Granola vs HEY Calendar: Meeting Notes or Calendar Philosophy?

Granola is all about meeting intelligence. It hooks into your existing calendar (Google, Outlook, whatever), watches for upcoming meetings, and joins them silently to transcribe and generate notes. The AI is genuinely good at pulling out action items, decisions, and key discussion points without you having to type anything.

I've been using it since early 2024 and it's saved me probably 5-7 hours a week on meeting documentation. Think of it as an assistant that remembers everything discussed while you focus on the actual conversation. Doesn't replace your calendar - enhances what happens during those calendar blocks.

HEY Calendar comes from Basecamp (the same folks who built HEY email) and it's their opinionated rethink of how calendars should work. The big thing is the screener - meeting invites don't automatically land on your calendar. They go to a holding area and you decide if they're worth your time. If someone sends you a recurring 1:1 that always runs over and accomplishes nothing, you can just... not accept it.

Radical concept, honestly. The design is clean, the philosophy is 'your calendar should serve you, not the other way around.' You either love the strong opinions or find them annoying. I'm in the first camp, but I've met plenty of people in the second.

This is Granola's whole reason to exist. Join a meeting and it starts transcribing automatically. Works with Zoom, Teams, Meet - platform doesn't matter. The transcription accuracy is scary good, even with multiple speakers or heavy accents.

But the real value is what happens after: the AI structures everything into sections like 'Decisions Made,' 'Action Items,' 'Key Discussion Points.' After a 60-minute strategy call, you get a readable summary instead of a 10-page transcript wall. Search works across all your meetings too. Type 'redesign timeline' and it surfaces every call where that came up. Honestly saved my ass a few times when my boss asked 'wait, what did the client say about launch dates?'

HEY Calendar doesn't touch meeting notes. Like, at all. It's purely focused on managing your schedule and protecting your time from meeting creep. If you want notes from your calls, you're doing that manually or using another tool (like, say, Granola).

This isn't a criticism - HEY just solves a different problem. They care about helping you decide which meetings deserve space on your calendar, not what happens once you're in them. For documentation, you'd need Google Docs, Notion, pen and paper, whatever you normally use.

Granola doesn't have opinions about how you manage your calendar. It reads whatever calendar you give it (Google, Outlook, HEY), sees when meetings are happening, and does its transcription thing. The workflow is: your calendar says meeting at 2pm, Granola joins at 2pm, notes appear after the meeting ends.

Dead simple. No calendar philosophy, no strong opinions about invites or availability. It's calendar-agnostic in the best way - works with whatever setup you already have.

HEY Calendar's whole thing is forcing you to be intentional about your time. Meeting requests hit the screener first. You review them and decide: does this deserve space on my calendar, or is this another recurring sync that could be an email? The 'held events' concept is smart too - tentative meetings that might happen but aren't confirmed yet.

Instead of cluttering your main calendar, they sit in a separate area until finalized. If you're someone whose calendar fills with junk meetings and you feel powerless to stop it, HEY gives you back control. The trade-off? It requires discipline and willingness to say no, which some people struggle with.

Granola plugs into Google Calendar and Outlook/Microsoft 365 calendars. That's your calendar source. For meetings, it works with Zoom, Teams, Google Meet. Notes can export to Notion, Google Docs, or get posted to Slack channels automatically.

The Slack integration is clutch - finish a call, summary drops into the project channel 2 minutes later, everyone stays in the loop. Also has an API if you want to build custom workflows, though honestly I've never needed to touch it. The integrations are focused: calendar apps to read your schedule, meeting platforms to capture audio, documentation tools to save notes. Does what it needs to, nothing more.

HEY Calendar syncs with Google Calendar and Outlook, so you can manage all your calendars from one interface. If your company uses Google Workspace, you can accept/decline invites from HEY and they sync back to Google so coworkers see your availability correctly. It's a front-end on top of your existing calendars, not a replacement.

The integration with HEY email is seamless - calendar invites from emails flow into the screener automatically. Beyond that, it's pretty self-contained. Not a lot of third-party integrations, but that fits the Basecamp philosophy of keeping things simple and opinionated rather than connecting to everything under the sun.

Granola runs $15-20/month depending on the plan. There's a 14-day free trial with full features, so you can actually test it on real meetings before paying. Is it worth $180-240/year? Look, if you're in 10+ meetings per week and those meetings matter, yeah probably. Time saved on note-taking alone pays for itself.

I calculated it once: if Granola saves me 5 hours a week and my hourly rate is anywhere above minimum wage, it's a no-brainer ROI. But if meetings aren't a huge part of your job, this is expensive for something you'll rarely use. They don't have a free tier, which makes sense given AI transcription isn't cheap to run on the backend.

HEY Calendar is $99/year, but it comes bundled with HEY email. If you already pay for HEY email ($99/year), the calendar is included at no extra cost. If you just want the calendar without the email... you can't unbundle them, which is annoying. $99/year is reasonable if you use both email and calendar and vibe with Basecamp's philosophy.

It's pricey if you only care about calendar features and already have an email setup you like. There's a 30-day trial to test the screener and workflow before committing. Worth trying if you're calendar-frustrated, but know what you're getting into.

Granola is for people drowning in meetings who need better documentation. Product managers who jump between stakeholder calls and team syncs. Consultants who bill by the hour and need accurate records of client conversations. Anyone who's ever left a meeting thinking 'wait, what did we actually decide?' and couldn't remember.

The value scales with meeting frequency - if you're in 15+ hours of meetings weekly, this is a legitimate productivity boost. Under 5 hours? Probably overkill. I've recommended it to coworkers who take a lot of client calls and every single one said it changed their workflow.

HEY Calendar appeals to people frustrated with traditional calendar apps. If you're sick of your calendar filling with low-value meetings and want a tool that helps you push back, this is it. Creative workers who need long blocks of uninterrupted time love the screener - it makes protecting focus time easier.

Remote workers who get bombarded with meeting requests from multiple time zones find it helpful for batching calendar decisions. But if you're in a corporate environment where declining meetings is politically risky, HEY's philosophy might cause more friction than it solves. It works best when you have autonomy over your schedule.