How to Use the Granola API on Business and Enterprise Plans

The Granola API provides programmatic access to meeting notes, raw transcripts, and webhooks for Business and Enterprise workspaces.

At Layer3Labs, we build workflow automations and CRM integrations, so we read an API for its plan gate, its limits and what it returns.

As of October 2026, the Business tier costs $14 per user per month, and Enterprise is $35 per user per month on the Granola pricing page. The billing docs word Enterprise as from $35. Free Basic accounts cannot access API endpoints.

Granola API Capabilities and Plan Gates

The Granola API provides RESTful endpoints that let Business and Enterprise workspace members retrieve meeting notes, extract transcripts, and configure automated webhooks. Granola does not provide API access on the free Basic tier. You need Business ($14 per user per month) or Enterprise ($35 per user per month) to create keys, per the Granola API help center.

The API lets your code list notes, fetch a note with its transcript, and list folders. It returns only notes that already have an AI summary and a transcript, so a meeting still processing will not appear yet.

On Business, any member can create a personal API key for their own notes and public workspace notes. On Enterprise, admins control API access and decide which scopes members may use. The Granola API reference also documents the Enterprise-only Audit API and Legal Holds API.

• Plan eligibility: Business ($14 per user monthly) and Enterprise (from $35 per user monthly) workspaces only.
• Base URL: https://public-api.granola.ai/v1 using HTTPS and standard JSON payloads.
• Authentication: Bearer tokens with personal or workspace-level scopes.
• Processing prerequisite: Records appear only after Granola finishes generating the AI summary and transcript.

Desktop Token Setup and Granola API Key Scopes

Create a Granola API key in the Granola desktop app under Settings → Connectors → API keys.

Key creation requires choosing between two permission scopes based on data access requirements. The Personal notes scope restricts the key to meetings owned by or directly shared with the generating user. The Public notes scope permits access to all public workspace notes stored across shared spaces and team folders.

Enterprise and Business workspaces also support workspace API keys managed exclusively by workspace administrators. Workspace keys do not expire automatically and remain active regardless of individual employee departures or account reassignments. Granola provides technical instructions for token generation in the Granola API help center.

• Open the Granola desktop application on macOS or Windows and press Cmd+, or Ctrl+, to access Settings.
• Select Connectors from the settings sidebar and choose API keys.
• Click Create new key to open the permission configuration dialog.
• Select the Personal notes scope, Public notes scope, or both scopes.
• Click Generate API Key and save the key in your secrets manager.

Initial Requests and Transcript Retrieval

Every request to the Granola API requires an HTTP Bearer token passed within the standard Authorization request header. A standard request to list available notes uses a GET call against https://public-api.granola.ai/v1/notes with the header Authorization: Bearer grn_YOUR_API_KEY. The response lists the notes your key's scopes can reach; the Granola API reference lists each note's fields.

Retrieving conversational transcripts requires either a query parameter or a dedicated sub-resource endpoint. Appending ?include=transcript to a specific note request returns the full conversational text embedded alongside the summary object. Alternatively, developers can query GET https://public-api.granola.ai/v1/notes/{note_id}/transcript to isolate raw conversational utterances without pulling full document metadata.

In the CRM integrations we build, we post the summary's action items to the contact record and send the full transcript to an archive.

• List Notes: GET https://public-api.granola.ai/v1/notes
• Get Single Note: GET https://public-api.granola.ai/v1/notes/{note_id}
• Get Note with Transcript: GET https://public-api.granola.ai/v1/notes/{note_id}?include=transcript
• Get Transcript Only: GET https://public-api.granola.ai/v1/notes/{note_id}/transcript
• List Folders: path in the Granola API reference

Production Constraints and Granola API Rate Limits

Granola restricts API traffic to a burst limit of 25 requests over 5 seconds and a sustained rate of 5 requests per second. That sustained rate equals 300 requests per minute across all endpoints. Exceeding these thresholds causes the server to return an HTTP 429 Too Many Requests status code.

Granola has no sandbox or test environment, so you test against live data. Use a separate paid test workspace and hold a few short meetings to create notes.

To backfill months of notes, page through List Notes at under 5 requests per second and back off on a 429. The CSV export is the other bulk route, limited to one per 24 hours.

Core Automation Workflows for Meeting Records

Three automations are worth building first with the Granola API: a CRM update, a Slack digest and a transcript archive. The first sends meeting takeaways to HubSpot, Salesforce or your own database. A webhook tells your worker that a note changed. The worker fetches the note and attaches its action items to the matching HubSpot contact.

The second workflow publishes a daily executive digest into internal communication channels like Slack. An automated script runs each evening, calls List Notes for the day's meetings, extracts core decisions, and posts a formatted message into dedicated team channels. This distribution pattern keeps cross-functional teams informed without requiring every stakeholder to maintain a paid Granola license.

The third workflow archives full conversational transcripts into a data warehouse or cloud storage bucket. An ingestion service receives document creation notifications, calls the transcript endpoint to extract complete speaker dialogue, and appends the JSON to that store. The archive gives analysts searchable conversation history and outlives any transcript auto-deletion policy your workspace sets.

Webhooks and the Enterprise Audit and Legal Holds APIs

Granola provides event-driven webhooks on Business and Enterprise subscriptions, while audit logging and legal hold capabilities remain restricted to Enterprise plans. As the Granola webhooks documentation shows, you create, list, update and delete webhook endpoints through the API, so your code hears about note changes without polling.

Enterprise plans include the Granola Audit API, a log of workspace activity. An admin creates Audit API keys under Settings → Connectors → Audit API keys, up to five per workspace. The Granola audit documentation says it serves the last year of events, 30 per page. Events include transcription starts and ends, note and transcript views, logins, data exports and MCP tool use.

Enterprise workspaces can also use the Legal Holds API, which prevents document deletion during active litigation or regulatory discovery. Unlike standard endpoints, the Legal Holds interface requires direct onboarding by emailing Granola support at hey@granola.so, as specified in the Granola legal holds guide.

Integration Architecture Tradeoffs

Use the API for background jobs, the Granola MCP server for questions you ask an assistant, and Zapier when nobody on the team writes code.

For interactive agentic workflows, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) server provides a direct bridge to desktop AI assistants. As explained in our guide to the Granola MCP integration, the server operates over Streamable HTTP at https://mcp.granola.ai/mcp and connects natively to tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor. MCP uses OAuth 2.0 rather than static API keys, enabling large language models to search past meetings, read transcripts, and answer ad-hoc queries interactively during user prompts.

Teams lacking engineering resources should evaluate no-code connectors before writing custom API scripts. Granola has native integrations with Notion, HubSpot and Slack. Zapier reaches thousands more apps without custom code, as our overview of Granola integrations shows. To send meeting notes straight into a sales pipeline, see our guide on AI meeting notes to CRM automation.

• REST API: Best for custom software, automated data pipelines, continuous warehouse archiving, and backend event handling.
• Granola MCP Server: Best for interactive conversational prompts inside Claude or ChatGPT, prompt engineering, and ad-hoc meeting research.
• Zapier Integration: Best for marketing and sales teams needing rapid, trigger-based automations into CRMs and task trackers without engineering overhead.

Implementation Boundaries and Deployment Strategy

Teams on the free Basic plan and developers needing an offline sandbox environment should not use the Granola API for their production workflows. Granola does not permit API access on the $0 tier. Teams that cannot upgrade to the $14 Business tier must rely on manual note copying or the 24-hour bulk CSV export feature in desktop settings. Organizations handling protected health data must also verify compliance requirements in our guide to Granola HIPAA compliance, as Business tier endpoints do not qualify for healthcare compliance.

Our answer changes if Granola adds a free developer tier or a sandbox, because early-stage developers could then build on the API before paying. Conversely, if Granola implements restrictive workspace-level data caps or removes personal API key generation on the Business tier, teams should pivot toward webhook-driven Zapier pipelines or native connectors.

To start, move your workspace to Business, create a key in the desktop app, and run one GET against /v1/notes with the Granola API.