Granola vs Klu: Fast Notes, Smarter Workflows 2025
16 Sept 2025•6 minute read
Sami AZ
Granola has built a reputation as a sleek, fast AI meeting notepad—especially for people who want minimal friction, bot-free capture, and clean summaries. It captures system audio locally, merges your own live notes with transcripts, and offers “Ask Granola” for Q&A over meetings.
Klu shares many of those strengths, but pushes further for teams: translating meetings into actionable workflows, syncing notes and tasks to CRMs, and enabling cross-meeting recall with Deep Dive.
This article compares Granola vs Klu, giving leaders a balanced view: what Granola does well, where it falls short for team leaders, and where Klu genuinely excels without dismissing Granola’s advantages.
Bot-free capture: Granola transcribes system audio directly on Mac/Windows/iOS, so no meeting bot joining is required. This reduces friction.
Blended note-plus-transcript workspace: You can type live notes while the transcript fills in; templates for recurring meeting types speed things up.
“Ask Granola” Q&A: Allows multi-meeting chat on macOS (on iPhone currently single-note). Leaders can quickly look up what they said or agreed in past meetings.
Core integrations: Google Calendar (primary), Slack, Notion, Attio, Affinity, and via Zapier. These let users push notes into tools they already use.
Privacy & security posture: Granola does not store audio by default (audio is processed locally, transcripts+notes get saved). It offers anonymized data training, with an opt-out. Also, in 2025 it had a security incident (hard-coded API key exposure) which was resolved quickly.
Granola blends typed notes with transcript and uses templates for fast capture
Limitations & Challenges Leaders Should Know
Google-first calendar support: Granola’s main calendar integration is Google; Outlook support is via ICS bridge + waitlist. This can be limiting for teams who standardize on Microsoft tools.
No public API yet: Sharing and triggers exist via Zapier, but lack of first-class API means less flexibility.
Audio recording absent: Granola doesn’t store raw audio (by design), which limits exact quote recall or high-fidelity speaker interaction.
Security optics: The 2025 incident with exposed API key raised concerns; though Granola resolved it, some users express discomfort with anonymized training even with opt-out options.
Feature gaps for teams: Link-sharing defaults and permissions, cross-platform consistency (Android still waitlist), offline/in-meeting capture reliability are areas of user feedback.
Leaders should check sharing and integration permissions to protect sensitive meeting content
How Klu Differs: Where Leaders Get More
Klu includes many of Granola’s strong features but adds capabilities especially valuable for teams and leaders:
Action items with ownership & deadlines: Klu automatically turns decisions into tasks, assigns owners, sets deadlines, and pushes them into Slack, Notion, or CRM tools.
CRM sync & structured timelines: Where Granola can push notes into CRMs via Zapier or native share, Klu ensures notes, tasks, and follow-ups are attached cleanly to deals/contacts in HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive.
Deep Dive recall across all meetings: Leaders can run queries like “What did we commit to ACME in Q4?” across many meetings, not just one.
Security, governance, and enterprise controls: SOC 2 + GDPR compliance, permissioning for team account roles, auditing features, and encrypted data storage.
Multi-platform consistency & performance: Klu supports all major meeting platforms with consistent behavior, plus solid mobile and desktop apps.
Klu’s Deep Dive consolidates insights from many meetings, saving leaders time
Granola vs Klu: Where Speed vs Structure Trade Off
Leaders often ask: “Do I go simple and fast, or structured and scalable?” Here are comparisons in practice:
Meeting preparation and calendar cues: Granola’s templates + calendar cues are fast to set up. Klu matches that, and also pulls in prep from past meeting data via Deep Dive so you can reference past commitments.
Follow-ups and task tracking: Granola generates action items, but leads still need to verify assignment and deadlines. Klu automates assignments and pushes them to tools used by the team.
CRM record clarity: Granola uses integrations or Zapier to push notes; some crunched workflows end up with mixed or raw summaries. Klu ensures structured CRM records, clean note + task attachments, and consistent deal timelines.
Recall for recurring clients/projects: Granola’s “Ask Granola” works well for single client sequences, but less so for cross-client or cross-project queries. Klu’s Deep Dive is built for exactly those scenarios.
Team governance and permissions: Granola offers sharing and link controls; Klu adds more role-based access, audit logs, and enterprise compliance features.
Real-World Scenarios
Executive syncs: Granola allows quick summaries and minimal setup; excellent for a leader who wants to see meeting highlights. But Klu ensures action items are distributed, meetings feedback loops are captured in CRM, and past promises remembered via Deep Dive.
Sales leadership: Granola gives fast insights and note sharing. Klu helps ensure that promises made are visible, follow-up tasks are assigned, and deals do not stall due to missing context.
Project management: Granola is helpful for solo PMs or small teams. Klu scales to multi-team projects, enabling task tracking in Notion or Slack, and recall across sprints when similar blockers recur.
When Granola Is Enough vs When Klu Becomes Necessary
If your team is small, values speed and minimal setup, and does not need deep CRM workflows, Granola offers compelling value.
Does Granola support Outlook natively? Not fully, as of 2025. Granola’s main calendar integration is Google Calendar. Outlook support is via ICS bridge + waitlist.
Can Granola assign owners or deadlines automatically? Granola generates action items but does not consistently auto-assign ownership or set deadlines; that often requires manual input. Klu handles that automatically.
Is Granola secure, especially after the 2025 incident? Granola handled the incident quickly and added opt-outs, anonymized training, and improved link permissions. That said, some organizations prefer tools with more robust audit and enterprise governance.
Conclusion
Granola is excellent if you want speed, minimal friction, and fast summaries. It’s clean, well-designed, and delivers strong value for leaders who prioritize speed over structure.
Klu takes what Granola does well and layers in workflow automation, CRM sync, cross-meeting recall, and enterprise-ready controls. If your team needs to move beyond notes to action, Klu is the choice for 2025.
👉 Try Klu Free and see how automation-first meeting workflows win in speed and structure.
Sami AZ
