Comparison
Heliotype vs Granola
The closest thing to a sibling: both record from the Mac itself, no bot in the call. They diverge on what happens next — and on whether you rent it.
What Granola is good at
Granola is a polished Mac-first note-taker that listens to your meeting and writes the notes for you — you jot fragments during the call and it expands them into a structured summary afterwards, with templates for different meeting types. If what you want is fewer notes to write, that is exactly what it sells, and it is good at it.
It also shares the thing that matters most architecturally: no bot joins your call.
Where Heliotype is different
Heliotype does not write your notes. It produces a named recording and a speaker-labeled transcript as ordinary files in a folder you chose, and stops there. The interpretation step is yours — usually a drag into Claude or ChatGPT, where your own context and prompts live.
That is a real trade. If you want a finished summary waiting for you, Heliotype will feel like it stopped one step early. If you want the raw material — quotable transcript, the audio itself, both on your disk and both greppable — a notes app is the thing that stopped one step early.
The second difference is the meter. Granola is a subscription per user, per month, indefinitely. Heliotype is $29 once plus transcription billed to your own AssemblyAI key at roughly $0.17–0.23 an audio-hour — which we can do only because there is no server on our side to pay for. The calculator runs both against your real meeting hours.
| Granola | Heliotype | |
|---|---|---|
| Bot in the call | No | No |
| Main output | AI-written notes and summaries | A recording plus a speaker-labeled transcript |
| Where it lives | In the app's own workspace | Ordinary files in your folder |
| Summaries | Yes — the point of the product | No, deliberately — you use your own AI |
| Pricing | Subscription per user, per month | $29 once |
| Transcription cost | Included in the plan | Your own AssemblyAI key, ~$0.17–0.23/hour |
| Account required | Yes | No — the licence verifies offline |
| Transcribe existing files | Not its job | Yes — right-click any audio or video in Finder |
Pick Granola if…
- You want the notes written for you, in a template, automatically.
- You'd rather work inside one notes app than in files.
- A monthly subscription is fine if it removes the work.
Pick Heliotype if…
- You want the recording and the transcript themselves, as files you own and can archive with the project.
- Your real notes app is Claude or ChatGPT, and you'd rather feed it clean input than read someone else's summary.
- You'd rather pay once, and see the per-hour cost honestly rather than folded into a plan.
- You also need to transcribe recordings you already have.
Competitor details checked 28 July 2026 and stated from public information; plans change — verify before deciding. What Heliotype can't do is published in full.