Marcus Norrving
CEO & co-founder at Garba · Updated August 2026
Choose Garba if your reps never really adopted the last conversation-intelligence tool you bought, if EU data residency needs to be the default rather than a setup option, and if you want the work after the call — the CRM update, the follow-up, the coaching — done rather than recorded.
Choose Gong if you're an enterprise revenue org with a RevOps team to run the platform, you need the deepest deal-inspection and forecasting feature set in the category, and the budget is already approved.
Both record and transcribe calls well. That is table stakes in 2026 and not where the decision gets made. The decision gets made on who the product is built around, what it does once the call ends, and what your data residency answer has to be.
| Attribute | Garba | Gong |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | European sales teams, SMB through mid-market | Enterprise revenue orgs with a RevOps function |
| Built around | The rep's day — the value lands before a manager opens a dashboard | Managers and RevOps — dashboards, deal boards and call libraries |
| EU data residency | Default. 100% of data processed in the EU, nothing to configure | Opt-in. New customers can pick an EU data centre at setup; the US is the default |
| CRM write-back | Field-level, from the conversation — MEDDPICC, next steps, custom fields | Automatic activity logging plus field sync; depth depends on configuration |
| Coaching model | Reps self-score against the playbook straight after the call | Manager-led review, with AI-surfaced moments to review |
| Follow-up drafting | Recap and next steps drafted the moment the call ends | Call summaries; the rep writes the follow-up |
| Pricing | Custom | Custom — not public |
| Reported cost | BIMobject: ~⅓ of their previous Gong contract | Estimates put it at $1,200–$1,600+ per rep per year, plus platform fees |
Who the product is built around
Garba
Garba is built so the rep gets paid first. The CRM is updated without typing, the follow-up is drafted before the rep has left the call, and the playbook score arrives without waiting on a manager. None of that requires the rep to open a separate tool and go looking for value.
That is the whole adoption argument, and it is the one BIMobject tested. Their revenue team had run Gong and adoption never took hold across the team. With Garba it landed in the first week — not through a mandate, but because it removed work from the day instead of adding a review queue to it.
Gong
Gong's centre of gravity is leadership. The deal boards, call libraries and forecast views are genuinely deep, and for a RevOps team with the bandwidth to run them they're the most complete instrumentation in the category.
The trade-off is where the effort sits. Value for the individual rep generally comes from logging in and reviewing — which is fine when reps do, and expensive when they don't.
CRM auto-fill
Garba
Garba reads every call, email and meeting and writes the deal context into the CRM fields your playbook actually uses — MEDDPICC, next steps, stakeholders, custom properties. Native to HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive. The rep does no data entry, and the record reflects what was said rather than what someone remembered to type on Friday.
Gong
Gong logs every call as an activity against the right opportunity, contact or account, and syncs conversation data back into the CRM. How much of your field set that covers is a configuration question, and for most teams a RevOps project rather than a switch.
Coaching
Garba
Reps score their own calls against the team's playbook immediately after the conversation. The feedback is objective and it arrives while the call is still fresh, which is the only time it changes anything. Managers get the aggregate picture without reviewing calls one at a time.
At BIMobject the self-scoring turned out to be the rep favourite — feedback from the system rather than from a person lands differently, and it lands faster.
Gong
Gong's call review and AI-surfaced coaching moments are strong, and its scorecard tooling is mature. The workflow runs through the manager: someone reviews, then responds. That scales well where there is coaching capacity and stalls where there isn't.
What happens after the call
Garba
The recap email and the next steps are drafted the moment the call ends. The rep reads, adjusts and sends — instead of writing it from scratch three days later, if at all. Buyer-ready materials come out of the same conversation.
Gong
Gong produces the call summary. Turning that into the follow-up the buyer receives is the rep's job, or a separate tool's.
GDPR and data residency
Garba
Garba processes 100% of customer data in the EU. It is the default, not a region you select during onboarding, and a DPA is provided as standard. Garba AI AB is a Swedish company operating from Malmö.
For a European team recording customer conversations — contract terms, pricing, named individuals — that is usually the difference between a short security review and a long one.
Gong
Gong does offer an EU data centre: its documentation states that new customers can choose to store data in either the US or the EU. Two caveats worth putting to your account team in writing. The US is the default, so it is a decision someone has to actively make at setup. And storage is not the whole picture — Gong's own FAQ notes offices in the United States, Israel and Ireland where data may be processed, plus sub-processors in the US, UK and EMEA.
That is a materially different answer from "no EU option", and you'll see the stronger version of that claim on plenty of competitor pages. It is also a materially different answer from residency by default. Ask for the specifics and get them into the DPA.
Price
Garba
Garba's pricing is custom, and the most useful number we can give you is a real one: BIMobject replaced their Gong contract with Garba at roughly a third of what they had been paying, for a tool the whole team then used. Their CFO did not need convincing twice.
Gong
Gong does not publish pricing. Industry estimates consistently land at $1,200–$1,600+ per rep per year with platform fees layered on top, but treat that as reported rather than quoted — your number comes from your negotiation, your seat count and your term.
The figure that matters isn't the per-seat price anyway. It's the price per seat that actually gets used.
Two lists. If more of the first one is true, the switch is worth a conversation; if more of the second is, Gong is the better buy and we'd rather you knew that now.
Choose Garba when — your reps didn't adopt the last tool; you're paying for seats that go unused; EU data residency has to be the default; you want the CRM current without chasing anyone; reps need feedback without waiting on a manager; you want it live in days.
Choose Gong when — you're an enterprise org with a RevOps team to run the platform; you need the deepest deal inspection and forecasting in the category; you're heavily invested in Salesforce Revenue Cloud; US-based infrastructure is the requirement rather than the problem.
For the core use cases, yes: conversation capture across Zoom, Google Meet and Teams, CRM auto-fill, coaching, deal intelligence and follow-up automation. Teams that have migrated report no functional gaps in their primary workflows. Where Gong stays ahead is depth of enterprise deal inspection and forecasting, so if those are the reason you bought it, evaluate carefully rather than taking our word for it.
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.
Yes, with conditions. Gong's documentation states that new customers can choose to store their data in a US or EU data centre, and the US is the default. Gong also notes offices in the United States, Israel and Ireland where data may be processed, and sub-processors in the US, UK and EMEA. So the accurate comparison is that Gong offers EU storage as an opt-in at setup, while Garba processes in the EU by default. Get the specifics into your DPA either way.
The one figure we can point to from a real contract: BIMobject replaced their Gong licences with Garba at approximately one-third of their previous Gong contract. Gong does not publish pricing, so we can't give you a general percentage — and anyone who does is guessing. Your number depends on seat count, term and what you negotiate.
Days rather than months. BIMobject's revenue team was adopted across the board in the first week. There is no data-warehouse project in front of it — Garba connects to your meeting platform and your CRM and starts working on the next call.
Yes — natively with HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive, plus Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Slack, with an MCP server, REST API and webhooks for everything else.
Talk to us about migration before you cancel anything — the sequencing matters, and it's the part teams most often leave until the renewal date has already passed.
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 a competitor writing about a competitor, so read this with that in mind — and check the Gong claims against Gong's own documentation, which is what we did. Something here out of date or wrong? Email support@garba.ai and we'll correct it.
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