Eru and Gong both help SaaS companies protect and grow revenue. But they approach the problem from completely different angles. Gong listens to what your customers say. Eru watches what your data shows. Understanding the difference helps you figure out which one you need — or whether you need both.
The Core Difference
Gong is a conversation intelligence platform. It records and analyses sales calls, demos, and meetings to extract insights about deal health, buyer sentiment, and rep performance. Gong's primary data source is human conversations.
Eru is a revenue data intelligence platform. It connects your systems of record — billing (Stripe), CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot), support (Intercom), product analytics (Segment), and databases — to surface churn signals, expansion opportunities, and revenue metrics by correlating data across tools. Eru's primary data source is operational and transactional data.
Put simply: Gong tells you what customers are saying. Eru tells you what customers are doing.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Factor | Gong | Eru |
|---|---|---|
| Primary data source | Sales calls, meetings, emails | Billing, CRM, support, product usage, databases |
| Core strength | Understanding buyer intent and deal health from conversations | Detecting churn signals and revenue patterns from operational data |
| Churn detection | Flags deals at risk based on call sentiment and engagement | Flags accounts at risk based on usage drops, billing changes, support spikes, and data gaps |
| Expansion signals | Surfaces upsell cues from conversations (mentions of budget, competitors, new needs) | Surfaces expansion opportunities from usage patterns (hitting plan limits, feature adoption, growth signals) |
| Revenue metrics | Deal-level forecasting and pipeline analytics | Account-level NRR, GRR, churn rate, LTV:CAC, MRR — pulled from live billing and CRM data |
| Data integrity | Not its focus | Catches MRR discrepancies, orphaned accounts, stale pipelines, CRM gaps |
| Who uses it | Sales reps, sales managers, revenue leadership | RevOps, Customer Success, finance, revenue leadership |
| Setup | Connects to your calendar, phone system, and email | Connects to any system of record via OAuth or API — 5 minutes each |
| Team size fit | Best with a sales team of 5+ reps generating call volume | Built for lean scale-ups who need revenue intelligence without a data team |
| Pricing | Enterprise pricing, typically $100–$150+/user/month | Scales with integrations and accounts, not seats |
When Gong Is the Right Choice
Gong excels when your revenue risk lives in conversations:
- You have an active sales team making calls and running demos daily
- Deal outcomes depend heavily on how reps handle objections, pricing discussions, and competitive positioning
- You need to coach reps based on what's actually said in calls
- Your churn signals are verbal — customers hinting at dissatisfaction during QBRs before anything shows up in the data
- You want deal forecasting based on buyer engagement and conversation patterns
Gong is particularly strong for sales-led organisations where the quality of the conversation directly impacts close rates and retention.
When Eru Is the Right Choice
Eru excels when your revenue risk lives in your data:
- Churn signals are hidden across 8–12 disconnected tools, and nobody is connecting the dots
- You're a product-led or hybrid SaaS where usage data matters more than sales calls
- Your CS team needs to know which accounts are at risk before the next QBR — not during it
- You need real revenue metrics (NRR, GRR, churn rate) pulled from live data, not manually compiled
- Your billing data doesn't match your CRM and nobody knows by how much
- You don't have a data team to build and maintain revenue dashboards
Eru is particularly strong for scale-ups where the data infrastructure hasn't kept pace with growth — where the problem isn't what customers are saying, but that nobody can see the full picture of what's happening across systems.
Where They Overlap
Both tools aim to protect and grow revenue. The overlap is in two areas:
Churn risk identification. Gong catches verbal signals ("We're evaluating alternatives"). Eru catches data signals (usage dropped 40%, support tickets doubled, billing downgraded). Both are valid churn indicators — they're just different types of signals.
Expansion opportunities. Gong catches verbal cues ("Our team is growing, we might need more seats"). Eru catches data cues (account is at 95% of plan usage, API calls growing 20% month-over-month). Again, both are real signals.
The strongest revenue teams use both types of intelligence. Verbal signals give you intent. Data signals give you evidence.
Can You Use Both?
Yes, and they're complementary rather than competitive.
Gong tells your sales team what to say and which deals to focus on. Eru tells your CS and RevOps teams which accounts need attention and why — based on what's actually happening in the data across your tool stack.
A practical setup: Eru flags an account as high churn risk because usage dropped and a billing discrepancy appeared. Your CS rep checks Gong to see what was said in the last QBR. They go into the save conversation with both the data evidence and the conversational context.
Quick Decision Guide
Choose Gong if: You have a sales-heavy team, your revenue depends on call quality, and your biggest blind spot is understanding what happens in buyer conversations.
Choose Eru if: Your biggest blind spot is fragmented data across tools, you need connected revenue metrics without a data team, and your churn signals are hiding in billing, usage, and support data that nobody is correlating.
Choose both if: You want full coverage — conversational intelligence for your sales team and data intelligence for your CS, RevOps, and finance teams.
How to Get Started With Eru
Connect your tools — Stripe, Salesforce, HubSpot, Intercom, Segment, your database, or any system with an API. Read-only access, 5-minute setup, no engineering required.
Book a free churn audit to see what revenue signals are hiding in your data — the ones no conversation can reveal.
Book a churn audit →