A real-time AI sales tool listens to a live sales conversation and surfaces guidance, objection counters, and answers while the call is still happening, instead of producing a report after it ends. The best ones in 2026 work without a bot joining the meeting: Heyalo ($49/seat/month, browser-based, for video calls), Trellus (free individual tier, for cold-call dialers), and Balto (quote-based, for contact centers) lead three different segments. This guide compares all eight serious options with verified pricing and the honest trade-offs of each.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Best for | Deployment | Starting price | Key trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heyalo | Video sales calls (Zoom, Meet, Teams) | Browser, no bot, no install | Free (3 meetings/week), $49/seat/month Pro | Built for video meetings, not phone dialers |
| Trellus | SDR cold calling inside dialers | Chrome extension over your dialer | Free for individuals; ~$60-150/month paid | Dialer-centric; not built for video meetings |
| Balto | Contact centers and phone-heavy enterprise | Desktop, integrates with phone systems | Quote-based (Capterra lists $115/user/month) | Enterprise sales process, opaque pricing |
| Abstrakt | Compliance-heavy phone teams | Desktop, phone integrations | Quote-based | No published pricing; phone-first |
| Attention | Mid-market teams wanting battle cards + CRM autofill | Meeting bot or recording | Custom (demo required) | Real-time features ride on a recorded call |
| Sybill | Post-call automation, not live coaching | Meeting recording | Free tier, $49-99/seat/month | Nothing surfaces during the call |
| Fathom | Free recording and summaries | Meeting bot (botless mode recently added) | Free, $19/seat/month premium | Post-call only |
| Granola | Invisible note-taking on Mac | Mac desktop app, no bot | Free tier, $14-35/seat/month | Notes after the call, no live guidance |
Pricing verified June 2026 against vendor sites, Capterra, and published tier pages. Quote-based vendors are marked as such; treat third-party numbers for them as indicative.
How we evaluated (and our bias, disclosed)
Heyalo is our product. This is our list, the same way tl;dv, MeetGeek, and most vendors in this market publish theirs. We deal with that conflict the only honest way we know: we segment by use case instead of declaring one winner, we say plainly where Heyalo loses, and every pricing claim links to a source you can check.
What we compared:
- Deployment style. Does anything join the call or appear to other participants? Bot, desktop app, browser, or extension?
- When guidance arrives. During the conversation, or in a report afterward?
- Surface fit. Video meetings, phone dialers, or contact-center stacks are different jobs. No tool covers all three well.
- Pricing transparency. Published numbers beat "book a demo."
- Between-call intelligence. What the tool knows from previous conversations when the next one starts.
What does "no bot" actually mean?
Most conversation intelligence tools (Gong, Fireflies, Read.ai) join your meeting as a visible participant to record it. Clients notice. Many enterprise security policies now block recording bots outright, and Google Meet flagged meeting bots as a potential risk in March 2026. A no-bot tool captures the conversation on the rep's side only: nothing appears in the participant list, no recording notice interrupts the call, and the prospect experience is unchanged.
The three no-bot architectures
Browser-based tools (Heyalo) run where the meeting runs and need no install. Extensions (Trellus) sit on top of your dialer. Desktop apps (Balto, Abstrakt, Granola) capture system audio locally. All three avoid the bot; they differ in which kind of call they cover.
1. Heyalo: best for live video sales calls
Heyalo is a real-time AI sales intelligence tool for video meetings. During a live call it surfaces buying signals, objection counters, competitive positioning, and answers to prospect questions in a private panel only the rep can see. No bot joins, nothing is installed, and other participants see nothing.
It covers the whole meeting lifecycle: a pre-meeting brief lands in Slack with attendee context and open questions from previous conversations, live guidance runs during the call, and the recap with deal signals, action items, and a drafted follow-up email is ready when the call ends. Cross-meeting memory means the third call with an account starts with the context of the first two.
$49
per seat per month, no platform fee
Free plan covers 3 meetings/week with no credit card. Compare that with Gong at $1,200-1,600/user/year plus a $5,000-50,000 platform fee.
Where Heyalo loses. It is built for video meetings in the browser, so if your team lives in a power dialer (Outreach, Salesloft, Orum) making 80 cold calls a day, Trellus fits that motion better. It is a young product without a long G2 review history yet. And if what you actually want is a searchable archive of recorded calls for QA review, a post-call tool is the right category, not this one.
See the detailed comparisons: Heyalo vs Gong, Heyalo vs Attention, Heyalo vs Sybill.
2. Trellus: best for SDR cold calling
Trellus is a real-time coach that lives in a Chrome extension on top of your existing dialer. It detects common cold-call moments and pushes short, action-oriented suggestions while the rep talks, then handles notes and call summaries afterward. It started as a Y Combinator launch focused exactly on this problem and has stayed dialer-first.
Pricing is the most transparent in the category: free for individual reps, with published paid tiers (roughly $60 to $150 per month depending on whether you bring your own dialer or use theirs; third-party pricing pages track the current numbers).
Trade-off: it is built around phone prospecting. For scheduled video meetings with screens shared and multiple stakeholders, it is the wrong shape.
3. Balto: best for contact centers
Balto is the enterprise incumbent in real-time guidance for contact centers. It listens to phone calls and pushes checklists, objection responses, and compliance prompts to the agent's screen, with manager-side live monitoring. It claims the largest deployment footprint in the category and publishes a steady stream of data reports on real-time guidance.
Pricing is quote-based; Capterra lists $115 per user per month and advanced bundles are negotiated. If you run a 50-seat support or inside-sales floor with QA and compliance requirements, Balto is the safe pick. For a 5-person B2B team doing Zoom demos, it is heavy machinery.
4. Abstrakt: best for compliance-heavy phone teams
Abstrakt does real-time call coaching with an emphasis on script adherence and compliance, positioned explicitly against "old conversational intelligence software" that only reports after the fact. It integrates with Salesloft and similar stacks. No published pricing; expect a sales process. Worth evaluating head-to-head with Balto if you are phone-first.
5. Attention: real-time features on a recorded call
Attention offers live battle cards plus strong post-call automation (CRM autofill, follow-up generation, coaching scorecards). The distinction that matters: its intelligence rides on a recorded meeting, so you are back to a visible recording presence on the call, and pricing requires a demo. If recording is acceptable in your market and you want one tool to do live prompts plus CRM hygiene, it deserves a look. Full comparison here.
When a post-call tool is actually the right answer
Real-time is not always the need. If your problem is note-taking, CRM updates, and deal review rather than in-the-moment help, these are the strong picks, and they are honestly better than Heyalo at that job:
- Sybill (free tier, $49-99/seat/month): the best post-call automation for B2B sales teams. Deal summaries, behavioral signals, CRM autofill, Slack delivery. Comparison.
- Fathom (free, $19 premium): unlimited free recording and summaries. The default answer when budget is zero. Comparison.
- Granola (free tier, $14-35/seat/month): invisible Mac note-taker, no bot, beloved by founders. Notes only, nothing during the call. Comparison.
And Gong remains the enterprise revenue-intelligence platform: post-call analytics, forecasting, and coaching scorecards at $1,200-1,600 per user per year plus platform fees. If you have a RevOps team and six figures of budget, it is the category-defining product. Our full breakdown of Gong alternatives covers that decision in depth.
How to choose
- Pick your call surface first. Video meetings: Heyalo or Attention. Dialer prospecting: Trellus. Contact center: Balto or Abstrakt. This filter eliminates most of the list immediately.
- Decide whether anything may join the call. If clients or policy say no recording presence, that removes Attention, Gong, Fathom's bot mode, and every notetaker bot.
- Check the between-calls story. Ask what the tool knows on call three that it did not know on call one. Cross-meeting memory is where the categories quietly diverge.
- Run it on real calls before paying. Every tool here has a free tier, trial, or demo. One week of live calls tells you more than any comparison table, including this one.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free real-time AI sales tool?
Yes, two. Trellus is free for individual reps using their own dialer. Heyalo's free plan covers 3 meetings per week with real-time coaching included, no credit card required.
Do any of these tools join the call as a bot?
Heyalo, Trellus, Balto, Abstrakt, and Granola do not; nothing appears in the participant list. Attention, Gong, Fireflies, and most notetakers rely on a recording presence in the meeting (Fathom added a botless mode recently).
What is the difference between real-time coaching and conversation intelligence?
Conversation intelligence tools (Gong, Chorus) record calls and deliver analysis afterward, hours later, in dashboards and review sessions. Real-time tools deliver the guidance during the conversation, when it can still change the outcome. Many teams run one of each; the jobs barely overlap. More in our explainer on real-time sales coaching.
Are no-bot tools allowed under recording consent laws?
No-bot tools that assist the rep without creating a recording sit differently from recording bots, but consent law varies by region and by what is stored. Check your jurisdiction and your company policy; we cover the landscape in why bot-free matters.
Which tool is best for a founder doing their own sales?
Heyalo, for the same reason it tops this list for video calls: founder sales runs on Zoom and Meet, and the free tier covers a typical founder's call volume. Here is the founder-specific breakdown. If your motion is high-volume cold calling instead, start with Trellus's free tier.