Granola launched voice dictation for any app on Thursday and made it free. Wispr, the dictation company, added meeting notes three months ago and has been offering Granola's paying users up to a year free to switch.
Wispr went after Granola's meeting-notes customers first. Granola has answered by giving away the thing Wispr charges for.
Granola, the meeting notetaker valued at $1.5 billion, launched a dictation feature on Thursday. Users hold the Fn key and talk, and Granola tidies up the text and pastes it into whatever app is open, whether that's an email, a Slack thread or a chatbot.
Wispr Flow, valued at $2 billion, sells the same thing. Dictation is its main paid product, and its free tier comes with usage limits. Granola's version has no word cap and costs nothing.
Wispr started the fight. In August it added a meeting notetaker that works much like Granola's, then began offering Granola subscribers up to a year of free service to move over. Thursday's launch is Granola's response.
Wispr Moved First
Wispr's notetaker, which TechCrunch first reported in August, records calls through the computer's own audio rather than sending a bot into the meeting. Granola built its following on that same no-bot approach.
Wispr then put up a page aimed at Granola users. Subscribers who upload a Granola receipt get Wispr credit for the paid time they have left, plus up to three extra months, capped at 12 months in total. Wispr will also import their exported Granola notes, summaries and transcripts.
The page compares the two products side by side. Wispr lists itself as meeting notes plus dictation in one subscription, and lists Granola as notes only, with voice input limited to Granola's chat feature. Granola's launch made that comparison out of date.
Granola Is Pricing Wispr's Core Product at Zero
For now the feature only works on Mac. Granola says iOS and Windows versions are on the way but hasn't given dates. Its announcement put the price up front: unlimited words, for free.
Granola can afford that because it makes its money elsewhere, on meeting notes and team workspaces. Dictation is a way to get more people using the app. Wispr has no such cushion, since dictation is what most of its customers pay for.
Granola's existing customers are the obvious first audience. They can now dictate without a second subscription, which undercuts the main argument in Wispr's switching offer.
Granola and Wispr Want Different Things
Granola raised $125 million at a $1.5 billion valuation in March and has since pitched itself to companies as an AI app for work, with meeting notes as the starting point. Dictation gives it the replies, follow-ups and messages people write after a call, alongside the call itself.
Wispr's plans run in a different direction. According to TechCrunch, it is building its own models in a research lab that looks at new ways for people to control computers. Co-founder Tanay Kothari has said he wants voice to replace the keyboard, and dictation is the center of that bet.
Wispr has a head start. Its app already dictates on Mac, Windows and iOS, and the company has spent about two years improving accuracy and formatting. Its personal dictionary, which learns names and jargon, now works across both dictation and meeting notes. Granola's version will have to hold up against that before the free price tag counts for much.
Every Voice App Is Becoming the Same App
Other voice startups are making the same move. Fireflies added dictation to its desktop notetaking apps in September, and Speechify and Monologue now offer both features.
TechCrunch notes that until earlier this year, most of these companies focused on a single job. Now they want to capture more of what users say over the course of a day. A company that holds both the meeting transcript and the follow-up email has more to feed its AI features than one that holds only the transcript.
The downside for all of them is that the products start to look alike. With several apps offering meeting notes and dictation, buyers have less reason to pay a premium for any one of them.
Free Dictation Is Still a Security Decision
For IT teams, the combined product raises more questions than the price does. A tool that records meetings and also takes dictation in every app can capture what was said on a sales call and the email sent afterward. That puts a large share of a company's sensitive material with a single vendor.
Free features also spread before anyone has approved them. An employee who already uses Granola for meetings can switch on dictation without a new purchase going through procurement. Security teams that cleared Granola as a notetaker should check whether that review covered an app that types into every other app on the laptop.
The same questions apply to Granola, Wispr and their competitors: where the audio gets processed, how long transcripts and dictated text are stored, and whether any of it is used to train models.
What Comes Next
Granola needs dictation on Windows and phones before it can compete with Wispr for most users. It has said those versions are coming but hasn't said when.
Wispr could respond by loosening the limits on its free tier, folding the notetaker into its base plan, or arguing that its dictation is good enough to keep paying for. Any of those would cut into its revenue.
Granola also hasn't said how long dictation will stay unlimited and free. Features that launch free to win users often end up behind a paywall later.
Wispr spent the summer trying to take Granola's customers. Granola's answer was to give away Wispr's product.
