Grain

Grain is an AI meeting notetaker and conversation-intelligence workspace for teams that need recordings, searchable transcripts, and follow-up in one place. It suits sales, customer-success, and product groups especially well, while individual users should weigh its short free history and meeting caps carefully. The paid tiers make the most sense when shared context and workflow integrations matter more than a basic transcript.

Overview

Grain turns meetings into transcripts, summaries, insights, and coaching feedback. It supports both bot-free computer-audio capture and bot-based video recording, so teams can choose whether a meeting participant is added. That flexibility is useful across varied meeting policies, but the two methods are separate capture approaches rather than a single identical experience.

Its searchable meeting library, sharing tools, and connections to CRM, communication, and automation products position it as a team knowledge system rather than a transcript inbox. The free plan is practical for short-term evaluation, not for retaining a long-running archive.

Key features

Grain works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Slack Huddles, and in-person meetings. Transcription supports 130 languages, and calendar integrations are available. AI notes generate recaps and next steps, while questions asked across the meeting library return cited answers; that is valuable when a team needs to locate a decision or commitment without replaying several calls.

Users can share clips, projects, and complete recordings, with automatic group sharing for configured teams. Listed integrations include HubSpot, Salesforce, Aircall, Slack, Productboard, and Zapier in addition to the meeting platforms. Meeting data can also reach Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI tools through exports, an MCP server, and an API.

Pricing

Free

The Free plan costs nothing, billed annually, and includes one free Notetaker seat. Meetings are limited to 45 minutes, history lasts 90 days, and personal-email users receive 20 bot-recorded meetings. It is a sensible way to assess capture and note quality, but the short retention window and bot quota limit it for ongoing team use.

Starter

Starter costs $15 a month and includes 10 uploads per month. It is the clearest fit for a light individual or small-team workflow that needs a paid tier, though the upload allowance can constrain heavy recording libraries.

Business and Enterprise

Business has custom pricing and includes Starter features plus AI coaching, custom follow-up emails, trackers, CRM and dialer integrations, and an advanced MCP server. Enterprise also uses custom pricing, adding enhanced security controls, single sign-on, dedicated account management, and custom invoicing. A 14-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee give buyers two ways to evaluate the commitment; contact support for help with the guarantee.

Platforms

Grain provides desktop applications for macOS and Windows, with workspace access in a browser. An API is also available, supporting teams that need to move meeting data into other systems.

Who it's for

Grain is aimed at small to mid-market and enterprise sales, customer-success, and product teams. Choose it when shared recordings, searchable institutional memory, cited answers, and CRM or AI handoffs are central to the workflow. A solo user who only needs occasional short transcripts may find the free caps and paid seat pricing harder to justify.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Bot-free audio capture avoids adding a meeting participant when that matters.
• Support for 130 languages and six meeting contexts broadens its usefulness across distributed teams.
• Cited library answers, recaps, next steps, and shareable clips connect notes to follow-up work.
• SOC 2 Type II certification, AWS hosting in the USA, and encryption at rest and in transit address common enterprise requirements.
• Grain states that it and its subprocessors do not use customer data to train AI models.

Cons

• The free plan limits meetings to 45 minutes and history to 90 days.
• Personal-email users get only 20 bot-recorded meetings on Free.
• Starter limits uploads to 10 per month.
• Business and Enterprise pricing is custom, making budgeting less direct.

Alternatives

• Notta is a better fit when mobile apps, browser extensions, and 120 free transcription minutes per month matter more than Grain's team-oriented library workflow.
• Gladia suits buyers seeking an API-led transcription service with flexible pay-as-you-go pricing.
• Happy Scribe is worth considering for unlimited free meeting recordings with a 45-minute per-recording limit and a 10-minute AI trial.
• Speechmatics fits teams that need Linux, self-hosting, or real-time and prerecorded transcription options.
• ESPnet is a free, open-source toolkit for teams prepared to manage model inference and training themselves.
• noScribe is the straightforward choice for free, open-source desktop transcription.
• Rev is preferable for English-only transcription with a defined monthly AI-minute allowance.
• tl;dv is an alternative when unlimited recordings and transcriptions are the priority.

Verdict

Choose Grain if your sales, customer-success, or product team needs meeting capture, searchable institutional memory, collaboration, and downstream CRM or AI connections. Its strongest reason to buy is the combination of cited library answers and flexible sharing across many meeting sources. Look elsewhere if you need a generous free archive, predictable higher-tier pricing, or a simple transcription tool without team workflow requirements.