Security, privacy, and how it all works
Tools like Granola make life easier, but meetings contain some of your most sensitive data. Treating this with the respect it deserves is of utmost importance to us.
The basics
Granola is a Mac app, a lot like Apple Notes or Notion. It requires Google Workspace login and integrates with your calendar.
You have to manually start Granola for a meeting (it won't auto-join or auto-record anything). Granola then accesses the system audio on your computer and transcribes it. It does not add a bot to your video call.
As a result, Granola works with any meeting platform. Zoom, Meet, Teams, you name it.
Granola uses best-in-class transcription providers (like Deepgram and Assembly) and AI providers (like OpenAI and Anthropic) to summarize your meeting. We are constantly switching to the best option as soon as new models come out.
No recording
Granola doesn't save the audio from calls - it transcribes in real time and only stores the transcript (and any notes you provide) from a call.
You control who sees your notes
As a user, you control who sees your notes. Notes are private by default, until you choose to share them with others.
You can delete individual notes, or request deletion of all your data at any time
Everything stored in industry standard, encrypted infrastructure
Notes are stored in our US-hosted AWS Virtual Private Cloud. They encrypted at rest and in transit and are backed up daily.
Granola is built and maintained by our top-tier engineering team, who've built scalable infrastructure for companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Meta.
We're here if you need us
If you're curious about how we're handling your data, or have any questions, please reach out to us at sales@granola.so
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Granola work locally or send data to the cloud?
In order to provide the best transcription and AI summarization quality, we do these in the cloud. We initially tried doing them locally on device, but the computation was too much and it slowed down your computer so now we do transcription and inference in the cloud.
Where is my data stored?
Granola stores notes and transcripts in industry-standard AWS-hosted virtual private cloud infrastructure, located in US East. Data is encrypted and backed up daily.
Should I ask for consent when I use Granola?
We recommend always asking for consent before transcribing others. See our advice on consent in Granola here: https://go.granola.so/consent
Note: To make it easier to remember to ask for consent, we are testing a beta feature where Granola automatically posts a message in your video call chat. If you are interested in testing it out, let us know.
Do Granola's LLM providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc) train on my data?
No. Our agreements with OpenAI and Anthropic prohibit them from training on your data.
Does Granola use my data for training?
We do not use unprocessed meeting transcripts for AI training. We use fully anonymized versions of transcripts, with all company names, employee information, and proprietary data removed, to improve our transcription accuracy and service quality.
To opt out of training, contact sales@granola.so
Can I bring my own models?
Currently not. This is something we may consider as an enterprise feature in future, but currently a lot of the magic of Granola comes in the careful matching of prompts, context, and AI models which we get from retaining controls over this.
Can I use a version of Granola in a private cloud?
We may consider building this in future as an enterprise feature, but not at the moment.
Do you support SSO/SAML?
- Granola only works with Google Workspace Login. Users have to sign in with their work Google account to use it, and so Granola inherits all the security benefits afforded with Google Login.
- If you revoke an employee's Google Account, they will lose access to their Granola account and data.
- We don't currently support other SSO providers but plan to support them in the future.
Can I revoke an employee's access to Granola?
Yes - if you revoke an employee's Google Account, they will automatically lose access to their Granola account and data.
What are your data retention policies?
- Notes & transcripts are stored indefinitely by default in Granola's secure cloud, unless deleted by the user.
- We don't currently offer controls over data retention timelines, but may do in the future for customers on our Enterprise plan