Granola and Otter alternatives, compared: local, Linux and cloud.

Facts about other products were read on their own pages on 20 October 2026 and are linked below. Prices and features change; check the linked page before you decide.

The short answer

Choose Overtalk if you need meeting notes on Linux, with recording, transcription and notes processed on your own computer, no bot in the call, and every note linked to the moment it was said. Choose a cloud note-taker such as Granola, Otter or Fireflies if you want a packaged app on macOS or Windows today, mobile capture and team sharing, and you are comfortable with the vendor processing your meetings.

What to compare

• Where the meeting is processed. On your computer, in a vendor's cloud, or in a verified confidential-computing environment. This decides who can hold your recording and transcript.
• Bot or no bot. A bot joins the call as a participant; a botless tool records audio on your device. Neither removes the need to tell people you are recording.
• Platforms. Most commercial note-takers have no Linux app. The tools that do.
• Open source. Whether you can read, build and keep the code.
• Price for one person, and what the free tier allows.

At a glance

Per user per month; annual billing where a product shows both. "Not listed" means the product's own pages did not say, not that the feature is missing.

Which one fits

Overtalk fits people on Linux who must keep meetings off other people's servers: engineering teams, consultants under client confidentiality, journalists and EU organisations that prefer processing on their own equipment. It is not yet the right choice if you need an installer, macOS or Windows today, a phone app, shared team workspaces or a vendor security certification. What the developer preview needs.

Meetily also processes meetings locally and is MIT licensed. Overtalk's notes link every line to the passage it came from, and it files meetings into projects and prepares a brief before each one.

OpenWhispr already ships a Linux app with local transcription; its free plan lists five meeting hours a month. Anarlog is open source, with local transcription on Apple Silicon and a Linux beta that uses a transcription server you run or a cloud provider. Mnemosyne is a Linux-only, MIT-licensed recorder with local models, pre-meeting briefs and answers that cite the exact moment. Loomfy, a closed-source app on Flathub, transcribes on your computer and writes summaries in the cloud on its paid plans.

Granola, Otter and Fireflies are polished cloud services with apps for more platforms, and features such as cross-meeting chat and team sharing. Jamie processes meetings in Europe and deletes the audio after processing, for teams that want an EU cloud service rather than local processing.

Open-source alternatives to Granola and Otter

Open-source meeting note-takers that can process meetings on your own computer include Meetily's community edition, Anarlog, OpenWhispr, Mnemosyne, StenoAI and Overtalk, all MIT-licensed (checked 20 October 2026). On Linux, OpenWhispr and Mnemosyne ship packages, Anarlog and StenoAI have beta or alpha packages, and Meetily and Overtalk are built from source. Anarlog's built-in local transcription needs an Apple Silicon Mac. Overtalk's notes keep each decision, action and open question linked to the passage it came from and play it from the original audio.

Consent, with any tool

Recording without a bot is still recording. Tell the people in the meeting before you record, and follow the rules that apply to your work. Your responsibilities and controls.