I'd wager very few people have used Gong more than I have. For about six years, first as a seller and then as a sales leader, it was open on my screen nearly every single day. And honestly, it was an unbelievable tool when it first came out. The concept of conversational intelligence really blew my mind.
But here's my real question for anyone shopping for a Gong alternative: when was the last time Gong actually helped you close a deal, or made one of your reps materially better?
I'm genuinely asking. Because that's why most of us bought it. Somewhere along the way Gong became an operating system for the whole revenue org - forecasting, sequencing, data enrichment, AI agents. Incredibly sticky. But the rep-coaching part, the part that was supposed to make your team better at selling, got buried under everything else.
That's exactly why I built Elanor. And it's why, if coaching your reps is the job you hired Gong to do, I think Elanor is the better alternative. Here's the case, and where Gong still wins.
If you bought Gong to make your reps better, the best Gong alternative is Elanor Labs: it scores every recorded sales call on the behaviors that win and lose deals, against a rubric built for that type of meeting, and turns it into an RBI Score and coaching for every rep - while Gong stays the better fit if forecasting is what you really use.
Why are so many teams looking for a Gong alternative right now?
Short answer: the bill got more complicated, and Q4 is renewal season.
1. The price. Gong doesn't publish prices. Third-party guides report roughly $1,300-$1,600 per user per year for a Foundations license, plus a platform fee reported between $5,000 and $50,000 a year (PitchMonster). One analysis puts the effective per-user cost up 25-56% between 2023 and 2026 (Coworker AI).
2. The AI is metered now. Since June 2, 2026, each paid seat adds about 2,000 AI credits a year to a company-wide pool that resets each contract year, with no rollover. Gong's own help center estimates one run of its new Deep Mode research agent at 1,000-3,000 credits (Gong, Gong). More on that in Gong AI credits, explained.
3. The renewal. Annual uplifts are commonly reported in the 5-10% range (Coworker AI), and contracts often require 60-90 days' notice to avoid auto-renewing (Oliv).
4. The direction. At Celebrate on September 30, 2026, Gong doubled down on agents and data: Gong Activate, Gong Enrich, Deep Mode and an Agent Builder (Gong). Smart for Gong. But none of it is about making your reps better sellers.
Why Elanor is the better Gong alternative for coaching your reps
1. It's built to grade selling, not to find keywords
Gong can score calls. Its AI reads the transcript and answers the scorecard questions you write, and it's sold with Gong Enable (Gong Help Center). That's useful. But you have to know which questions to ask, and Gong's own help center notes that the AI may return different results for the same input (Gong Help Center).
For Elanor, scoring isn't a feature on top of a recorder. It's the whole product. She watches the full call, not just the transcript, and grades the behaviors that create or destroy revenue. We call that Revenue Behavioral Intelligence™.
2. A rubric for every type of meeting, built with you
An intro call shouldn't be graded like a demo, and a demo shouldn't be graded like a close. Elanor scores every call against a rubric built for that meeting type, and we build it with you from your own playbook. I've run and coached more than 2,500 B2B intro calls over the past decade. You don't have to figure out the questions on your own.
3. One number your whole org understands
Every call, rep, team and company gets an RBI Score - think of it as a credit score for sales conversations. It breaks down into skills and the exact timestamped moments behind them. So when a rep asks why they got a 68 and not a 75, the answer is right there on the call. No black box.
4. Every rep gets coached on every call
Real talk: managers coach the bottom of the board. Your top performers - the ones you can least afford to lose - almost never get real feedback. Sad but true, and it's one of the main reasons great reps leave.
Elanor coaches everyone, on EVERY call, within minutes. An hour-long call takes her roughly four minutes, and she cuts short clips of the moments that mattered before a manager would even open the recording. I'll give you my own example: I ran a call recently that felt awesome. Within minutes Elanor scored it a 90 and showed me exactly what I could have done better and where to take the deal. No more replaying the call in my head on the drive home.
5. Nothing to rip out, nothing for reps to change
Elanor joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet as a notetaker, or works from the recordings you already have. Scores can write back to your CRM (see integrations). Reps keep selling the way they sell. The first new thing they see is their own coaching.
Gong vs. Elanor at a glance
| Gong | Elanor Labs | |
|---|---|---|
| Built to | Run the revenue org: recording, forecasting, engagement, enrichment, AI agents | Make reps better: score how well they sold on every call and coach to it |
| How calls get scored | AI answers the scorecard questions you write, from the transcript (sold with Gong Enable) | Every recorded call scored against a rubric built for that meeting type |
| Who designs the scoring | You do | We build it with you, from your playbook |
| What you get | Answers to your questions, trackers, call summaries | An RBI Score for every rep, team and company, broken into skills and the timestamped moments behind them |
| Coaching | Managers review calls, scorecards and AI summaries | Every rep gets coached on every call, with short clips of the moments that mattered |
| Forecasting, sequencing, enrichment | Yes | No - keep those where they are |
Where Gong still wins
I'm obviously biased, so I'll say this plainly. If your leadership team runs the forecast out of Gong, or your SDRs live in Gong Engage, keep Gong for that. Elanor doesn't do forecasting, deal boards, sequencing or data enrichment, and it's not trying to.
You can run both: Gong for the pipeline, Elanor for the people. Or, if you realize coaching was the main thing you bought Gong for, downsize Gong to what you actually use.
What about the other Gong alternatives?
If coaching isn't the job, here's the short version as of October 2026:
- Another all-in-one platform: Salesloft, which now includes Clari (Clari Copilot was renamed Salesloft Conversation Intelligence in September 2026), or Chorus, which is now sold as part of ZoomInfo's platform (Claap, ZoomInfo).
- Cheaper recording and notes: Avoma or Fireflies.ai, or your CRM's own tools - HubSpot announced in September that Sales Hub now fills in CRM records from call transcripts (ModernInbound, IntegrateIQ).
- Practice reps: AI role-play tools like Hyperbound and Second Nature. Great for practice, but practice isn't what happened with a real buyer.
All good tools. None of them are built to tell you how well your reps actually sold.
The lesson
Recording every call was never the point. Knowing which behaviors are winning and losing deals - and coaching every rep to them - is the point. If that's what you bought Gong for, you have a better option now.
If you're staring down a Gong renewal this quarter and your reps' calls are recorded, reach out. We gotta chat. We'll run Elanor on your own calls and you can compare.
Frequently asked questions
Sources: Gong Help Center: Gong AI for scoring; Gong Help Center: Automatic review scorecards FAQ; Gong Help Center: About Gong credits; Gong Help Center: Deep Mode; Gong: Celebrate '26 announcements; PitchMonster: Gong pricing; Coworker AI: Gong pricing; Oliv: Gong contract renewal; Claap: Clari competitors after the Salesloft merger; ZoomInfo: Chorus; ModernInbound: Best Gong alternatives; IntegrateIQ: HubSpot UNBOUND 2026. Details reflect public information as of October 12, 2026; vendors' terms may change. Gong, Chorus, Salesloft, Clari, HubSpot and other product names are trademarks of their respective owners; Elanor Labs is not affiliated with them.