Meta offers two server-side options: the Conversions API Gateway (a one-click managed service that proxies CAPI events) and integration through your own sGTM container. Both solve the same underlying problem with different trade-offs.

CAPI Gateway: what it is

A Meta-hosted service you provision through your AWS or GCP account. Meta runs the container; you pay for the underlying compute and bandwidth. It accepts events from your Pixel and forwards them to Meta's CAPI endpoint server-side.

Limitations: Meta-only. Cannot send events to GA4, TikTok, LinkedIn, your warehouse, or any other destination. If you only care about Meta, this is a quick path.

sGTM: what it is

A general-purpose server-side tag manager. Receives events from your client GTM (or any other source) and routes them to any destination with a tag template, including Meta, GA4, TikTok, LinkedIn, BigQuery, your CRM, and arbitrary webhooks.

Strength: one container handles everything. Trade-off: you have to think about more of the configuration yourself, and the entry cost is slightly higher.

When the Gateway makes sense

• You only run Meta ads and have no plans to add other server-side destinations.
• Your team has zero appetite for tag manager configuration.
• You already pay for Meta Business and want everything in one bill.

When sGTM makes sense

• You run Meta plus at least one other ad platform server-side.
• You want to feed a warehouse or send events to internal services.
• You care about consistent dedup logic across destinations.
• You want one consent state, hashed once, applied everywhere.

The hybrid pattern that does not work

"Use the Gateway for Meta and sGTM for everything else" sounds clean and is a maintenance nightmare. You end up with two separate event pipelines that have to be kept in sync, two consent integrations, two dedup strategies, and two debugging surfaces. The teams who try this almost always consolidate within a year.

Migration path from Gateway to sGTM

If you started with Gateway and want to move: stand up sGTM in parallel. Configure the Meta CAPI tag identically. Run both for a week and compare event counts in Events Manager. When the counts match, switch your Pixel's CAPI integration from Gateway to sGTM, then decommission the Gateway. Total effort: about a sprint, mostly waiting for verification.

For pricing comparisons, the cost-of-running breakdown applies similarly to Gateway hosting costs on your cloud account.