetime, not monthly 3
Granola #3 in ai meeting notetakers · never keeps the raw audio and never joins the call — and trains on you by default unless you're enterprise.
83 /100 verdict the best data-minimisation story here — the audio is discarded the moment it's transcribed — undercut by a training default that favours granola on every tier but the most expensive.
Granola vs Grain
Grain Granola price $19/seat/mo $14/user/mo free tier yes yes capture on-device, no bot on-device, no bot trains on you not addressed yes by default, opt-out retention not published no raw audio kept eu hosting no no price/user/mo $19 starter $14-35
switch for individuals who want frictionless capture and will go into settings to switch training off.
pros
+ raw audio discarded immediately after transcription + on-device capture with no bot in the meeting + third parties contractually barred from training on your data + training opt-out available on every tier including free cons
− granola's own training is on by default below enterprise − us-only hosting with no eu option − no monthly-versus-annual billing choice − no participant signal that it's recording advertisement
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Read AI #4 in ai meeting notetakers · the only one that lets the other people in the meeting opt out of being recorded.
80 /100 verdict alone in this ranking in giving non-hosts a way out — which also means it's collecting on everyone who doesn't take it.
Read AI vs Grain
Grain Read AI price $19/seat/mo $15/user/mo free tier yes yes capture on-device, no bot in-call presence with notice trains on you not addressed personalised improvement permitted retention not published up to 2 years eu hosting no no guarantee price/user/mo $19 starter $15-39.75
switch for teams recording external meetings where participants should be able to decline.
pros
+ in-meeting opt-out for participants, unique here + notifies attendees that the meeting is being measured + clear per-tier pricing with a 25% annual discount + covers zoom, meet and teams on the free plan cons
− collection is on by default — participants must act − opt-out fails where meeting chat is disabled − two-year retention unless you buy enterprise+ − security page returns 404; certifications unverified 5
Spinach #5 in ai meeting notetakers · hipaa-ready with an unscoped no-training promise, and a privacy policy that won't load.
77 /100 verdict unusually strong compliance for the price and an unqualified no on training — with the pages that should back it up returning 404.
Spinach vs Grain
Grain Spinach price $19/seat/mo $19/user/mo free tier yes yes capture on-device, no bot not documented trains on you not addressed no — unscoped retention not published custom, paid add-on only eu hosting no not stated price/user/mo $19 starter $19-29
switch for engineering and agile teams wanting standup notes wired into jira or linear.
pros
+ unscoped no-training commitment on the security page + soc 2 type 2 audited by ey, plus hipaa and baas + free tier with unlimited recording and transcription + deep engineering and project-tool integrations cons
− privacy policy pages return 404 − capture method and consent handling undocumented − no default retention period disclosed − subprocessor zero-retention is not the same as spinach's own 6
Sembly AI #6 in ai meeting notetakers · eu data residency without paying enterprise prices — and training that's on by default until you do.
75 /100 verdict the only vendor here offering eu storage as a standard option rather than an enterprise upsell — attached to a training default that runs the other way.
Sembly AI vs Grain
Grain Sembly AI price $19/seat/mo $10/user/mo free tier yes yes capture on-device, no bot not documented trains on you not addressed yes below enterprise, opt-out retention not published user-configurable, 14-day backups eu hosting no yes, standard option price/user/mo $19 starter $10-39
switch for european teams who need data kept in the eea without an enterprise contract.
pros
+ eu data residency available on standard plans + configurable auto-delete rules for meeting content + cheapest entry tier here at $10 a seat annually + covers meet, teams, zoom and webex cons
− trains on your data by default below enterprise − capture method undocumented — how-it-works page 404s − no consent mechanism for other participants − deleted content persists in backups for 14 days 7
MeetGeek #7 in ai meeting notetakers · publishes exactly how long it keeps your audio and transcripts, per tier — and alerts participants when it starts.
73 /100 verdict the clearest retention disclosure in the category and an in-meeting alert — with no actual statement about model training.
MeetGeek vs Grain
Grain MeetGeek price $19/seat/mo $9.99/user/mo free tier yes yes capture on-device, no bot in-call, alerts participants trains on you not addressed not addressed retention not published 1 month to unlimited, by tier eu hosting no ireland only price/user/mo $19 starter $9.99-17
switch for teams that need to know precisely how long recordings live before choosing a plan.
pros
+ exact retention windows published per tier and data type + alerts participants when recording starts + ireland hosting for eu data + cheapest paid tier in this ranking at $9.99 cons
− no clause addressing model training at all − access-limitation language is not a no-training guarantee − consent explicitly pushed onto the user − ireland-only hosting with no regional choice 8
Jamie #9 in ai meeting notetakers · eu-hosted and covers in-person meetings — with a no-training clause narrower than it first reads.
68 /100 verdict a credible eu-first option with the broadest capture claim here — read its training clause twice, because the context narrows it.
Jamie vs Grain
Grain Jamie price $19/seat/mo €21/user/mo free tier yes yes capture on-device, no bot not documented trains on you not addressed no, but scoped to workspace retention not published no company default eu hosting no yes, partial containment price/user/mo $19 starter €21-39
switch for european teams recording a mix of video calls and in-person meetings.
pros
+ eu hosting with eea-based ai processing + covers in-person meetings as well as all online platforms + mcp support for querying meetings from ai tools + free tier of 10 meetings a month cons
− no-training clause is scoped to google workspace data − other subprocessors still process in the us − no company-wide retention default − priced in euros — normalise before comparing 9
Fathom #10 in ai meeting notetakers · the only vendor that warns you some jurisdictions require everyone's consent, not just yours.
66 /100 verdict unusually honest about the legal problem it creates for you, and unusually quiet about its own security posture.
Fathom vs Grain
Grain Fathom price $19/seat/mo $15/user/mo free tier yes yes capture on-device, no bot bot implied, not confirmed trains on you not addressed yes by default, opt-out retention not published unspecified, custom on enterprise eu hosting no no — us with sccs price/user/mo $19 starter $15-34
switch for teams who want unlimited free recording and will handle consent themselves.
pros
+ explicitly warns about all-party-consent jurisdictions + unlimited free recordings and transcriptions + third parties barred from training on your data + training opt-out available in account settings cons
− fathom trains on your data by default − security and compliance page returns 404 − retention is 'as long as necessary' below enterprise − domain migrated from fathom.video — old links stale 10
Avoma #11 in ai meeting notetakers · captures phone calls as well as video, with a no-training promise that covers only google's data.
64 /100 verdict the most complete sales-intelligence layer here, and its training carve-out protects google's data rather than yours.
Avoma vs Grain
Grain Avoma price $19/seat/mo $19/user/mo free tier yes no capture on-device, no bot not documented trains on you not addressed only workspace data excluded retention not published unquantified eu hosting no no price/user/mo $19 starter $19-39 plus add-ons
switch for revenue teams wanting dialer calls and video meetings analysed in one place.
pros
+ captures dialer calls as well as video meetings + conversation and revenue intelligence built in + free unlimited viewer seats + soc 2 type ii with annual penetration tests cons
− no-training clause covers only google workspace data − no opt-out control mentioned for other recordings − us-only hosting, no eu option − add-ons cost nearly as much as the base seat + 3 more tested, not detailed here
we ranked 14 ai meeting notetakers in total. the 3 that didn't make this page are written up in the full ranking →
how these were compared every tool on this page went through the same test as Grain — same tasks, same order, scored the same way. the comparison tables are the figures from that testing, not vendor spec sheets.
the ai meeting notetakers test in full → was this useful?
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