A Granola alternative without the cloud
Granola is lovely. No bot joins your call, and it writes your notes for you. It does that in the cloud, and its paid plan is a subscription.
I wanted fast, simple and robust transcription for my calls that runs on my Mac without sending data to the cloud. That became Dictate: it transcribes your online calls on your Mac, and no bot joins. It doesn't write the notes itself. Your own agent does that, from the transcript.
How it works
- Start a call in Zoom, Teams, Slack, a browser tab such as Meet, or another call app. Dictate asks you before it records.
- It records your microphone and the call's audio separately, so every line is labeled Me or Call.
- The transcript is kept in History on your Mac for 30 days by default. You can keep it forever.
- Ask your agent for the notes, for example "Summarize my call with Alex and draft a follow-up email." Claude Code or any MCP client can read your calls.
Your agent reads the call through a server on your Mac, and where it sends it from there depends on that agent.
Dictate next to Granola
| Dictate | Granola | |
|---|---|---|
| Your audio goes to | Your Mac | Granola's servers |
| Price | Free forever for the first 50 early access users. After early access, a regular lifetime license is $49. | Free with 30 days of history, or Business at $14 per user a month |
| Online calls, no bot | Yes | Yes |
| Your agents can read it | Yes, on your Mac | Yes, through Granola's servers. Full access needs Business. |
| Works on | Apple silicon Macs with macOS 15 or later | Mac, Windows and phones |
Granola's column comes from its pricing, transcription and MCP pages, as of 13 November 2026.
Where Granola is the better pick
Granola writes the notes for you and names speakers in Meet, Zoom and Teams. It also works on Windows and phones. If that's what you need, it's great at it.