Non-EU vendorAI CoworkHeadquarters: GB

Granola: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Granola is an AI notepad for meetings. The app captures audio from your computer instead of sending a bot into the call, and combines your own notes with the transcript into meeting notes and action items. It uses your calendar to prepare a brief before external meetings, and an MCP connector lets other AI apps use your notes. Granola is available for macOS, Windows, iOS and Android, is delivered as SaaS and is not open source.

Granola is headquartered in London; legally, the service is offered by Granola, Inc., a US company, together with its UK subsidiary Granola Labs Ltd. According to the privacy policy, personal data is stored on AWS servers in the US, and the security page describes a US-hosted AWS environment; no EU hosting option is documented. Granola does not store meeting audio and names Deepgram, Assembly, OpenAI and Anthropic among its providers. The company offers a data processing agreement, relies on standard contractual clauses for transfers and cites SOC 2 Type 2. European organisations should account for transfers to the US.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Granola pre-selected

Mastodon LinkedIn Bluesky X Email

Sovereignty score

32 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-250
Headquartered outside the EU (GB)
Data residency SOV-30
No hosting in Europe (US)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-340
Key management with a non-European vendor
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-630
Closed source, runtime with the vendor

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 8, 2026

Headquarters	GB (OTHER)Verified by hand
Ultimate parent company	USVerified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Yes — found adequate by the European CommissionVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	USVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Category	AI Cowork
Type	Product
Website	granola.ai ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Granola

The European alternatives to Granola come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

20 European AI Cowork vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is Granola one of many dependencies?

Score your whole stack in about three minutes. Free, no account needed.

Assess your stack →View a sample report (opens in a new tab)

Why digital sovereignty matters with Granola

Granola is headquartered in GB, outside the EU. Contracts and data therefore also fall under non-European law. The GDPR applies through contractual terms, but in a conflict with local legislation you have less certainty than with a European vendor. The ultimate owner is based in US. Foreign control undermines part of the certainty a European headquarters offers.

Granola hosts data outside the EU (US). Personal data therefore leaves the EU, which requires a transfer mechanism under the GDPR and pulls the data residency score down.

Granola is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Granola together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Granola?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Granola include Sally, Noota and Leexi. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Granola?

Our list of EU alternatives to Granola is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

Is Granola GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Granola is headquartered in GB (OTHER) and hosts data in US. The vendor states it is GDPR-compliant, but the data falls under non-EU jurisdiction. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 8, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in AI Cowork

AI Cowork: Autonomous AI desktop agents — multi-step task execution, document processing, workflow automation. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

Also in this category

See all →

Open in the alternatives dashboard Missing a vendor? Submit it Are you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the AI Cowork page — with no effect on your score