If you came to Granola because of the no-bot capture, you’ll like
Quietly. If you stayed annoyed about the encrypted local DB and the
monthly bill, you’ll switch. Same on-device audio capture, same
MCP server — but notes save as plain .md in a folder you
pick, and you pay $49 once.
| Quietly | Granola | |
|---|---|---|
| No bot joins the call | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio capture | On-device, system audio + mic | On-device, system audio + mic |
| Where notes live | Plain .md in your folder | Encrypted SQLite + cloud sync |
| MCP for Claude / Cursor | ✓ | ✓ |
| Works fully offline | ✓ | cloud-dependent |
| Open in Obsidian / VS Code / Atlas.ti | ✓ | — |
| Bring your own LLM key | ✓ (OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama) | Granola's stack |
| Pricing | $49 once · $199 team (5 seats) | $18/mo · $14/user/mo Business |
| What you get if the company disappears | Your .md files. That’s it. | An encrypted SQLite blob |
Granola has Mac and Windows. Quietly is macOS-only today.
Granola's pre-built templates (sales recap, 1:1, retro) are excellent out of the box. Quietly hands you a transcript and lets your own LLM stack do the summarising.
Granola's Business tier has shared folders + admin. Quietly's team license is a multi-seat license, not a shared cloud.
Granola's local cache is encrypted; the community had to
reverse-engineer it to integrate with Obsidian. Quietly writes
.md with front-matter the day you install it.
Quietly makes one outbound call per day — a license check. That’s it. Granola syncs notes through its own backend.
Granola Individual at $18/mo = $216/year. Quietly = $49 once. Two months in you’re ahead, and you keep the version you bought forever.
You already pay for Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus. Quietly hands your meeting Markdown to your own model — no AI credits, no per-summary cap.
Drop a .m4a from voice memos, a .wav from a field recorder, a .mp3 of a podcast. Same Markdown, same folder.
Reads Google or Apple Calendar and asks before it records — only for events you mark recordable. Quiet by default.
Export your existing Granola notes (Settings → Export). Drop the resulting files into the folder Quietly is watching — Obsidian / iCloud / Dropbox / your repo. Quietly will index new ones from the moment you install. We’re building a one-click import; in the meantime, email support@meetquietly.com and we’ll help.
$49 personal · $199 team. 7-day trial, no card. 30-day refund.