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A Granola alternative that keeps everything on your Mac
A Granola alternative that keeps your audio on your Mac. On-device transcription, no bot, no cloud notebook.
Granola is a slick meeting notepad. It listens to your call and turns your rough notes into a clean writeup, with the processing happening in its cloud. If you live in that workflow it feels great.
Trace is for people who want the same "just record the meeting" simplicity but without the audio leaving their machine. It captures system audio and your mic locally, transcribes on-device with Parakeet through FluidAudio, and saves plain files you own. No cloud notebook sits in the middle.
You still get the in-meeting niceties. A live recap runs as you talk (a streaming Parakeet model), and you can flag a key moment mid-call with a hotkey and a short note, which is handy when you later feed the transcript to an LLM for a summary. The difference is where it all happens: on your Mac, not on someone’s server.
How they compare
| Feature | Trace | Granola |
|---|---|---|
| Where audio goes | Stays on your Mac. | Notes processed in its cloud. |
| Bot in the call | No bot; captures audio locally. | No bot; captures audio locally. |
| Live in meeting | Live recap plus flag key moments. | Enhances your typed notes during the call. |
| Transcription | On-device. | Cloud-based note generation. |
| Pricing | One-time purchase (£9.99). | Subscription-based. |
| Output | Raw .wav, .json and .md files. | Notes kept in the app. |
| Best for | Private, local transcripts you keep. | AI-polished shared notes. |
FAQ
Does Granola use a bot? Does Trace?
Neither one adds a bot to the call. Both capture audio on your Mac. The real difference is what happens next: Granola sends note processing to its cloud, Trace keeps transcription on-device.
Does Trace generate AI summaries like Granola?
Trace produces clean transcripts and lets you mark key moments with notes, which makes summarising with your own LLM easy. It does not run its own cloud summary service. You stay in control of where that step happens.
Is Trace cheaper than Granola?
Trace is a one-time purchase rather than a subscription, so over time it usually costs less for a single user.
Can I use Trace fully offline?
Yes, after the one-time model download on first use. From then on transcription runs with no network.
Get Trace
Keep your meetings on your Mac. One-time purchase on the Mac App Store.
Compare
- Otter alternative: Record on your Mac with no bot in the call, transcribed on-device.
- Offline transcription for Mac: Everything stays on your machine, and it works with the network off.
- No-bot transcription: Capture system audio with no extra participant in Zoom, Meet or Teams.