Marcus Norrving
CEO & co-founder at Garba · Updated August 2026
Gong is the category leader in conversation intelligence, and it earned that. It is also expensive, built first for managers, and priced on an assumption that every seat you buy gets used. Those are the three reasons European teams tend to go looking.
The credible alternatives: Garba, Chorus.ai (ZoomInfo), Salesloft, Clari and Avoma. Which one fits depends on three questions — how hard your data-residency requirement is, what your reps will actually open, and how much per seat you can defend at renewal.
We're on this list, so read us accordingly. We've tried to be specific about where we don't fit, and every claim about a competitor here is one you can check against their own documentation.
Three reasons come up over and over, and only one of them is about features.
Adoption stalls. Gong's depth is aimed at managers and RevOps. The dashboards and deal boards are rich, but an individual rep has to go and get the value rather than receive it. Teams end up paying for seats that quietly go unused — which is a budget problem long before it's a product problem.
Data residency is a procurement question, not a preference. If you're recording customer conversations in the EU, someone in security review is going to ask where that audio lives and who can reach it. Vendors differ enormously here, and the honest distinction is rarely "EU or not" — it's whether the EU is the default or an option you had to know to ask for.
Price-to-value at renewal. Gong doesn't publish pricing; reported figures land at $1,200–$1,600+ per rep per year plus platform fees. That is defensible when the whole team is in it every day. When half the team isn't, it's an expensive dashboard.
| Tool | Best for | EU data residency | Reported pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| GarbaOur pick | European teams, SMB to mid-market, that need reps to actually adopt it | By default — 100% processed in the EU | Custom |
| Chorus.ai | Teams already paying for ZoomInfo | US-based | Custom |
| Salesloft | Consolidating conversation intelligence into a full engagement platform | EU options — confirm scope in the DPA | Custom |
| Clari | Enterprise forecasting and pipeline inspection | US-based | Enterprise, custom |
| Avoma | Small teams that mainly need meeting notes | EU options — confirm scope in the DPA | From $19/user/mo |
We belong on this list, but not on every shortlist. The honest version:
EU data residency as the default. 100% of customer data processed in the EU, with nothing to configure and a DPA as standard. Some tools here offer an EU region if you ask at setup; most don't offer one. "Already how it works" is a shorter security review than "available on request".
Built so the rep gets paid first. The CRM updated without typing, the follow-up drafted before the rep leaves the call, the playbook score without waiting on a manager. That is the entire adoption argument, and it's why BIMobject's team took to it in week one after Gong hadn't landed.
Where we're the wrong answer. If you're a 500-rep enterprise that bought Gong for forecast inspection and Revenue Cloud depth, we are not the like-for-like swap and we'd rather say so here than in month three. We're also newer than the incumbents, with a smaller customer base to reference.
Garba
Our pickGarba starts from a different premise than most of this list: the rep should get value from the tool before leadership does. Every conversation updates the CRM, drafts the follow-up and scores the call against the team's playbook — without the rep logging in separately, reading a transcript, or typing anything.
The proof point we can actually name: BIMobject moved off Gong in 2025. Gong had never landed consistently across their revenue team. Garba did, in the first week — at roughly a third of the previous contract.
Best for
European sales teams, SMB to mid-market, who've already tried a conversation-intelligence tool and failed to get adoption.
Key features
- CRM auto-fill from every conversation — field-level, into HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive
- Follow-up and next steps drafted the moment the call ends
- Self-scoring coaching against your own playbook, without waiting on a manager
- Deal intelligence and pipeline risk signals across every conversation
- 100% EU data processing by default, DPA as standard
Pricing
Custom. The one real number we can point to: BIMobject pay roughly ⅓ of their previous Gong contract.
Chorus.ai (ZoomInfo)
ZoomInfo acquired Chorus.ai in 2021, and the bundle is now the pitch: if you already pay for ZoomInfo's prospecting and data platform, Chorus adds conversation intelligence without adding a vendor, a contract or a security review.
Evaluated on its own merits as a Gong replacement, it's a thinner case. US-based infrastructure, comparable pricing dynamics, and no distinct answer to the adoption problem that sent you looking in the first place.
Best for
Teams already inside the ZoomInfo ecosystem.
Salesloft
Salesloft pairs conversation intelligence with cadences, email sequencing and forecasting. If the real goal is consolidation — fewer tools, one contract, one admin — it covers more ground than a like-for-like Gong swap.
It is not the strongest pick if conversation intelligence itself is the thing you care most about, and its EU story is worth pinning down in the DPA rather than the sales deck.
Best for
Teams replacing Gong and a separate sales engagement tool in one move.
Clari
Clari is a revenue intelligence and forecasting platform first. It captures calls, but the product is built so that leadership gets clean pipeline data — not so that an individual rep gets something out of their own conversations.
Which makes it a clean recommendation and a clean disqualification. If your problem is forecast accuracy at enterprise scale, evaluate it. If your problem is that reps don't use the tool and the CRM is stale, Clari isn't aimed at that.
Best for
Enterprise RevOps teams whose problem is forecast accuracy.
Avoma
Avoma does meeting notes, transcription and light coaching at a materially lower price point, and it is one of the few tools in the category that publishes what it costs — from $19 per user per month.
It doesn't go as deep on CRM auto-fill or deal intelligence as Garba or Gong. For a team that genuinely just needs recordings and summaries, that's a feature rather than a gap.
Best for
Small teams that need meeting notes and transcription on a budget.
Choose Garba if — you're in Europe and want residency to be the default; your reps didn't adopt the last tool; you want CRM hygiene without chasing anyone; you want a real number rather than a quote-on-request.
Choose Chorus.ai if — you already pay for ZoomInfo and bundling beats best-of-breed.
Choose Salesloft if — you're consolidating conversation intelligence and sales engagement into one platform.
Choose Clari if — the problem you're actually solving is forecast accuracy, not the rep's day.
Choose Avoma if — you need solid meeting notes on a small budget and can live without deep CRM automation.
For European teams, Garba: 100% of customer data is processed within the EU by default rather than as a setup option, a DPA is provided as standard, and the company is Swedish. Worth being precise about the comparison, though — Gong does offer an EU data centre that new customers can select at setup, with the US as the default. The distinction is default versus opt-in, not present versus absent.
Three reasons dominate. Adoption stalls, because the depth is built for managers and RevOps rather than for the individual rep. The price gets hard to defend at renewal when utilisation is low — reported figures run $1,200–$1,600+ per rep per year plus platform fees. And EU buyers increasingly want data residency to be the default their vendor ships with rather than a configuration choice made once at setup.
Yes. Avoma publishes pricing from $19 per user per month and is the cheapest option here, though it covers a subset of what Gong does. Garba's pricing is custom; the concrete data point is that BIMobject replaced their Gong contract with Garba at roughly one third of what they had been paying. Gong doesn't publish pricing, so treat any percentage comparison — including ours — as specific to a contract rather than a general rate.
For the primary workflows, yes: conversation capture, CRM updates, coaching, deal intelligence and follow-up automation. Teams migrating from Gong report no functional gaps there. If you bought Gong specifically for enterprise deal inspection and forecasting depth, evaluate that side by side before switching.
BIMobject moved their revenue team from Gong to Garba and had adoption across the team in the first week. The thing to plan is sequencing against your existing contract — start that conversation before the renewal date, not after it.
Garba processes all customer data in the EU by default. Salesloft and Avoma have EU options whose exact scope is worth confirming in the DPA rather than taking from a sales conversation. Chorus.ai and Clari are US-based. Gong itself offers an EU data centre as an opt-in at setup. In every case, ask specifically where audio, transcripts and derived data are stored and processed — those are not always the same answer — and get it in writing.
Marcus Norrving
CEO & co-founder at Garba
Co-founded Garba after helping build Notified, the PR and investor-communications platform acquired by West Corp in 2019 - hiring the reps, running the pipeline, and writing the 9pm follow-ups. Started Garba in Malmö the moment AI could do that work instead of just recording it.
We're on this list, so weigh it accordingly — and check every competitor claim here against that vendor's own documentation, which is where ours came from. Think a tool is missing or a detail is wrong? Email support@garba.ai.
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