ConversationPilot vs Convo: two bot-free live sales coaches compared

The same shape, different trade-offs

Both products belong to a new tier that appeared in 2025 and 2026: native desktop coaches that hear the call through the computer's own audio, put help on the rep's screen only, and never send a bot into the meeting. That makes them far closer to each other than either is to Gong or Fathom, which record and analyse after the fact.

Convo launched in September 2025 as an AI meeting assistant and repositioned in 2026 as a real-time sales assistant and coach for sales and customer-success teams, with a secondary recruiting page that, like ConversationPilot, coaches the interviewer and does not score candidates. It ships a Starter and a Professional plan per user, an Enterprise tier for CRM integrations, a public REST API and an MCP server, and it has moved quickly: a self-filling BANT playbook shipped in June 2026, with SPICED and MEDDPICC listed as coming.

ConversationPilot covers sales, recruitment, customer success and fundraising in one app, coaches in whatever language the call is held in, produces a scored report after every call, and takes a deliberately different stance on what the other person is told.

What you see during the call

Convo's live layer is a compact overlay with suggested responses (the vendor claims two to three seconds of latency), objection handling, buying-signal detection for budget, timeline and decision maker, a Live Insights panel that fills in BANT as the call progresses, and an Ask AI box that answers from the pricing sheets and product documents you upload. Across calls it keeps a memory of the account and prepares a pre-call briefing.

ConversationPilot's cards do a similar job: the next question to ask, a reframe for the objection just raised, buying or candidate signals, and qualification coverage against BANT, MEDDIC or a playbook you write yourself. Knowledge documents work the same way, so the cards quote your own material. The structural difference is the report at the end: ConversationPilot scores the call, lists the signals it detected and drafts the follow-up email; Convo's post-call output is summaries, feedback, follow-up drafts and CRM notes without a call score as far as its pages describe.

• Convo: suggested responses, objection handling, buying signals, self-filling BANT, Ask AI over your documents, account memory and briefings
• ConversationPilot: next question, objection reframes, buying and candidate signals, live qualification, playbooks, scored post-call report with follow-up draft

Languages

Convo supports six languages, English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Italian, with automatic detection that works mid-conversation. That is a real feature and covers most of Western Europe and the Americas.

ConversationPilot detects the language automatically and coaches in it, whatever it is. Polish, Romanian, Japanese and Dutch calls, all of which appear among our sign-ups, work without a setting. If your team sells in one of Convo's six languages the difference is academic; if it sells anywhere else it is decisive.

How each one hears the call, and what it asks the Mac for

Convo uses the operating system's audio capture. On a Mac that is ScreenCaptureKit, which means the app asks for Microphone, Screen Recording and Accessibility permissions; the Screen Recording grant is what lets it hear the other side. On Windows it sets up audio loopback automatically. It detects the meeting app in use across Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Slack huddles and others.

ConversationPilot 1.5.0 uses a Core Audio system-audio tap on macOS 14.2 and later, so it asks for one permission, System Audio Recording, and never for Screen Recording or Accessibility. Older Macs get a guided one-time install of the free BlackHole driver, and Windows needs nothing extra. A built-in sound check with two meters and a test tone confirms both sides reach the app before the first real call. Neither product joins the meeting or triggers a recording notification in the meeting software.

Where the audio goes and what is kept

Convo says audio is captured locally and sent only to its transcription sub-processor, AssemblyAI in the United States, which deletes it after processing and does not train on it; Convo states that customer data is never used to train models or shared beyond its named sub-processors. That is a sound policy.

ConversationPilot's is equivalent on the points that matter and goes one step further in what it publishes: audio is transcribed in short clips by OpenAI and never stored by us or on your device; only text is kept and you can delete any call or your account; nothing is trained on your conversations; coaching signals come from words, never from voice tone or faces; every processor, region and retention period is on our trust page. Both companies are small, which cuts both ways: ConversationPilot does not yet hold a SOC 2 report and says so on its trust page, Convo lists its current certifications on its privacy page, and in both cases a founder answers the email.

The disclosure question

Convo's homepage FAQ answers "Can anyone on the call tell I'm using Convo?" with "No. Convo runs locally on your device. No bot joins, no recording notification appears, and the overlay is visible only to you." That is accurate, and it is a selling point many reps want. It also places the whole burden of telling the other person, where the law requires it, on the user without saying so.

ConversationPilot works the same way technically, and says something different about it. The overlay stays off your screen share, so your notes stay yours, but we do not market concealment: before coaching starts the app offers a one-line disclosure in the call's language that you can say or paste, and our Terms ask you to tell people where recording or transcription law requires it. For a rep on a personal card this is a matter of taste. For an owner buying seats for a team, it is the sentence their lawyer will ask about, and after the 2026 lawsuits over bot-free meeting capture it is the sentence buyers increasingly expect.

Pricing, trials and refunds

Convo's Starter plan is $22.49 per user a month billed annually, or $29.99 billed monthly; Professional is $52.49 annually or $69.99 monthly; Enterprise, which is where the native CRM integrations live, is custom and billed annually. There are no seat minimums and you can cancel at any time. There is no free plan. Convo's Terms of Service, effective 16 August 2026, state that all payments are final and non-refundable, and that free trials are offered at Convo's discretion, to teams only, and never automatically, even though some of its 2026 blog posts still advertise a seven-day trial.

ConversationPilot is $39 a month or $384 a year for Solo, also in GBP and EUR, $59 per seat for Team and $89 per seat for Manager. There is a Free plan with three recorded calls a month and no live coaching, and a 7-day trial that asks for a card and never charges an account that has not used the product: an unused trial is extended, then cancelled, rather than billed. Solo is about 30 percent more than Convo Starter on monthly billing and about 70 percent more against Convo's annual price. You are paying for any-language coaching, the scored report, the four modes and the trial terms.

Where Convo is the better choice

Choose Convo if your team sells in one of its six languages, wants native CRM write-back to HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho or Attio and is prepared to pay for the Enterprise tier to get it, or wants an API and MCP server to build on from the Starter plan up. Its per-seat price is lower, its Ask AI over uploaded documents is a strong answer engine, and a two-person team shipping BANT in June and SPICED and MEDDPICC next is moving fast. Its public footprint is thin, four Trustpilot reviews and one on Software Advice as of September 2026, so ask for references.

Choose ConversationPilot if you sell or recruit in languages beyond those six, want a scored report after every call, need interviewer-side recruitment coaching in the same seat as client business development, want a free plan or a trial that cannot charge you for a product you never used, or are buying for a team whose compliance lead will ask how the other person is told.