A Granola alternative that keeps the audio on your Mac

What Granola actually got right

Two things, and both are worth naming before we compare anything.

First, no bot. Granola captures the audio your computer plays instead of dialling into the call as a participant. Nobody sees a "Notetaker" in the attendee list, nobody has to admit a bot from the waiting room, and nobody asks what that account is. Once you have worked this way, going back to a bot-based tool feels absurd.

Second, the notes model. You type rough fragments during the meeting, the AI fills in what you missed. That is the correct interaction. Tools that give you a wall of AI summary with no input from you produce notes that read like nobody was in the room.

TNN works the same way on both counts. That is not a coincidence, and it means the honest comparison is about the two things underneath.

Difference one: where the audio goes

Granola sends your meeting audio to its servers to transcribe and summarise it. That is a normal, well-run SaaS arrangement, and for most meetings it is fine.

It stops being fine in specific situations, and if you are reading this you probably already know which one is yours: a client under an NDA that names third-party processors. A candidate interview. A salary conversation. A conversation about an incident that has not been disclosed yet. A legal or health context. A security review that asks you to enumerate every subprocessor that touches customer voices.

TNN transcribes on your Mac. Whisper runs on the Neural Engine, the audio never leaves the machine, and there is no server to enumerate because we do not run one. Turn off your wifi and transcription still works.

Granola pricing and limits checked July 2026 against public pricing pages. Vendors change plans often - verify before you decide.

Difference two: how you pay

Granola's paid tier is $14 per user per month at the time of writing, which is $168 a year, every year, for as long as you want your notes to work. The free tier gives you unlimited meetings but only the most recent 30 days are accessible; older notes stay stored and come back when you upgrade.

TNN is a one-time payment, $49 planned after the beta, and free while the beta runs. There is no subscription for transcription, ever, because transcription costs us nothing per meeting: it happens on your hardware.

The pricing difference is not really about $168 versus $49. It is about what happens to two years of meeting notes if you stop paying.

Difference three: the files are yours

This is the part people underestimate until they need it.

Every TNN meeting is one plain Markdown file in a folder you choose, ~/Documents/TNN by default. Your live notes, the full transcript and the AI summary sit in that one file. Delete the app tomorrow and you still have every meeting, readable in any text editor, greppable from the terminal, indexable by Spotlight, syncable to whatever you already use.

Which leads to the thing TNN does that no bot-free competitor does yet: because your meetings are already plain files, Claude can work with the whole archive. TNN ships an MCP server, so Claude can list your meetings, read notes and transcripts, run your saved skills, and write results back into the meeting file. Setup is one click in Settings.

In practice that means you can ask "what did we promise this client across our last four calls" and get an answer built from actual transcripts, rather than from what you happened to remember to write down. The AI notes run on your own Claude Pro or Max subscription, so there are no API keys and no AI fees on top from us.

Where Granola is still the better choice

Genuinely, not as a formality:

• You are on Windows. TNN is macOS 13 or later, Apple Silicon only. Granola ships both.
• You need a team workspace. Shared notes, shared folders, teammates reading each other's meetings. TNN is single-user today.
• You want the AI included and zero setup. Granola's summaries work out of the box. TNN's AI notes need your own Claude Pro or Max.
• You want a mature product. Granola has years of polish. TNN is in beta and you will find rough edges.

How to try it in about five minutes

Download, grant the screen and microphone permissions macOS asks for, connect your calendar so TNN knows which meeting is starting, and press record on your next call. The transcription model downloads once, roughly 600 MB, and after that you are offline-capable.

If you want the Claude side, open Settings and enable the MCP server. Then ask Claude about your last meeting and watch which files it reads.