Granola ROI calculator: Calculate your savings from AI meeting notes
February 16
TL;DR: Manual meeting notes cost founders 5+ hours weekly. At a Series A CEO salary of $203,000 (per Kruze Consulting), that's $97 per hour, roughly $25,220 annually spent on documentation overhead. Granola transcribes device audio with no visible bot while you jot rough notes, then enhances them with relevant transcript context after the meeting ends. Use the calculator below to estimate your potential savings based on your meeting frequency and time value.
Founder time is expensive. At Series A CEO compensation levels, each hour represents roughly $97 in salary cost. Manual meeting documentation, typing during calls, reconstructing context afterward, copying notes into your CRM, compounds quickly.
Granola handles the low-leverage work of documentation while you focus on the conversation. You jot rough notes during the conversation, Granola transcribes device audio with no visible bot, and your notes get enhanced with relevant transcript context when the meeting ends. The calculator below estimates how much runway and focus time you reclaim based on your meeting frequency and time value.
The hidden cost of manual meeting notes
Manual typing splits your attention during moments that require full presence: reading body language during a hiring decision, catching hesitation in a customer's feature request, noticing when a board member pauses on a strategic question. The in-meeting distraction costs you twice: first in reduced engagement quality, then in the time required to reconstruct context you missed while typing.
Post-meeting cleanup adds another layer. If even 10% of your meeting time goes to documentation overhead, you lose half a day weekly.
Calculate your potential savings with Granola
Want to estimate your savings? Ask AI.
How Granola delivers ROI: 5+ hours saved every week
Granola reduces three common time drains in meeting workflows. Setup takes under 5 minutes: download the app, sign in with Google, grant permissions, connect your calendar.
Reclaim time from typing during meetings
You jot rough notes ("pricing objection," "technical question," "next steps"), and Granola transcribes device audio in the background with no visible participant. When the meeting ends, your rough notes get enhanced with relevant quotes from the full transcript.
Eliminate post-meeting cleanup
Granola integrates directly with HubSpot, Attio, and Affinity, letting you export notes to the relevant records. You can also export to Notion or share via link with teammates.
Stop searching for lost context
Granola's chat interface lets you query across all meetings with natural language. Business plan folders enable team-level queries: your Head of Sales can ask "Why are enterprise deals stalling?" across all discovery calls.
Beyond the math: Institutional memory and confidentiality
Time savings represent measurable ROI, but two qualitative benefits matter just as much: you preserve knowledge when employees leave, and you can document confidential conversations without visible recording technology.
When your Head of Engineering gives notice, their context usually walks out with them. Customer pain points they heard in sales engineering calls, architectural decisions made in technical reviews, feature requests mentioned casually in Slack huddles. All of that institutional memory vanishes unless it was explicitly documented. Granola creates a searchable archive so departures create knowledge gaps rather than complete knowledge loss.
At Daversa Partners, 136 of 150 employees adopted Granola. President Laura Kinder called Granola a "game changer" for back-to-back meetings in their executive search practice. She noted that traditional bots are "intrusive" and "business killers" for executive searches where confidentiality is paramount.
For board meetings, M&A discussions, executive recruiting calls, and investor pitches, visible recording bots kill trust before the conversation starts. Granola captures device audio with no bot joining the call, so the participant list stays clean and the conversation stays natural.
You should still ask permission (include a brief note in the calendar invite or mention it at the start), but there's no "recording started" announcement creating friction.
Granola pricing vs. the cost of your time
The Business plan costs $14 per user monthly and includes unlimited meetings, team folders, and integrations with Attio, Notion, Slack, HubSpot, Affinity, and Zapier. For larger organizations, the Enterprise plan costs $35+ per user monthly and adds advanced security controls, custom integrations, and dedicated support. A free Basic plan includes core features with limited history.
| Plan | Price | Best For | Key Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | Free | Individual users and small teams | Unlimited meetings, AI meeting notes, limited meeting history, shared folders, templates, AI chat, Recipes |
| Business | $14/user/month | Growing teams and professionals | Everything in Basic, plus unlimited history, Slack/Zapier/Notion/CRM integrations, admin controls, advanced AI models |
| Enterprise | $35+/user/month | Organizations with compliance needs | Everything in Business, plus SSO, organization-wide AI training opt-out, org-wide auto-deletion, usage analytics, and dedicated support |
If you run 15 meetings weekly and save 20 minutes per meeting, that's 5 hours weekly, or 260 hours annually. At a $97 hourly rate, that's $25,220 in estimated annual productivity value. The Business plan costs $168 per year. Estimated net value: $25,052.
These numbers assume every meeting benefits from structured notes. Your actual savings depend on several factors: meeting types (standups versus board meetings require different documentation depth), how many meetings involve decisions or action items worth capturing, and your existing note-taking workflow. The 20-minute estimate reflects typical overhead for meetings that require documentation; your results may vary.
"As we rebuild Brex into an AI-native company, we need tools that move fast without ever compromising accuracy. Granola earned our trust by delivering precise, reliable summaries, and helped strengthen our written culture." - Pedro Franceschi, Founder & CEO of Brex
"With Granola I don't have to worry anymore about taking meeting notes, I can just write down things I really care about and let Granola take care of the rest. Love that I can easily share my notes with my colleagues as well, and that we can all chat with the meeting transcript so everyone can see the full context of the meeting, even if they weren't there." - Jess M. on G2
We let all users opt out of model training in settings. Enterprise customers get organization-wide AI training opt-out by default. We're SOC 2 Type 2 certified and GDPR compliant, with data processing agreements available upon request.
Try Granola for free. If the calculator above showed potential savings, download the Mac, Windows, or iOS app and test it in your next meeting.
Frequently asked questions about Granola ROI
How accurate is the 20-minute time savings estimate?
The calculator uses 20 minutes as a baseline for meeting overhead (including prep, in-meeting distraction, and post-meeting cleanup). Based on internal estimates, actual savings typically range from 15-40 minutes depending on meeting complexity and workflow.
Does Granola work for in-person meetings?
Yes, the iOS mobile app captures audio from your phone's microphone during in-person conversations.
Is my data secure and private?
We're SOC 2 Type 2 certified and GDPR compliant, audio is transcribed then deleted, and AI providers can't train on your data. All users can opt out of model training in settings.
Can I replay the audio from past meetings?
No, we don't store audio recordings, only text transcripts. If your compliance team requires audio verification, Granola won't meet that need.
How long does setup take?
You'll be up and running in under 5 minutes: download the app, sign in with Google, grant microphone permissions, and connect your calendar.
Key terminology
Institutional memory: The collective knowledge of your organization that persists beyond individual employee tenure, captured in searchable meeting records.
Bot-free capture: Capturing device audio locally without a virtual participant joining the video call, eliminating the visible "recording started" announcement.
Enhanced notes: The combination of your rough notes written during the meeting and AI-generated context drawn from the full transcript.