Question 1

Why switch from Granola to Shiken?

Accepted Answer

Granola is designed around one user taking personal AI notes during back-to-back meetings. It’s excellent at that — but it stops there. Shiken starts with the same bot-free capture experience, then adds full video recording, speaker diarisation, AI coaching, roleplay generation, team-wide intelligence and a learning platform that turns every call into training content your whole organisation can benefit from.

Question 2

Does Shiken offer bot-free recording like Granola?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Shiken captures computer audio directly so nothing extra joins your call — the exact pattern Granola popularised. The difference is you can also choose a meeting bot when you want full video, screen recording or richer speaker separation. Granola only offers bot-free, transcript-only capture, so you’re locked in to one mode.

Question 3

Who owns the meeting data and is it used to train AI?

Accepted Answer

With Shiken, your meeting data is yours. We never train models on your content by default and enterprise customers get contractual zero-retention and data residency controls. Granola’s policies require opting out to avoid having your notes used to train their AI. For regulated industries and confidential conversations this is a meaningful difference.

Question 4

What about team-wide insights and search?

Accepted Answer

This is one of Granola’s biggest gaps. Granola is note-based and manually shared, so rolling up patterns across every sales call or customer conversation is painful. Shiken gives managers and enablement teams org-wide dashboards, searchable transcripts across every meeting and automatic tagging, so you can ask "where did prospects push back on pricing this quarter" and get a real answer.

Question 5

Can Shiken coach me on my conversations?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Every Shiken meeting is scored against the rubric you choose — MEDDIC / SPIN / your own sales methodology, communication frameworks, compliance checklists or custom scorecards. You get 1:1 AI coaching feedback after every call and the agent will queue up targeted roleplays for the skills you need to sharpen. Granola offers no coaching layer.

Question 6

Does Shiken turn my meetings into training content?

Accepted Answer

Yes — this is Shiken’s core USP. A single sales call or discovery meeting can be turned into a 5-minute microlearning, a flashcard set, an AI roleplay scenario, a SCORM module for your LMS, a Slack recap or a customer-shareable clip. Granola gives you the note, Shiken turns the note into content that moves the org forward.

Question 7

Can Shiken replace Granola for power users who live in back-to-back meetings?

Accepted Answer

Easily. Heavy users typically tell us Shiken matches Granola on the bot-free notepad experience and adds everything they were missing — coaching, roleplays, video clips, SCORM export and a learning platform. Many also move off a second tool (Fathom, Otter or a notetaker bundled with an LMS) once Shiken is in place.

Question 8

How does pricing compare?

Accepted Answer

Shiken has a free plan and transparent paid tiers that include meeting recording, the Knowledge Agent, AI coaching, roleplays and the learning platform. Granola charges per seat for what is effectively a personal notepad, and features like a public API are reserved for higher tiers. For teams, Shiken is typically more cost-effective because it replaces both the notetaker and the training tools.

Best Granola Alternative for Teams

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