Grain is a popular tool for recording and transcribing meetings. It's widely used by individuals and businesses who want to automate their meeting note-taking.
Grain has many useful features, however, you may still want to find better alternatives with advanced features that suit your specific business needs.
In this blog post, we will explore top 9 Grain alternatives that can help streamline your meeting recording and transcription process.
Best Grain alternatives
1. Bluedot
Bluedot is a must-have tool for your Google Meet meetings. It serves as a more affordable and user-friendly Grain alternative. Bluedot provides a Chrome extension that records, transcribes, and summarizes your Google Meet calls, and then generates a follow-up email.
What makes Bluedot a great alternative to Grain?
Bluedot provides transcripts with over 95% accuracy including the detection of speaker names. It can identify acronyms and technical terms ensuring that all words are captured accurately.
You have the option to personalize your meeting notes and choose a template that best summarizes your meeting. This can be tailored to your specific use case, whether it's a customer call, an all-hands meeting, a candidate interview, and so on.
Unlike other Grain alternatives, Bluedot provides a non-intrusive approach that doesn't involve meeting bots, allowing your participants to feel at ease during the call.
Top features of Bluedot:
- A Chrome extension to record Google Meet.
- Transcription and customizable AI meeting notes tailored to specific business needs.
- Shareable collections of meeting clips.
- A searchable repository for team meetings and customer calls.
- A screen recorder to capture your screen and camera, allowing for quick sharing.
- An AI-powered video editor that can remove filler words or entire sentences using the transcript.
Pricing: Bluedot offers Free Forever, Pro, and Team plans. The paid Pro plan costs $18 per month, while the cost of the Team plan varies depending on the size of your team.
2. Otter
Otter offers real-time transcription of meetings and produces meeting notes. It can automatically capture all shared slides, transcribe video calls, and generate AI-powered answers based on the content of the meeting.
How does Otter compare to Grain?
Using Otter, you can automate meeting transcription. Otter connects to your calendar and sends a meeting assistant to transcribe every video call you attend.
However, unlike Grain, this tool only records audio and provides transcriptions for your meetings. While this might make it a bit more challenging to catch the emotional nuances of your meetings, it's still a handy tool. But if you're after something more comprehensive, you might find Otter less attractive alternative to Grain.
Top features of Otter:
- Audio recording and real-time transcription
- Keyword analytics and commenting
- Searchable transcript and meeting notes
- iPhone/Android apps for in-person meetings
- Meeting assistant that automatically joins calls.
Pricing: Otter offers Basic (free), Paid plans: Pro ($16.99/month), and Business ($40/month), with charges per user per month.
3. Fireflies
Fireflies is an AI-powered meeting assistant that records, transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes your meetings. This Grain alternative provides integrations with over 50 tools, making it a widely adoptable solution.
Why Fireflies is a great alternative to Grain?
Apart from recording your meetings, Fireflies also analyzes the transcription and provides access to valuable meeting metrics, including sentiment analysis, talk-to-listen ratio, and speaker analytics.
While Grain supports only 20 languages, Fireflies supports more than 32, making it a more accessible alternative to Grain.
Top features of Fireflies:
- Audio/video recording and transcription.
- Meeting assistant that can join meetings.
- Search feature for keywords and themes.
- Integration with over 50 platforms.
- API for custom integrations.
- Support for multiple languages.
Pricing: This Grain alternative offers a free plan with limited recording minutes and audio-only options. The basic paid plan starts at $18 per user per month, while the Business plan, which provides advanced intelligence, costs $29 per month per seat.
4. TL;DV
TL;DV is another Grain alternative that offers recording, transcription, and summarization of your meetings. It's easy to set up and free to use, unless you want advanced integrations with various collaboration platforms and CRMs.
Why choose TL;DV over Grain?
TL;DV is quite similar to Grain, offering the option to clip meetings and create video reels. TL;DV provides a generous free plan and supports over 30 languages. However, the quality of the transcription is slightly inferior compared to Grain. TL;DV offers an option to timestamp moments during the meeting, making it easier to catch up after the call.
Pricing: TL;DV's Pro plan costs $25/month, which is slightly more expensive compared to Grain's Starter plan at $19/month. However, if you need CRM integration, TL;DV paid plan is far more affordable at $25/month compared to Grain's $39/month.
5. Fathom
Fathom is an ideal tool for your Zoom meetings. It's a free Grain alternative that records and transcribes your meetings. When you mark specific sections of a Zoom call, it automatically produces a summary of that moment.
What are the differences between Fathom and Grain?
Even though Fathom supports Google Meet and Teams, it is primarily designed for Zoom. Its main selling point is that it's a free tool with unlimited usage. However, the quality of the transcriptions and meeting notes may not match the high standard provided by Grain.
Top features of Fathom:
- Transcription and meeting notes
- Real time meeting clipping to create highlights
- Repository for all meetings
- Direct integration with Zoom
- Playlist to save meeting highlights
- AI follow up tasks
Pricing: Fathom offers a 'free forever' plan for individuals and a paid plan for teams, which costs $19 per user per month, including a 14-day free trial.
6. Gong
Gong is another Grain alternative. It’s a conversational intelligence and sales engagement platform that assists sales teams in recording, transcribing, and analyzing their meetings to unlock best practices. The insights gained from these calls are instrumental in training and onboarding new sales reps.
What distinguishes Gong from Grain?
Gong is a leader in conversation intelligence. It transcribes video calls, identifies topics and insights, and provides detailed analytics such as the duration of monologues and talk ratios. This information helps sales managers understand why some team members perform better than others. Gong is more than just a meeting recorder, which is why it is priced 3-5x higher than Grain.
Top features:
- Integration with CRM systems
- Advanced analytics for teams
- Real-time keyword alerts
- Multi-language transcription
- Revenue intelligence
- Playlists of meeting moments
Pricing: Gong offers custom pricing plans, available only on an annual basis.
7. ZoomInfo (Chorus)
Chorus is a more advanced alternative to Grain. It provides detailed analyses of every call to boost the performance of sales teams. Chorus automatically records every video call on platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and MS Teams, and offers transcription and analytics services.
How does Chorus compare to Grain?
Chorus offers team, pipeline, and revenue intelligence, positioning itself as a more advanced solution for sales teams. With features like AI summary notes, topic trackers, and smart search capabilities, it is a more expensive tool compared to Grain.
Key features
- Pipeline Analytics
- Smart Coaching
- Topic Detection and Transcription
- Slack and CRM Integration
- Collections for Meeting Highlights
- Meeting Analytics
Pricing: Paid plan is customized based on your business needs.
8. Avoma
Avoma is a conversational intelligence and meeting note-taker primarily designed for sales teams, but it can also be used by other departments. It provides a range of features including call analytics, meeting transcription, meeting scheduling, etc. Many sales teams at small and medium-sized businesses prefer this solution because it is more affordable.
Why should you consider Avoma over Grain?
This Grain alternative focuses on every aspect of your meeting. Before the meeting, it assists in scheduling and sends an agenda template. During the meeting, it records, transcribes, and helps highlight important moments. After the meeting, it provides a summary and coaching insights.
Top features:
- Meeting Scheduling
- Meeting Transcription and AI Notes
- Agenda Templates
- Coaching Insights
- Team Analytics
- Live Bookmarking
Pricing:
Avoma offers a variety of paid plans to suit different business needs. It starts at $24 monthly for a basic meeting assistant. If you want more advanced meeting notes, analytics, and CRM integration, there is a Plus plan for $59 monthly and a Business plan for $79 monthly. The Business plan includes risk alerts and pipeline intelligence. The Enterprise plan starts at $149 per user per month.
9. MeetRecord
MeetRecord provides automated AI coaching that analyses your conversations and offers recommendations on closing deals. Its unique selling point lies in its ability to transcribe meetings, extract insights from your video calls, and utilize these insights for team training.
Why MeetRecord is a great alternative to Grain?
It automates the review process for customer calls and automatically identifies key insights. The detailed analytics and automated coaching make it a more attractive option for sales teams compared to Grain.
Top features:
- AI coaching
- Meeting recorder and transcription
- CRM integration
- Single searchable database
- Objection tracking
- Deal intelligence
Pricing: MeetRecord paid plan starts at $39 per month per user. If you want to have AI coaching and advanced analytics, you need to request a custom price.
Which Grain alternative is better for you?
Before selecting a solution, you need to consider your budget and use case. Many people choose Bluedot because it offers customisable meeting notes and a bot-free solution that suits many business cases. Install the free Chrome extension and try it out for yourself.