Granola recently launched a major rebrand. The reaction from their community has been polarized. If you're one of the users reconsidering your options, we'd like you to try Hedy for free.
Let's get this out of the way first: Granola makes a solid product. Their approach to meeting notes has earned them a loyal user base, and rebranding takes guts. Sometimes it lands, sometimes it doesn't.
But based on what we're seeing across LinkedIn, Threads, and Reddit, a lot of Granola users are unhappy with the new direction. Some are calling it the worst tech rebrand in recent memory. Others are staying put but quietly wondering what else is out there.
If that's you, keep reading.
The visual changes happened alongside some practical ones that are worth noting. Granola recently moved to a model where free users only see the last 30 days of meeting notes. Older notes are stored but locked away unless you upgrade to their Business plan at $14 per user per month, or their Individual plan at $18 per month.
If you've built up months of meeting history in Granola, that's a real constraint.
Hedy and Granola solve different problems, and it's worth being honest about that.
Granola is a notepad. You take notes during meetings, and AI fills in the gaps afterward. It's good at what it does.
Hedy is a meeting coach. Instead of just capturing what happened, Hedy actively helps you during the conversation. Our automatic suggestions feature analyzes your meeting in real-time and surfaces insights, questions, and opportunities at exactly the moment they're useful. You don't ask for help. Hedy knows when to offer it.
Here's a practical example: you're in a client call and they mention budget constraints twice but never specify a number. Hedy might suggest you ask about their budget parameters right then. That's the kind of intelligence that changes meeting outcomes, not just meeting notes.
Beyond real-time coaching, Hedy also provides transcription, summaries, to-do extraction, and our Topics feature that connects insights across multiple meetings. So you're not giving up the documentation side of things.
A few specifics that matter if you're comparing:
Cross-platform from day one. Hedy runs on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and the web. Granola started Mac-only and has been slowly expanding. If you work across devices, Hedy has you covered.
On-device speech recognition. Your conversation audio stays on your phone or computer by default. We don't send audio to the cloud unless you explicitly choose to. For anyone in healthcare, legal, or sensitive business conversations, this matters.
30+ languages. Granola supports around 10. If you work with international teams or clients, that's a meaningful gap.
Your data stays accessible. No 30-day windows. No locking away your meeting history behind a paywall. Pro users get unlimited sessions with full history across all devices.
Pricing. Hedy Pro costs $9.99 per month, $69.99 per year, or $199 for lifetime access. Granola's comparable plan runs $14 to $18 per month with no lifetime option.
Switching tools is always a hassle. We get it. To lower the barrier, we're offering any current or former Granola user 3 months of Hedy Pro, completely free. You'll need to enter a credit card, but you won't be charged during the trial period and can cancel anytime.
Visit granola.hedy.ai to claim your free trial.
That gives you plenty of time to run Hedy as a Granola alternative alongside your current workflow and see if it fits.
Granola has raised $67 million in venture capital. That's a lot of money, and that money comes with expectations. When your investors include firms like Lightspeed and your valuation sits at $250 million, the product roadmap inevitably bends toward enterprise deals, large contract sizes, and an eventual exit. Individual users who fell in love with the original product tend to take a back seat to organizations buying hundreds of licenses.
We've already seen early signs of this shift. The 30-day note history limit on the free plan. The new Business and Enterprise tiers. The team-focused 2.0 launch. None of this is unusual for a VC-backed company following its natural trajectory. But it does mean individual users are no longer the primary audience.
Hedy has raised zero external funding, with no plans to raise funds from investors. We're profitable and growing organically. The only stakeholders we're accountable to are the people who actually use the product every day. When we decide what to build next, we look at our feature board and listen to our users. Not a board of directors, not a growth-stage investor pushing for ARR targets.
That's not a knock on Granola's team. It's just a fundamentally different incentive structure. And if you care about where your tools are headed long-term, it's worth thinking about who's steering the ship.
Julian Pscheid
Founder, Hedy AI
