Convene: the open-source Granola alternative that saves notes to your own folder

Granola and Convene solve the same problem the same way. Both capture the audio your computer is already playing, so nothing has to join the call and announce itself. They differ on one thing that turns out to matter a lot: who ends up holding the notes.

Granola keeps them in Granola. Convene writes them into your folder as Markdown and then gets out of the way. That is the whole pitch, and it is also the whole trade-off: Convene has no integrations, no team administration, and no company behind it.

Granola is a good product, and for a lot of people it is the right one.

• You want an iPhone app today. Granola’s is on the App Store. Convene’s is built but not yet released, and when it arrives it will be aimed at in-person meetings rather than calls.
• You need notes to land in other tools automatically. Notion, Slack, HubSpot, Affinity, Zapier. Convene writes a file and stops there.
• You are buying for a team. Granola has shared workspaces, SSO and admin controls. Convene has one user: whoever is sitting at the Mac.
• You would rather pay someone than hold the keys. Granola bills you once and handles transcription. Convene asks you to create an AssemblyAI key and pay them directly, which is more control and more setup.
• You use Windows. Convene is macOS only.

• You want the notes to be files. Markdown with YAML frontmatter, in a folder you picked, readable in ten years by anything. No export step, because there is nothing to export from.
• You live in Obsidian. Point Convene at the vault and the notes appear in it, with the summary’s timestamp citations as working wikilinks into the transcript. More on the Obsidian setup.
• You want to read the code. Every claim on this site is checkable against the source rather than a policy page.
• You would rather not have an account. There is no sign-up, no licence check, and no server to sign up to.
• You want your side and their side kept apart properly. Convene runs your mic and your Mac’s system audio as two separate transcription streams, so speaker attribution is structural rather than inferred.

Convene is not local transcription, and any page that tells you otherwise is selling something. Audio streams to AssemblyAI, and summaries go to Anthropic or OpenAI, both over keys you create and pay for yourself.

What is true is narrower and, for most people, more useful: there is no Convene server. Nothing routes through us because there is nowhere for it to route. Your keys stay in your Keychain and your notes stay in your folder. If your requirement is that no audio ever leaves the machine, neither Convene nor Granola meets it. You want something running a model locally.

What is the difference between Convene and Granola?

Convene is open source and writes your notes as Markdown files into a folder you choose, usually an Obsidian vault. Granola is a commercial product that keeps your notes in its own app and on its servers. Neither sends a bot into your meeting. If you want to own the files, pick Convene. If you want a polished product with a team maintaining it, pick Granola.

Is Convene really open source?

Yes. Convene is MIT licensed and the source is on GitHub, so you can read exactly how it captures audio, where it sends it, and how it writes your notes.

Is Convene cheaper than Granola?

Convene itself is free forever. You pay AssemblyAI directly for transcription at their published rate, and Anthropic or OpenAI for summaries if you enable them. There is no markup, because there is no Convene server for the request to pass through. Whether that is cheaper than a Granola subscription depends on how many hours of meetings you record. Check both providers' current pricing pages.

Does Convene keep my audio on my own machine?

No, and this is the most important caveat. Convene streams your audio to AssemblyAI for transcription, using your own API key. What is different from Granola is that there is no Convene server in the path: the request goes from your Mac to AssemblyAI directly, and we never receive your audio, transcript or notes. If you need transcription that never leaves your machine, use a tool that runs a model locally.

Can I move my Granola notes to Convene?

Nothing to migrate, because Convene reads nothing. Old Granola notes stay in Granola. New meetings land in your folder as Markdown from the moment you install Convene. Granola can export, so you can move history across by hand if you want it in one place.

Does Convene have a mobile app like Granola?

Not for calls. Granola has iOS and Android apps on the stores. Convene's iPhone app is built but not yet released, and it works differently. It records the room through the phone's mic for in-person meetings, because iOS does not let an app capture another app's audio.

What integrations does Convene have?

Convene has none, on purpose. It writes plain Markdown into a folder, so anything that reads files (Obsidian, ripgrep, git, your editor, an MCP server pointed at the folder) works without an integration. Granola has real integrations with Notion, Slack, HubSpot and others on paid plans. If you need a note pushed into a CRM automatically, Granola does that today and Convene does not.