Otter vs Granola vs yapyap: which one keeps your data safe

These three get compared constantly and they are not the same kind of product. Otter is a cloud workspace. Granola is a cloud notepad that skips the bot. yapyap is an application that keeps everything on your computer.

This compares them on four questions people ask when privacy is the reason they are shopping, rather than on feature counts. Figures are from July 2026 and vendor pricing changes, so check before you buy.

The table

	Otter	Granola	yapyap
Where recordings and notes live	Their cloud	Cloud notepad, they emphasise not storing audio	Your device
Bot joins the call	Default Meeting Agent, avoidable via desktop or Chrome	No, core to the brand	Never
Account required	Yes	Yes	No, for the core
Price	Free (capped) · Pro ~$8.33 · Business ~$19.99 per user monthly, annual	Basic $0 · Business $14 · Enterprise $35 per user monthly	$69 once, two devices
If the company shuts down	Archive goes with it	Notes go with it	Your copy keeps working

Where the recording lives

This is the question underneath the other three.

Otter is a cloud product by design. Your recordings, transcripts and search index are on their servers, which is also what makes their mobile app and cross-team search work well. It is a $100M+ ARR category incumbent, so the odds of it disappearing next year are low.

Granola takes a middle position that deserves credit. It captures from your computer without a bot, and it emphasises that it stores transcripts rather than audio. That is genuinely better than a full upload. It is still a cloud notepad, so the text of your meetings lives with them.

yapyap keeps the audio, the transcript and the write-ups on your disk. There is no server of ours in the path and no account for the core product.

Whether a bot joins

Otter's Meeting Agent joins your call as a guest by default, though you can avoid it with their desktop or Chrome capture. Granola built its brand on not doing this. yapyap never joins, because it records the computer's own audio underneath whatever application you are in.

If the reason you are reading this is a client who objected to a bot on the guest list, Granola and yapyap both solve it and Otter solves it if you change how you capture.

What an account gets used for

Otter and Granola both require one, which follows from being cloud products. The account is what makes your notes reachable from a phone in an airport, and what makes team sharing work.

yapyap does not require one for the core product, because there is no server holding recordings to log in to. The cost of that is real: no web interface, no cross-device sync beyond pairing your own phone with your own desktop over your own network, and no team workspace.

What happens if the company stops

Otter and Granola are companies with staff, funding and customers, which makes them more likely to still exist in five years than a one-person project. That is a genuine point in their favour and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

The difference is what happens in the event they do stop. A cloud archive stops being reachable when the service does. A local library is files on your disk that keep opening.

yapyap is built by one person, closed source, with a stated intention to publish the code if that person stops. That is an intention rather than a legal instrument, and we wrote about the gap in what happens to your recordings if I disappear.

Which to buy

Otter if your team already operates in their workspace and you need admin controls, single sign-on and search across seats. Their cloud is the product, not a side effect.

Granola if you want polished integrations with Slack, Notion, HubSpot and the rest, want no bot, and are comfortable with the notes living in a managed workspace. It is very good at back-to-back calendar work.

yapyap if the recording staying on your machine is the requirement, if you would rather pay once than per seat every month, or if you need one recording to become several different write-ups.

By year three, Otter Pro is about $300 and Granola Business is about $504 per person. yapyap is $69, once. That gap is the honest headline, and what it costs you is the cloud conveniences listed above.

If you want the wider field rather than these three, we compared nine local-first tools in what actually stays on your computer.