Granola's paid plan is $14 per user per month, and it doesn't do annual discounts. Business bills monthly and annual billing is for Enterprise contracts only, which we covered in our Granola pricing guide. So if you're hunting for a Granola discount, the coupon sites won't help much. The real discounts are three official programs, and two of them are worth a full year of Business.
We run Granola on our own calls every day and we're affiliates, which means some links here pay us if you subscribe. That doesn't change your price. Everything below comes from Granola's students page, startups page, and referral program docs, checked on November 7, 2026. These offers change, so the live pages win if anything here has moved.
What a free year is actually worth
Business is $14 per user per month with no annual discount, so a free year is worth $168 per person. For a startup that's per seat, which is where the number gets real.
| Who | Offer | Value at $14 a month |
|---|---|---|
| One student | 12 months of Business | $168 |
| Student plus 5 referred classmates | 12 months each | $1,008 across six people |
| 5-person seed startup | 1 year of Business | $840 |
| 20-person seed startup | 1 year of Business | $3,360 |
| New user via referral | 2 months of Business | $28 per seat |
What Business adds over the free Basic plan is the stuff you notice after a month. Unlimited meeting history instead of the last 30 days, the advanced AI models, integrations with Notion, HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, and Zapier, full MCP access with transcripts, and the API. A year of that is a long enough runway to find out whether you'd ever pay for it.
Granola for students, 12 months free
Granola's students page offers 12 months of Granola Business free to currently enrolled students at accredited universities in the US, the UK, and Canada. You verify by uploading your student ID. Granola calls it a limited edition offer, so we wouldn't sit on it.
- Go to granola.ai/students and start the application.
- Upload your student ID to verify enrollment.
- Install Granola on your Mac or Windows laptop once you're approved.
- Share it. Students can refer up to five friends at the same university, and each one also gets 12 months of Business free.
For students the use case is lectures, seminars, and group project calls. Granola listens to your laptop audio, and you jot rough notes while it transcribes. Afterward it merges your notes with the transcript into a clean write-up. For lectures in a room rather than on Zoom, the phone apps take notes in person, and our guide to in-person note takers covers when a phone is enough.
Check before you record a lecture. Some schools and instructors restrict recording, and many states and countries have consent rules. Ask first. Granola transcribes from audio, so the same rules apply to it as to any recorder.
Granola for startups, 1 year free
The startups page gives one year of Granola Business free to startups that meet all of these.
- Fewer than 30 employees. The page's FAQ says up to 30, so if you're right at 30, ask.
- Raised pre-seed or seed funding from one of Granola's 500+ approved investors.
- Never paid for Granola and never used a promo code on it.
Bootstrapped and self-funded companies don't qualify, and the page says so directly. After the free year you move to standard Business pricing, which is $14 per user per month today.
Two practical notes. First, apply before anyone on the team upgrades on a card, because having paid for Granola disqualifies you. Second, if your investor isn't on Granola's list, the startup perk portals some banks and accelerators run sometimes carry Granola deals too. We haven't verified those terms, so read them before you count on one.
The referral program, 2 months of Business
Granola's referral docs give a new user 2 months of Granola Business when they sign up through an existing user's link. The link lives in Settings, under Referrals. The rules are tight.
- Company email only. Gmail and Outlook.com addresses aren't eligible.
- New to Granola. The person signing up can't already have an account.
- New company. Their company can't already have a Granola workspace.
- Nothing for the referrer. The docs describe a reward for the new user only.
So the referral link is a good deal for exactly one person, someone joining from a company that isn't on Granola yet. If that's you and you know a Granola user, ask them for their link.
What about Granola promo codes?
Granola's pricing page doesn't list any coupon codes, and we didn't find a public one on Granola's own site. The startup page's rule that you can't have used a promo code tells you codes exist, most likely through partner programs, but they aren't something Granola publishes. Coupon sites listing a "Granola promo code" are mostly recycling the student, startup, and referral offers above. Go to the source pages instead.
The other discount nobody mentions is the free plan itself. Basic has no meeting cap and no trial clock. It's the same note-taking engine as Business, and it now includes Voice Typing, Granola's free dictation feature, which we break down in our Granola Voice Typing review. The only limit is that notes older than 30 days drop out of view until you upgrade.
What happens when the free year ends
The startup page says you move to standard Business pricing. The students page doesn't spell out what happens at month 13, so assume the same and set a calendar reminder for month 11. You have two choices when it ends.
- Pay $14 per user per month and keep everything.
- Drop to Basic. Granola's docs say older notes aren't deleted on Basic, they're hidden, and you can export a CSV of titles and summaries for your full history from Settings, then Profile, then Generate CSV.
The bottom line
If you're a student in the US, UK, or Canada, take the free year. $168 of Business for uploading a student ID is the best deal Granola offers, and five classmates can get it too.
If you're a funded seed startup, apply before anyone pays. A paid account disqualifies you, and the value scales with every seat.
Everyone else, start on Basic. It's free with no meeting cap. You'll know within a month whether the 30-day history window ever gets in your way.
For the full plan breakdown, read Granola pricing. For a year of daily use, our Granola AI review. And if Granola isn't the fit, Granola alternatives sorts the other options by workflow.