Granola has become something of a darling in the tech world. Recently raising another $43M at a $250 million valuation and endorsed by Silicon Valley heavyweights like ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover, and reportedly the worst-kept secret among VCs for recording pitch meetings, it's an impressive AI meeting tool.

But here's the question government Clerks should be asking. Was Granola built for you?

When tech CEOs repeatedly say Granola generates the best meeting notes of anything I've tried, they’re talking about VC pitch meetings and tech team stand-ups.

None of them are trying to document a city council meeting while ensuring ADA compliance, tracking roll call votes on Resolution 2025-47, or producing official minutes that will hold up to a FOIA request.

This guide breaks down exactly what each tool does, where they excel, and which one actually solves the problems government Clerks face every day.

Quick Comparison

What is Granola?

Granola is an AI-powered note-taking platform designed to transcribe and summarize meetings automatically. Unlike traditional meeting recorder bots (like Fireflies or Otter), Granola runs as a desktop and mobile app that captures audio directly from your device. It never joins the call as a visible participant.

The company raised $20 million in late 2024, followed by another $43 million in May 2025, to scale what they call their bot-free vision. That funding has fueled rapid growth, particularly among tech-forward companies and the venture capital community.

How Granola Works

You install a desktop application (available on macOS and Windows) that runs in the background and a Chrome extension for browser-based meeting detection. When you have a scheduled call, Granola pops up a reminder asking if you want to transcribe. One click, and it starts capturing audio without alerting other participants.

During the meeting, a live transcript scrolls in the Granola app. You can take notes in their Notion-style editor. When the meeting ends, Granola's AI enhances your notes within seconds.

Granola Features

Here are the most popular features that customers use Granola for.

• Automated transcription: Live transcription with support for 10+ languages. Independent testing found Granola's accuracy to be higher than Otter.ai with fewer errors in the raw transcript.

• AI-enhanced summaries: Granola takes your rough notes plus the transcript and produces polished recaps with key points, decisions, and action items. Users can customize the output with templates for different meeting types.

• "Ask Granola" chat: An AI assistant that uses your meeting content as context. You can query in natural language, like "What questions did the client ask?" or "List all the action items,” and get answers based on the transcript.

• Recipes: Custom AI prompts combined with your meeting data to accomplish tasks like writing follow-up emails or drafting project briefs from discussion notes.

• Integrations: Native integrations with Slack, Notion, HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, and Zapier on the Business plan. Teams can auto-post summaries to Slack channels.

Granola Pricing

Granola offers a free Basic plan with core AI notes and chat features, though it caps meeting history to approximately 14 days.

The Business plan runs $14/user/month for unlimited meetings.

Enterprise pricing (around $35/user) adds SOC 2 compliance, SSO, admin controls, and data retention policies.

What Granola Does Well

Granola genuinely excels at what it was designed for, which is lightweight, invisible meeting capture for knowledge workers who live in back-to-back meetings.

The no bot design means no awkward AI attendee popping into your Zoom. Users consistently praise how it just works and gets out of the way. In a software site review, a senior recruiter with 15 years of experience said Granola allows me to be fully present in every candidate conversation without worrying about taking detailed notes in real time.

The summary quality is also frequently praised.

For internal team meetings, sales calls, user research sessions, and investor pitches, Granola delivers.

But Granola Wasn't Built for Government Clerks

Here's where the Silicon Valley success story hits a wall. Granola was designed by tech people, for tech people, solving tech problems. And the gap between great meeting notes for a product team stand-up and compliant official minutes for a city council meeting is enormous.

No ADA Compliance Infrastructure

Government agencies are legally required to produce accessible documents. The Americans with Disabilities Act mandates that public meeting documentation be accessible to people with disabilities.

Granola has no built-in accessibility checking, no automated compliance verification and no tools to ensure your minutes meet ADA standards before they're published. For government Clerks, this means either manually verifying every document against accessibility requirements or risking non-compliance.

No Government Meeting Workflow Support

Public meetings have a structure that internal tech company stand-ups simply don't. Agendas must be posted in advance. Motions must be properly stated and seconded. Votes must be recorded with precision. Resolutions and ordinances require specific formatting. Public comment periods must be documented according to procedure.

Granola only offers customizable templates, which work great for distinguishing a sales call from a customer interview. But there's no motion tracking, no vote recording, no resolution formatting, no public comment management and no agenda lifecycle tools.

Not to mention, one of the most cited complaints among Granola users is the lack of advanced organizational features. Beyond basic folders, there's no tagging system or robust search interface.

No Compliance Framework

Government Clerks operate within strict legal frameworks like the Brown Act in California, Open Meetings Laws across states, public records requirements, and retention schedules. These are legal obligations with real consequences for non-compliance.

Speaker Attribution Problems at Scale

In a five-person product team meeting, it probably doesn't matter if the transcript doesn't clearly label who said what. In a city council meeting with seven council members, a city manager, a city attorney, department heads presenting, and members of the public making comments, speaker identification is essential.

User reviews consistently flag this issue in Granola. So besides not having the right speaker listed, the AI summary may also infer names and paraphrase everything in one big block of text without labels.

No recording playback

The most frequently cited drawback in Granola is the lack of audio or video recordings. Granola only captures text. If something is transcribed incorrectly or you want to verify the tone of a comment, you can't go back to the source.

The Desktop App and Google Workspace Limitations

Granola requires installing a desktop application. There's no full web client for capturing meetings, which can be problematic if you are on a locked-down work device and can’t download apps without the IT department’s permissions.

In addition, as of late 2025, Granola's signup requires a work Google account. Personal Gmail accounts aren't accepted, and there's no native support for Microsoft 365 (though it's reportedly on the roadmap).

Many government agencies run Microsoft environments. This single limitation could exclude entire organizations from even trying the product.

What is ClerkMinutes?

ClerkMinutes exists specifically for municipal Clerks producing official meeting minutes that must be accurate, compliant, and ready for public distribution. This isn't some general-purpose transcription app retrofitted for government work. It's a purpose-built system engineered around how public meetings actually function. That distinction matters at every level.

While other tools see a government meeting as just another conversation to process, ClerkMinutes recognizes that motions carry legal weight, speaker identification affects compliance, and the final document must hold up to scrutiny.

Key Capabilities in ClerkMinutes

Here are the most popular use cases and features.

• Intelligent Agenda Mapping: Drop in your agenda alongside the recording. The system interprets your agenda's structure, matches each item to the corresponding audio segment, and builds your minutes around that framework. Motions, discussion, and votes land under the appropriate headings without you dragging content around manually.

• Parliamentary Action Detection: The platform catches every motion as it happens: who moved, who seconded, any amendments or substitutes introduced, anything withdrawn, and final vote outcomes tied to the correct agenda item.

• Consistent Speaker Labels: Tag your participants once at the beginning, and those names hold steady from start to finish. If the system hits ambiguity, it marks the spot for you to resolve rather than making assumptions. No generic "Speaker 1" tags littering your transcript.

• Applied Formatting Standards Your jurisdiction's style preferences from header formats and indentation conventions to detail levels and standard layouts get configured once and applied to every future meeting.

• Zero Invented Content: Unclear audio or missing context gets flagged for your input, not filled in with plausible-sounding guesses. The system won't fabricate names, vote counts, outcomes, or motion language. This is why Clerks trust it for records that can't afford errors. You won't discover made-up details in your published minutes because the AI got creative.

• Audit Trails: Every line connects back to the original recording with timestamps, change history, and citations. When someone questions the record, you can point to exactly where and when something was said, and by whom. Critical for compliance, accountability, and your own confidence when tough questions come up.

How ClerkMinutes Works

• 1. Add Your Agenda. Drop your agenda file in. The system parses it instantly and uses it as the skeleton for your minutes.

  
  

• 2. Add Your Recording. Bring in audio or video from Zoom, YouTube, or a local source. Have a transcript already? That works too.
  
  

• 3. Verify Speakers. The system surfaces speaker identifications for you to confirm. One click locks in each name, and they stay locked in.
  
  

• 4. Review and Finalize. Your minutes appear organized by agenda item, sectioned properly, and formatted to your standards. Review everything in one view, approve or edit sections, then export to Word or PDF.

That's the whole process.

When to Use Each Tool

Choose Granola When:

• You're documenting internal departmental meetings where formal compliance isn't required.

• The meeting is an informal planning session or brainstorm.

• You're having one-on-one meetings or casual team check-ins.

• You want a general-purpose AI note-taking assistant for business meetings.

• You use Google Workspace and can install desktop applications freely.

• Speaker attribution precision isn't critical.

• You don't need ADA-compliant output.

Choose ClerkMinutes When:

• You're documenting city council meetings, board meetings, or public hearings.

• The meeting is subject to Open Meetings Laws or Brown Act requirements.

• You need ADA-compliant documentation.

• You're recording motions, votes, resolutions, and ordinances.

• There's a public comment period that must be documented.

• The meeting records will be subject to public records requests.

• You’re a Clerk with government-specific approval workflows.

• You're working within an IT environment that restricts software installation.

• Compliance is the number one job.

Final Verdict

Granola is a genuinely good product that has earned its reputation in the tech world.

But excellent AI meeting notes for tech professionals and compliant official minutes for government Clerks are fundamentally different problems.

The reality is that general-purpose tools adapted to specialized use cases almost always leave gaps. Users consistently note Granola's limitations around organization, speaker attribution, and workflow integration, and those are users who don't even need the government-specific features that ClerkMinutes provides.

When you try to adapt a general tool to specialized requirements, you end up spending time on workarounds. You manually verify accessibility compliance that should be automated. You create your own systems for tracking motions because the tool doesn't understand them. You build elaborate folder structures because the organization tools are basic.

That time adds up. More importantly, the risk adds up. An incorrect speaker attribution in a tech team meeting is awkward. An incorrect attribution in official council minutes is a compliance issue. Missing an ADA requirement in internal notes is forgettable. Missing it in public meeting documentation is a legal exposure.

For government Clerks managing public meetings, that answer is clear. Ready to see the difference? Try ClerkMinutes for free and experience what it's like to work with a tool that actually understands what government Clerks need.