Marcus Norrving
CEO & co-founder at Garba · Updated August 2026
These are different products, and it's worth saying that before anything else. Fireflies is one of the most widely used AI notetakers in the world: it records meetings — every kind, not just sales — and gives you transcripts, summaries and action items, cheaply and well.
Garba is a sales platform. It reads the sales conversation and routes what matters to where it belongs: the deal fields into the CRM, the follow-up draft to the rep, the playbook score to the coaching loop, the risk signal into the pipeline view.
The practical test: after a call on Fireflies, a rep has a transcript and a list of actions, and still has to update the CRM, write the follow-up and judge how the call went. After a call on Garba, none of those are manual. If what you need is meeting notes across the whole company, Fireflies is the right tool and cheaper — we'd rather say that than sell you something you don't need.
| Attribute | Garba | Fireflies.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Sales platform — CRM automation, coaching, pipeline intelligence | AI notetaker — transcripts, summaries, action items, across every meeting type |
| Best for | Sales teams who want the post-call work done, not written down | Whole organisations that need affordable notes on every meeting |
| EU data residency | Default. 100% processed in the EU, nothing to configure | US by default (AWS/GCP). EU storage only via Private Storage on Enterprise — and their docs note data is still processed and accessed in the US |
| CRM auto-fill | Field-level, sales-specific — MEDDPICC/BANT, next steps, objections | CRM sync via integrations; not built around sales field extraction |
| Coaching | Self-scoring against your playbook after every call | Not a sales-coaching product |
| Pipeline intelligence | Deal signals and pipeline risk across conversations | Not included |
| Meeting coverage | Sales calls and meetings | Every meeting type — sales, internal, HR, recruiting |
| Language coverage | 125 languages, accent-sensitive detection | 100+ languages |
| Pricing | Custom | Free tier; paid Pro / Business / Enterprise |
Notes versus outcomes
Garba
Garba doesn't hand the rep a document. It extracts the deal-specific things — BANT and MEDDIC fields, stage signals, next steps, the objection that actually came up — and writes them into the right CRM fields in Salesforce, HubSpot or Pipedrive. Then it drafts the follow-up and scores the call against the playbook.
The output isn't a summary of the meeting. It's the work that would otherwise happen after the meeting.
Fireflies.ai
Fireflies is very good at what it is: recording, transcribing and summarising, with action items, across effectively every meeting a company holds. It has a real free tier and it's inexpensive at scale.
It can push to a CRM through integrations. What it isn't built for is sales-specific field extraction — the difference between "here are the action items" and "the deal's next step, budget signal and stakeholder are now in the opportunity record".
GDPR and data residency
Garba
Garba processes 100% of customer data in the EU, by default, with a DPA as standard. Garba AI AB is a Swedish company operating from Malmö.
Fireflies.ai
This is the row EU buyers should read carefully, and the detail comes from Fireflies' own documentation. By default, data is stored and processed in the US on AWS and Google Cloud. EU data residency is available only through Private Storage on the Enterprise plan.
And even then, their docs are explicit that EU Private Storage covers where the data rests — it is still processed and accessed in the US. If your requirement is that EU customer conversations don't leave the EU, that is a different answer from EU storage, and it's the question to put in writing.
Coaching and pipeline intelligence
Garba
Reps score their own calls against the team's playbook immediately, without waiting on a manager. Managers get the aggregate picture, plus deal risk signals and pipeline context drawn from every conversation rather than from what got typed into the CRM.
Fireflies.ai
Fireflies doesn't do sales coaching or pipeline intelligence, and doesn't claim to. A manager on Fireflies gets transcripts and summaries — genuinely useful for spot-checking a call, but not a coaching or forecasting layer.
Price, and when to just keep Fireflies
Garba
Garba's pricing is custom. The reference point: BIMobject replaced their Gong contract at roughly a third of what they had been paying.
Fireflies.ai
Fireflies is cheaper, has a real free tier, and covers every meeting in the business rather than just sales calls. If the job to be done is "our meetings need notes", it wins on price and coverage and you should keep it.
The case for switching isn't that Fireflies is bad at notes. It's that notes were never the thing costing your reps their afternoon.
Choose Garba when — the problem is CRM hygiene, follow-ups and coaching rather than notes; you want deal and pipeline intelligence from conversations; EU processing has to be the default rather than an Enterprise add-on.
Keep Fireflies when — you need affordable notes across every meeting type in the company, not just sales; a free tier matters; transcription and summaries are genuinely the whole requirement.
Worth knowing — plenty of teams run a notetaker for internal meetings and a sales platform for the pipeline. These aren't mutually exclusive purchases.
Not by default. Per Fireflies' own documentation, data is stored and processed in the US on AWS and Google Cloud, and EU data residency is available only through Private Storage on the Enterprise plan. Their docs also note that even with EU Private Storage the data is stored in the EU but still processed and accessed in the US — so EU storage and EU processing are separate questions. If EU processing is a legal requirement for you, confirm the specifics with Fireflies and get them into the DPA.
Yes. Garba processes 100% of customer data within the EU by default, with nothing to configure, and a Data Processing Agreement is provided as standard. Garba AI AB is a Swedish company based in Malmö.
Fireflies can connect to CRM tools and push summaries and action items through integrations. What it isn't built around is sales-specific field extraction — writing the deal stage, next step, budget signal or stakeholder into the right opportunity fields. That is what Garba's CRM auto-fill does, natively for HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive.
Garba, for the manager's actual job. It gives aggregated coaching scores, deal risk signals and pipeline intelligence drawn from every rep's calls. Fireflies gives a manager transcripts and summaries, which is useful for reviewing one call but isn't a coaching or forecasting layer.
Garba transcribes 125 languages with accent-sensitive automatic detection; Fireflies supports 100+. Both clear the bar for a multi-market team, so this isn't the row that should decide it.
Only if your problem is the sales workflow rather than the notes. Fireflies is cheaper, has a free tier, and covers every meeting type in the company — if what you need is meeting notes, keep it. Many teams run both: a notetaker for internal meetings, a sales platform for the pipeline.
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 compete with Fireflies for some budgets and not others, and this page says which. Every Fireflies claim here comes from their own documentation. Something out of date or wrong? Email support@garba.ai and we will correct it.
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