Granola vs. Zine: Great Meeting Notes, But What About Everything Else?

Gran

ola has earned its reputation as one of the best AI meeting assistants in 2025. No meeting bots, clean transcripts, and the clever hybrid notes approach (human notes + AI enhancement) make it a joy to use.

But here's what happens after your meeting: your team discusses the decisions in Slack. Someone creates a GitHub issue. The product manager updates the spec in Notion. A week later, you're searching for "Why did we choose Postgres over MongoDB?"

Granola doesn't know. It has your meeting notes, but not the Slack thread, not the GitHub discussion, not the Notion spec. Your context is fragmented.

If you're choosing between Granola and Zine, you need to understand where meeting-only tools break down — and why teams need unified knowledge that connects meetings, discussions, code, emails, and decisions.

Table of Contents

1. TL;DR — Quick Feature Comparison
2. Understanding the Platforms
3. The Core Difference: Meetings Only vs. Everything
4. Meeting Features: What Granola Does Best
5. Beyond Meetings: Where Granola Stops
6. Unified Knowledge: The Zine Approach
7. Developer Tools: None vs. MCP Integration
8. Team Collaboration: Notes vs. Knowledge Management
9. Search Capabilities: Meetings vs. Everything
10. Use Cases: When to Choose Each
11. Pricing and Plans
12. Final Verdict

TL;DR — Quick Feature Comparison

Understanding the Platforms

What is Granola?

Granola is an AI-powered meeting note-taking app designed for people in back-to-back meetings. Launched in 2024 and refined through 2025, it has a unique approach:

Key Features:

1. No Meeting Bots: Granola records your computer's system audio (Mac-only), so there's no bot joining your call
2. Hybrid Notes: You type rough notes during the meeting; Granola's AI enhances them with context, structure, and details from the transcript
3. Multi-Platform Support: Works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and any other meeting tool
4. Customizable Templates: Create note structures for different meeting types (1-on-1s, standups, customer calls)
5. Integrations: Export to Notion, Slack, and other tools (via Zapier on Business plan)
6. AI Chat: Ask questions about your meetings post-call

2025 Pricing:

• Free: 25 meetings (trial)
• Individual: $18/month - unlimited meetings
• Business: $14/user/month - team features, integrations
• Enterprise: $35/user/month - advanced controls, SSO, priority support

What makes it great: The hybrid approach is clever. You're not passive (like with pure auto-transcription tools), and you're not alone (the AI fills in what you miss). The result: better notes than either human or AI alone.

Current Limitation: Mac-only (no Windows, Linux, or web version yet)

What is Zine?

Zine is an agentic information orchestrator built for teams that need knowledge across all their tools—not just meetings.

Zine provides:

• 30+ live data connectors: Slack, GitHub, Gmail, Drive, Jira, Notion, calendar, meetings, CRM, and more
• Automated synchronization: No manual uploads, everything auto-syncs
• Meeting intelligence: Yes, Zine also does meeting transcripts (with speaker diarization)
• Unified search: "What did we decide about auth?" searches meetings + Slack + GitHub + Notion + email
• Knowledge graphs: See how people, topics, and projects connect
• MCP integration: Use your knowledge in Cursor, VS Code, or connect other MCP tools
• Multi-model chat: Use GPT, Claude, Gemini, or custom models
• Team collaboration: Shared workspaces, saved views, collective knowledge

Where Granola is a meeting tool, Zine is a knowledge platform (that includes meetings).

The Core Difference: Meetings Only vs. Everything

Granola's value proposition: Great meeting notes without bots.

Zine's value proposition: Your team's complete knowledge, including meetings.

The difference is scope. Granola captures 100% of your meetings brilliantly. But meetings are only 10-20% of your team's knowledge.

The other 80-90% lives in:

• Slack: Daily discussions, decisions, questions, incident responses
• GitHub: Code, issues, PR discussions, architecture decisions
• Email: Customer feedback, vendor discussions, executive communications
• Notion/Docs: Specs, runbooks, wikis, project plans
• Jira/Linear: Feature requests, bugs, roadmap, sprint planning
• CRM: Customer context, deal notes, account history

Granola doesn't know about any of this. It's excellent at what it does, but it's only one piece of the puzzle.

💡 Key Point: Granola gives you meeting notes. Zine gives you meeting context (the meeting + the Slack discussion before + the GitHub PR after + the email follow-up).

Meeting Features: What Granola Does Best

Let's be clear: Granola is excellent at meetings. Here's what it does well:

1. No Meeting Bots (Clean UX)

Traditional meeting tools (Otter.ai, Fireflies, etc.) send a bot into your call. This:

• Shows up in participant list
• Records video (privacy concern)
• Can be distracting
• Looks unprofessional on customer/client calls

Granola records system audio from your Mac. No bot. No one knows you're using it (though you should disclose transcription for privacy/legal reasons).

2. Hybrid Notes (Human + AI)

You type notes during the meeting:

- Sarah concerned about latency
- Bob suggests Redis caching
- Decision: proceed with caching, revisit in Q2

Granola enhances with AI:

- Sarah Johnson (VP Engineering) raised concerns about API latency 
  during peak traffic hours, citing recent customer complaints 
  from Acme Corp and Widget Inc.
- Bob Chen (Senior Backend Engineer) suggested implementing Redis 
  caching as a mitigation strategy, referencing the successful 
  deployment in the authentication service last quarter.
- Decision: Proceed with Redis caching implementation. Bob to 
  create GitHub issue, Sarah to review architecture proposal 
  by end of week. Revisit performance metrics in Q2 review.

This is better than pure auto-transcription (which is noisy and unfocused) and better than human-only notes (which miss details).

3. Multi-Platform Meeting Support

Granola works with:

• Zoom
• Google Meet
• Microsoft Teams
• Any other video/audio tool (records system audio)

You don't need meeting-specific integrations.

4. Customizable Templates

Create templates for different meeting types:

• 1-on-1s: Discussion topics, action items, follow-ups
• Standups: Blockers, progress, plans
• Customer Calls: Pain points, objections, next steps
• Retrospectives: Went well, could improve, action items

Granola structures your notes accordingly.

5. AI Chat About Meetings

After the meeting, ask Granola:

• "What did Sarah say about latency?"
• "List all action items from today's call"
• "Summarize the pricing discussion"

It searches the transcript and your enhanced notes.

This is genuinely impressive. Granola is one of the best meeting tools available.

But it's only meetings.

Beyond Meetings: Where Granola Stops

Here's what Granola can't do:

❌ No Slack Integration (Search)

Granola can export notes to Slack. But it can't:

• Search Slack messages
• Ingest Slack conversations
• Connect meeting discussions to related Slack threads

Example scenario:

• Monday meeting: "Let's implement Redis caching"
• Tuesday Slack #engineering: "Redis caching concerns: memory pressure, eviction policy questions"
• Wednesday: You need to remember what was said

Granola: Only has Monday's meeting notes Zine: Has meeting notes + Tuesday's Slack discussion

❌ No GitHub/Code Integration

Developers often discuss code in meetings, then implement in GitHub. Granola has no way to connect:

• Meeting discussion → GitHub issue
• Architecture decision → PR implementation
• Bug report in meeting → fix in commit

Example scenario:

• Meeting: "We need to fix the checkout timeout bug"
• GitHub: PR #567 "Fix Redis cache eviction causing checkout timeouts"

Granola: Only knows about the meeting discussion Zine: Connects meeting → GitHub PR → Slack discussion about the fix

❌ No Email Context

Sales and CS teams often:

• Meet with customers
• Follow up via email
• Need to reference both meeting + email thread

Example scenario:

• Monday: Customer call discussing pricing objections
• Tuesday: Email with pricing proposal
• Friday: Follow-up call

Granola: Has Monday and Friday meeting notes (disconnected) Zine: Has meeting notes + Tuesday's email + full conversation history

❌ No Cloud Storage Search

Teams store:

• Specs in Google Drive
• Architecture diagrams in OneDrive
• Presentations in SharePoint

Example scenario:

• Meeting: "Refer to Q3 roadmap deck"
• Google Drive: "Q3 Product Roadmap.pptx"

Granola: Can't search or reference the deck Zine: Finds the deck, shows relevant slides

❌ No Jira/Linear/PM Tools

Product and engineering meetings often discuss:

• Feature requests
• Bugs
• Roadmap priorities

Example scenario:

• Meeting: "Let's prioritize SSO for Q4"
• Linear: SSO issue created, assigned, updated

Granola: Only knows meeting discussion Zine: Connects meeting → Linear issue → status updates

❌ No CRM for Sales/CS

Sales teams need:

• Meeting notes
• CRM account history
• Previous interactions

Granola: Only meeting notes Zine: Meeting notes + CRM (Attio) + email threads + Slack mentions

Unified Knowledge: The Zine Approach

Zine's approach: Connect all your tools once, search everything together.

Meeting Intelligence (Yes, Zine Does This Too)

Zine handles meetings:

• Calendar sync: Auto-ingest meeting recordings from Zoom, Google Meet, Teams
• Transcription: Whisper-quality transcripts with timestamps
• Speaker diarization: "What did Sarah say?" (identifies speakers)
• Searchable: Query works across meeting transcripts
• File upload: Manually upload meeting recordings if not auto-synced

But meetings are just one source in Zine's ecosystem.

Cross-Tool Context

When you search Zine, you get everything related to your query:

Query: "Redis caching implementation"

Zine returns:

1. Meeting transcript (Monday): "Bob suggests Redis caching"
2. Slack #engineering (Tuesday): "Redis caching concerns: memory pressure"
3. GitHub PR #567 (Wednesday): "Implement Redis cache with LRU eviction"
4. Notion doc (last month): "Caching Strategy Architecture"
5. Email thread (last week): Vendor discussing managed Redis options

All in one search. All with citations (click through to source).

Timeline View

See chronological flow:

1. Notion doc (3 months ago): Caching strategy discussed
2. Meeting (1 month ago): Architecture review
3. GitHub issue (3 weeks ago): "Implement Redis caching"
4. Slack discussion (2 weeks ago): Implementation concerns
5. GitHub PR (1 week ago): Implementation merged
6. Meeting (today): Performance review

This is how teams actually work. Context flows across tools. Granola only sees one meeting at a time.

Knowledge Graph

Zine automatically extracts:

• People: "Alice", "Bob from engineering", "Sarah (VP Eng)"
• Topics: "Redis caching", "API latency", "Performance optimization"
• Projects: "Q4 Performance Initiative", "Customer Onboarding Redesign"

And models relationships:

• Alice and Bob collaborated on Redis caching
• Redis caching relates to API latency
• Performance optimization discussed in 5 meetings, 12 Slack threads, 3 GitHub PRs

Graph view visualizes: Who knows what? What discussions led to which decisions?

✅ Zine's Advantage: For teams where knowledge flows across multiple tools, Zine's unified approach prevents information silos. Granola only captures one silo (meetings).

Developer Tools: None vs. MCP Integration

Granola: No Developer Integration

Granola offers:

• Export notes to Notion, Slack (via integrations)
• No API
• No way to connect to coding tools (Cursor, VS Code)
• No MCP support

If you're a developer who wants your meeting context accessible from your IDE: Not possible with Granola.

Zine: MCP Protocol for Developers

Zine is built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP). For developers, this means:

Use Case: AI Coding Agent with Meeting Context

1. Connect Zine MCP to Cursor
2. In Cursor: "Remind me what we decided about auth in last week's meeting"
3. Zine searches: Meeting transcript + related Slack discussion + Notion spec
4. Cursor gets full context: Now when you ask "Implement password reset flow", it knows your team's architecture decisions

Setup (Cursor example):

// ~/.cursor/mcp_servers.json
{
  "zine": {
    "type": "sse",
    "url": "https://www.zine.ai/mcp",
    "apiKey": "your-zine-api-key"
  }
}

Now your coding agent has access to:

• All your meeting transcripts
• All your Slack discussions
• All your GitHub issues and PRs
• All your Notion specs

Granola can't do this. It's a standalone note-taking app.

Zine as MCP Client:

Connect Sentry MCP (error traces) to Zine. Now ask:

• "What Sentry errors relate to our Redis caching discussion?"
• Zine queries Sentry MCP + searches meeting transcripts + Slack threads
• Result: Meeting where Redis was discussed + Sentry errors related to caching

✅ Zine's Advantage: For developer teams, MCP integration turns meetings into actionable context for your AI tools. Granola's notes sit in isolation.

Team Collaboration: Notes vs. Knowledge Management

Granola: Individual Notes with Some Sharing

Granola Business plan ($14/user/month) adds:

• Team collaboration (share notes)
• Centralized billing
• Admin controls

But collaboration is limited to sharing meeting notes. Each person still uses Granola individually, and notes are per-meeting.

Zine: Team Knowledge Platform

Zine workspaces are team-first:

• One connection, everyone benefits: Connect Slack once, entire team searches all channels
• Shared knowledge: Everyone sees the same context (meetings + Slack + GitHub + email)
• Saved views: Create filtered views ("Customer Feedback", "Engineering Discussions") and share
• Collaborative chat: Team asks questions, AI answers with citations
• Permissions: Control who accesses what (sales sees CRM, eng sees GitHub)

Example:

• New engineer joins
• Asks Zine: "How does our auth system work?"
• Zine returns:
  • Meeting recordings (3 architecture reviews)
  • Slack #engineering discussions (15 threads)
  • GitHub PRs (auth-service implementation)
  • Notion spec doc (Architecture Decisions)

No one had to manually share meeting notes or Slack threads. The knowledge was already unified.

With Granola, you'd need to:

• Share 3 meeting note files
• Copy/paste Slack threads
• Link to GitHub PRs
• Attach Notion doc

And when content updates (new Slack discussion, updated spec), none of it stays in sync.

✅ Zine's Advantage: Zine is designed for team knowledge management. Granola is designed for individual note-taking with optional sharing.

Search Capabilities: Meetings vs. Everything

Granola: Search Your Meetings

Granola's AI chat lets you search your meeting notes and transcripts:

• "What did Alice say about pricing?"
• "List action items from this week"
• "Find the meeting where we discussed Postgres"

This is useful! But scope is limited to meetings you've recorded with Granola.

Zine: Search Across All Your Tools

Zine searches everything:

Query: "Postgres vs MongoDB decision"

Granola returns: Meeting transcript where it was discussed (if you recorded it)

Zine returns:

1. Meeting transcript (architecture review)
2. Slack #engineering (15-message debate with technical details)
3. Notion spec ("Database Selection for Q4 Microservices")
4. GitHub issue #234 ("Evaluate database options")
5. Email thread (CTO approval)

Zine's search understands:

• Entity relationships: "Show me everything Alice worked on"
• Time ranges: "Discussions about Redis in the last 30 days"
• Cross-tool queries: "GitHub PRs mentioned in Slack"
• Semantic search: "authentication implementation" finds "login flow" discussions

✅ Zine's Advantage: For complex queries that span multiple tools and sources, Zine's unified search is exponentially more powerful than meeting-only search.

Use Cases: When to Choose Each

Choose Granola If:

✅ You're an individual with lots of meetings

• Back-to-back calls every day
• Need structured notes without bots
• Want hybrid human + AI note-taking

✅ Meeting notes are your primary need

• You don't need to search Slack, GitHub, email
• Your work is meeting-centric
• Post-meeting follow-up is your main workflow

✅ You use a Mac

• Currently Mac-only (Windows/Linux not supported)

✅ You want a lightweight tool

• Simple, focused, does one thing really well
• Not building a comprehensive knowledge base

✅ Budget-conscious for individual use

• $18/month for unlimited meetings (Individual plan)
• Free trial covers 25 meetings

Granola is ideal for individual contributors (PMs, designers, consultants) who spend 50%+ of their time in meetings and need great notes.

Choose Zine If:

✅ You're a team that needs unified knowledge

• Knowledge lives in Slack, GitHub, email, docs, not just meetings
• Multiple people need access to the same information
• Context flows across 10+ tools

✅ You're developers using AI coding agents

• You use Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, or Claude Code
• You want meeting context accessible from your IDE
• MCP integration matters

✅ You need search across everything

• "What did we decide about X?" should search meetings + Slack + GitHub + docs
• You can't remember which tool has the information you need
• Cross-tool context is critical

✅ Sales, CS, or product teams

• Sales needs: Meetings + CRM + email + Slack
• CS needs: Meetings + support tickets + Slack + CRM
• Product needs: Meetings + Notion specs + Linear + Slack

✅ Knowledge graphs and entity extraction

• You want to see "Who worked on what?" and "How do topics connect?"
• Visual relationship graphs matter
• Discovering unexpected connections

✅ Multi-platform requirement

• Need web, mobile, or non-Mac desktop access
• Team uses Windows, Linux, or mixed platforms

Zine is ideal for teams (especially dev teams, product teams, sales/CS) who need knowledge management across all their tools, not just meeting notes.

Pricing and Plans

Granola Pricing (2025)

Free: 25 meetings (trial)

• AI chat
• Customizable templates
• Basic features

Individual ($18/month):

• Unlimited meetings
• AI-powered chat
• Custom note templates
• All AI features

Business ($14/user/month):

• Team collaboration
• Integrations (Notion, Slack, Zapier)
• Consolidated billing
• Admin features

Enterprise ($35/user/month):

• Advanced privacy controls
• SSO (single sign-on)
• Priority support
• Admin dashboard

Zine Pricing

Free Tier:

• 100 credits (try all features)
• Basic connectors
• Limited usage for testing

Personal ($49/month):

• Unlimited search and chat
• 16 data sources (Slack, GitHub, Gmail, Drive, Notion, Discord, Reddit, RSS, etc.)
• MCP server access
• Meeting transcription
• Audio briefings
• File uploads

Professional ($149/month):

• Everything in Personal
• 30+ data sources (adds Jira, Linear, Trello, Intercom, Zendesk, Attio, S3, etc.)
• Advanced collaboration
• Higher usage limits
• Priority support

Max ($499/month):

• Everything in Professional
• Highest usage limits
• White-glove support
• Custom integrations

Enterprise: Custom pricing for large teams

Final Verdict: Great Notes or Complete Context?

Granola is excellent at what it does: meeting notes. The hybrid approach is clever, the no-bot UX is clean, and the AI enhancements are genuinely useful.

But it's a single-purpose tool. If meetings are 80%+ of your knowledge work, Granola might be enough. For most teams, meetings are only 10-20% of their knowledge.

Where Granola excels:

• ✅ Meeting note-taking without bots
• ✅ Hybrid human + AI notes
• ✅ Multi-platform meeting support
• ✅ Customizable templates
• ✅ Clean, focused UX
• ✅ Affordable for individuals

Where Granola falls short:

• ❌ Meetings only (no Slack, GitHub, email, docs)
• ❌ No unified search across tools
• ❌ No developer integration (no MCP)
• ❌ No knowledge graphs
• ❌ Mac-only platform
• ❌ Limited team collaboration features

Where Zine excels:

• ✅ 30+ automated connectors (meetings are just one)
• ✅ Unified search across all tools
• ✅ Knowledge graphs with entity extraction
• ✅ MCP integration for developers
• ✅ Team collaboration and shared workspaces
• ✅ Multi-platform (web, mobile, any OS)
• ✅ Multi-model AI (not locked to one provider)

If you need great meeting notes and nothing else: Granola is perfect.

If your team's knowledge lives in meetings + Slack + GitHub + email + docs: Zine gives you the complete picture.

Granola captures 100% of your meetings. Zine captures your meetings and connects them to everything else your team knows.

Explore Zine Features:

• MCP Integration - Connect meeting context to Cursor, VS Code
• Slack Knowledge Base - Search all your Slack history
• GitHub Intelligence - Code, issues, PRs in Dev Mode
• Meeting Intelligence - Transcription, diarization, audio briefings
• AI Coding Agent Setup - Give your agent full team context

Learn More:

• Try Zine - Free tier available
• Watch: Setting up Zine MCP with Cursor
• Schedule a demo

Great meeting notes are just the beginning. Teams need unified knowledge.