// GuidesComparison
Gong alternatives for sales managers running teams under 30 reps (2026)
Short answer
Decide which job you are hiring for first: recording calls, coaching from calls, forecasting, or one view of the whole team. Under 30 reps, Fathom, Fireflies and tl;dv record for free, and Avoma, Rafiki, Spiky and Oliv add coaching from calls at $15 to $49 per user per month on published price lists. Gong publishes no prices; its pricing page says licenses are per user plus a platform fee, and our arithmetic on three third-party estimates puts a 10-rep Gong year one at about $25,500 to $41,000, with the worked examples near $28,500. A recorder shows mainly what happened on recorded calls, so the honest move for many small teams is to keep the notetaker and add a manager layer that reads the CRM, Slack, email and calendar.
Do you need another recorder, or the picture across recorders, CRM and Slack?
Most “Gong alternatives” pages compare one recorder with another. That is the wrong question. Gong’s value is built on recorded calls; the rest of the week (CRM updates, Slack threads, unanswered emails, moved meetings) enters only under conditions. Its help center says Gong imports emails and calendar meetings “when the company’s CRM is connected and when the email sender, recipients, or meeting participants match an applicable CRM record”. Per that page, Gong matches them to a CRM contact or to an account with the same email domain, so conversations with a company not yet in the CRM are not imported.
So which problem do you have? If reps forget what was said and you have no time to listen, that is a recording problem, and a free notetaker fixes most of it. If you learn on Friday that a rep went quiet on Monday, or that a close date moved twice with no one telling you, that is a visibility problem, and a bigger recorder will not fix it.
- You need a recorder if calls are the main customer touch and nobody writes them up. Fathom, Fireflies and tl;dv do this on free plans. Whichever tool records your calls, use it only under your company’s recording policy and the consent rules where your reps and buyers are.
- You need coaching from calls if you review calls with reps and want scorecards and flagged moments. Most of the tools below sit here, and so does Gong.
- You need a manager view if your Monday questions are who needs attention, what changed and which deals are drifting. Those answers live in the CRM, Slack, email and calendar as much as in calls (see the last two sections).
Watch out
The mistake to avoid
Buying a bigger recorder to fix a visibility problem. A recorder’s picture is built mainly from the calls its bot joined. The rep who has stopped booking calls is exactly the one it is least likely to show you.
Which Gong alternatives fit which job?
Sort candidates by job first and price second. Prices below are from each vendor’s own site on September 27, 2026; “not public” means the vendor quotes on request.
| Job | Tools | Published starting price, or “not public” | Best for team size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Record and summarize calls | Fathom, Fireflies.ai, tl;dv | Fathom free, Team from $15/user/mo annual. Fireflies free, Pro $10/user/mo annual. tl;dv free, Pro €18/seat/mo annual, shown in euros when we checked | Any size, including 3 reps with no budget line |
| Coach from calls | Avoma, Rafiki, Spiky, Jiminny, Chorus by ZoomInfo, Salesloft Conversation Intelligence | Avoma from $19/seat/mo plus a $29 Conversation Intelligence add-on; Rafiki $19 (up to 3 users), then $49; Spiky free, paid from $15. Jiminny, Chorus, Salesloft: not public | Avoma, Rafiki, Spiky: 1 to 30 seats. Jiminny, Chorus, Salesloft: mid-market and up |
| Forecast and CRM hygiene | Scratchpad (Salesforce only), Oliv, Avoma Revenue Intelligence add-on | Scratchpad free, Solo from $19/user/mo; Oliv Sell $49/user/mo; Avoma add-on $29/seat/mo | 10 to 30 reps with nobody in RevOps |
| Manager view across CRM, Slack, email, calendar and calls | diffi | On request; accounts set up with the diffi team | Managers with 5 to 30 reps who keep their notetaker |
Every tool in the first two rows starts from a recorded call; the third starts from the CRM; the fourth starts from the rep.
Why can Gong cost more for a small team?
Gong publishes no prices. Its pricing page says “Licenses are priced per user” and “There is a platform fee based on the number of users supported”, and offers a form for a proposal. It also says you can integrate your existing tech stack for free, so integrations are not the cost. The platform fee is. Spread over 200 users it is a rounding error; spread over 10 reps it adds about a third on top of the licenses in the estimates below.
| Estimate source | Per-user license | Platform fee | Year-one total for a small team |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sybill, a competing vendor | Foundation $1,400 to $1,600/user/yr | $5,000 to $10,000/yr under 50 users | 10 people: $28,500 to $73,500 incl. $7,500 onboarding and a $5,000 to $50,000 platform fee |
| PitchMonster | $1,300 to $1,600/user/yr | $5,000 to $50,000/yr | 10 users: about $28,500 (10 × $1,600, plus $5,000 platform fee and $7,500 onboarding) |
| MarketBetter | $1,300 to $1,920/user/yr | $5,000 to $50,000/yr | 15 people: $54,000 incl. $25,000 implementation; 5 users: $28,000 |
Read those as ranges. What they agree on is the shape: a per-user license in the low four figures per year, a platform fee before the first license, and onboarding on top. Avoma’s pricing page states there are “no setup fees, no minimum platform fees”; Fathom, Spiky and Scratchpad have free plans; Rafiki and Oliv list per-user prices and list no platform fee.
Note
A platform built for the whole company
Gong is built as a company-wide platform, with Engage, Forecast, Enable and Agents alongside conversation intelligence, and its pricing page lists a platform fee on top of per-user licenses.
The best Gong alternatives for teams under 30 reps, compared
Ten alternatives that appear in most lists we read, three of them mid-market tools included so you can rule them out, plus diffi under the same rules. “Needs call recording?” asks whether the product’s picture is built from recorded calls.
| Tool | Best for | Needs call recording? | Works with (CRMs) | Price (published, or not public) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fathom | Free recording and summaries for small teams | Yes; it is the recorder | Notetaker first; CRM sync depends on plan | Free; Team from $15/user/mo annual |
| Fireflies.ai | Free transcripts and summaries for a team that needs a record | Yes; it is the recorder | Notetaker first; CRM sync depends on plan | Free; Pro $10/user/mo annual; Business $19 |
| Avoma | SMB teams that want notes, scheduling and coaching from one vendor | Yes | Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Copper, Zendesk Sell, Zoho | Startup $19/seat/mo annual (up to 25 seats); Conversation Intelligence add-on $29 |
| Rafiki | Small teams that want call scoring and CRM auto-capture at a published price | Yes | Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, Pipedrive, Freshworks, Monday | Starter $19/user/mo annual (up to 3 users); Premium $49 |
| Spiky | Teams that want coaching during the call | Yes | Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho | Free; paid from $15/user/mo; real-time coaching on Premium, $40 to $49 |
| Oliv | Teams replacing several rep tools with role-based agents | Mostly; bot capture is a $10/user/mo add-on; email and Slack are inputs | Salesforce, HubSpot | Converse $19; Sell $49 per user/mo |
| Scratchpad | Salesforce teams whose real problem is CRM hygiene | No; a recorder is bundled (10 hours a month free) | Salesforce only | Free; Solo from $19/user/mo; Team from $49 |
| Jiminny | Mid-market teams that want coaching-led conversation intelligence | Yes | HubSpot named on the home page; confirm yours | Not public; 14-day trial |
| Salesloft Conversation Intelligence (ex-Clari Copilot) | Teams already on Salesloft cadences that want calls, deals and forecast from one vendor | Yes, for this module | Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365 (CRM integrations page) | Not public |
| Chorus by ZoomInfo | Teams already buying ZoomInfo data | Yes | CRM sync; no CRM named on the product page | Not public; “custom plans” |
| diffi | Managers with 5 to 30 reps who keep their notetaker and want one file per rep across every source | No; the file is built from CRM, Slack public channels, mail and calendar; a visible “diffi Notetaker” bot can join Zoom, Meet and Teams calls | Salesforce, HubSpot (read-only) | On request; accounts set up with the diffi team |
Fathom. The default answer to “I just need the calls written up.” The free plan on Fathom’s pricing page includes unlimited recordings, transcriptions and instant summaries; Team is $15 per user per month billed annually. Its free and Team plans are built for the record and the summary; coaching metrics and AI scorecards sit on its Business plan.
Fireflies.ai. A free plan plus Pro, Business and Enterprise tiers; its pricing page lists Pro at $10 and Business at $19 per seat per month billed annually. tl;dv is the third free notetaker here, with a “Free Forever plan” and Pro at €18 per seat per month billed annually on its pricing page, shown in euros when we checked.
Avoma. The most complete small-team package with public prices. Its home page says “All-in-one doesn’t mean you have to buy all at once”: Startup is $19 per seat per month billed annually, capped at 25 seats, and the Conversation Intelligence and Revenue Intelligence add-ons are $29 each.
Rafiki. Its pricing page leads with “Enterprise intelligence shouldn’t require an enterprise budget”. Premium at $49 adds smart call scoring, auto-captured CRM fields and a deal dashboard with forecasting, with no seat minimum.
Spiky. The pick for coaching during the call rather than after it. The home page promises to “Identify winning behaviors, execute them in real time, and scale it across the team”; real-time coaching and the executive dashboard sit on Premium, so budget $40 to $49 rather than the $15 entry price.
Oliv. Sells role-based agents rather than seats. Converse at $19 is for SDRs (the page says it replaces Fathom, Fireflies and Granola); Sell at $49 is for account executives (“replaces Gong, Clari”). Bot-based meeting capture and Slack capture are $10 add-ons each.
Scratchpad. A Salesforce workspace with a recorder bundled in, which makes it a different kind of Gong alternative. If half your pain is reps not updating Salesforce, it addresses that directly. HubSpot teams should skip it; the pricing page names Salesforce only.
Jiminny. Mid-market conversation intelligence with a coaching lean, in its own words: “Jiminny captures and analyzes every email, phone and video call - so Revenue Leaders can see what’s winning deals and coach what’s not.” No prices on the site.
Salesloft Conversation Intelligence. Clari and Salesloft completed their merger on December 3, 2025; Clari Forecast keeps its name and Clari’s conversation intelligence continues inside Salesloft, which launched Salesloft Conversation Intelligence on July 14, 2026 with live coaching and auto call scoring so “managers know exactly which calls to review”. Pricing is not public.
Chorus by ZoomInfo. Sold under the “Make Every Interaction Count” banner, and it draws enrichment from the ZoomInfo platform. Pricing is “custom plans” behind a form. Worth a look only if ZoomInfo data is already on your invoice.
diffi. The odd one out on purpose: not a recorder-first product. It builds one file per rep from Salesforce or HubSpot (read-only), the Slack public channels you choose, Gmail or Outlook and your calendar. Accounts and pricing are set up with the diffi team.
What does a recorder not show a manager?
Three things, and none is fixed by a better recorder: what happened outside the calls, which rep needs you this week, and a rep going quiet.
- Recorded calls come first. A conversation the bot did not join shows up, at best, as a CRM or email trace.
- More data is not “who needs attention”. A manager with 12 reps does not need more dashboards; they need a short list ranked by who is drifting, with the evidence one click away.
- A recorder is built around the calls it joins. A rep going quiet shows up in the calendar and the CRM first.
So on Monday the notetaker holds the calls, the CRM the deals, Slack the chatter, the calendar the meetings that moved, and you hold the job of reading all four before the 1:1. That is the layer worth automating, and the recorders above are not built around it.
How diffi helps
Keep Fathom, Fireflies or Avoma for the calls. diffi is the manager layer on top: it builds a living file for every rep from the sources a recorder is not built around, Salesforce or HubSpot (read-only; it does not write to your CRM), the Slack public channels you pick, Gmail or Outlook, and your calendar, plus a visible “diffi Notetaker” bot for the Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams calls you want in the file (its own bot joins only the calls you want in the file, so most teams run it alongside the notetaker they keep). Each rep’s file shows a summary, a timeline across sources, active signals such as deal risk, disengagement risk or a coaching gap with the evidence behind each, and open actions. Ask in plain language who needs attention or what changed this week, and once you confirm, diffi can message a rep on Slack, book a meeting with an invite, or set a reminder. Accounts and pricing are set up with the diffi team. Book a demo to see it on your own team’s data.
See it on your own teamHow do you choose in one afternoon?
One afternoon is enough if you take the steps in order and write the answers down.
- Write the three questions you ask every Monday (10 minutes). About what was said: you are shopping for a recorder. About who and what changed: a manager view.
- Count last week’s customer touches by channel for two reps (20 minutes): calls a bot could have joined, emails, Slack threads about a customer, CRM updates. The recorded-call share is the share of the picture a recorder can give you.
- Check the CRM column above against your CRM (5 minutes). Scratchpad is Salesforce only; Oliv names Salesforce and HubSpot.
- Price the year, not the seat (15 minutes): seats × monthly price × 12, plus any platform fee, plus onboarding. Ask every quote-only vendor to put both fees in writing before the demo.
- Run two free tiers with two reps for two weeks (10 minutes to set up). Fathom, Fireflies, tl;dv, Spiky and Scratchpad have free plans; Avoma, Rafiki and Jiminny offer 14-day trials.
- Decide whether the manager view is a separate purchase (30 minutes). If step 2 showed most of the week was not on a recorded call, it is.
Tip
A worked example, for illustration only
Say you run 12 reps on HubSpot. Avoma Startup at $19 per seat plus the $29 Conversation Intelligence add-on is $48 per seat per month billed annually: $576 a month, about $6,900 a year, for recording, notes and coaching from calls. Or keep Fathom’s free plan and spend nothing on the call side. Set either beside Gong: our arithmetic on three third-party estimates puts a 10-rep Gong year one at about $25,500 to $41,000, with the worked examples near $28,500.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest Gong alternative that still gives a manager a team view?
It depends on what you mean by team view. If you mean call scorecards and dashboards across reps, Spiky’s Premium plan ($40 to $49 per user per month), Avoma’s $19 Startup plan plus the $29 Conversation Intelligence add-on ($48) and Rafiki’s Premium ($49) are the lowest published prices for scoring plus a dashboard. If you mean who needs attention across CRM, Slack, email, calendar and calls, none of the recorders above is built around it; that is a manager layer such as diffi, which publishes no price and is set up with its team.
Gong vs Avoma vs Fathom vs Fireflies for coaching: which is better?
For coaching from calls, Gong and Avoma are the two built for it; Fathom and Fireflies start as notetakers, with coaching and conversation-intelligence features on their higher plans. Avoma publishes its prices (Startup $19 per seat per month billed annually plus $29 for the Conversation Intelligence add-on) and lists six CRMs; Gong publishes no prices and charges a platform fee on top of per-user licenses. Under 30 reps, start with Avoma or a comparably priced tool, and keep the free notetaker if all you need is the record.
Do I need call recording, or do I need a manager dashboard?
Ask where last week’s customer touches happened. If most of them were calls and your problem is remembering what was said, you need recording, and a free notetaker is enough to start. If your problem is finding out late that a rep went quiet, a deal drifted or a meeting was pushed, you need a view that reads the CRM, calendar, Slack and email, because those changes happen outside calls. Many teams under 30 reps need the second and already have the first.
Can I keep my free notetaker and add intelligence on top?
Yes. Fathom, Fireflies and tl;dv all have free plans and none of them stops you adding another tool. The layer worth adding is the one that reads the sources the notetaker is not built around: the CRM, Slack, email and calendar. diffi works that way, and its own visible notetaker bot is optional for the calls you want in a rep’s file.
Does Gong publish its pricing?
No. Gong’s pricing page says “Licenses are priced per user” and “There is a platform fee based on the number of users supported”, with no dollar amounts and a form for a proposal. Every dollar figure you see online for Gong comes from a third party. Our arithmetic on three third-party estimates, from Sybill, PitchMonster and MarketBetter, puts a 10-rep Gong year one at about $25,500 to $41,000 once the platform fee and onboarding are included, with the worked examples near $28,500.
Is Clari Copilot still a Gong alternative?
Under a new name. Clari merged into Salesloft on December 3, 2025; Clari Forecast kept its name and the conversation intelligence side became Salesloft Conversation Intelligence in July 2026. Pricing is not public, and Salesloft’s own FAQ says customers’ products and workflows will not change immediately.
Does diffi replace Gong?
No. diffi is not a recorder-first product. It is a manager layer that builds one file per rep from Salesforce or HubSpot (read-only), the Slack public channels you choose, Gmail or Outlook and your calendar, with an optional visible notetaker bot for Zoom, Meet and Teams calls. If you need deep call analytics for reps, keep a recorder; if you need to know who on the team needs you this week, that is the job diffi does.