Cluely AI: What It Is, How It Works, and Best Alternatives in 2026

A mid-2025 data breach at Cluely exposed the interview transcripts, screenshots, and personal data of more than 83,000 users after hackers found admin credentials in a public GitHub repository (Wikipedia). That incident captured the fundamental tension behind this product: a tool designed to see everything on your screen becomes a massive liability if its own security fails.

Cluely is a desktop application for macOS and Windows that overlays real-time AI responses on top of any active window. It reads your screen via OCR, captures audio through speech-to-text, and feeds both streams into a large language model. The generated responses appear in a floating panel that only you can see.

The technical feature that made Cluely famous is its rendering approach. The overlay uses low-level GPU hooks, DirectX on Windows and Metal on macOS, that sit below the layer captured by screen-sharing software. During a Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams call, other participants cannot see the Cluely overlay on your shared screen.

The product launched in April 2025 with the marketing tagline "Cheat on Everything." Founder Roy Lee, who was suspended from Columbia University for creating a predecessor tool called Interview Coder, positioned Cluely as an interview aid, exam helper, and dating coach. By late 2025, the company had softened its messaging and repositioned as a meeting assistant competing with Otter.ai, though the undetectability feature remained the core premium offering.

Cluely raised $20.3 million in total funding: a $5.3 million seed round from Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures, followed by a $15 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz. Despite the funding, independent reviews flagged real performance issues. Testing by multiple outlets found response delays of 5 to 90 seconds and transcription accuracy as low as 20%, well below the 300-millisecond response times Cluely advertised.

Cluely runs on three desktop tiers, with a separate mobile subscription.

Starter (Free)

Limited AI responses, limited meeting notetaking, up to 3 file uploads for custom context. Enough to test the interface, but not useful for regular work.

Pro ($19.99/month)

Unlimited AI responses and meeting notes, unlimited file uploads, CRM integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Zoho, plus priority support. Annual billing brings the price to approximately $11.99/month.

Pro + Undetectability ($149.99/month)

Everything in Pro, plus the GPU-level overlay rendering that hides the app from screen-sharing software. Annual billing drops this to $44.99/month.

Mobile ($8/week)

A separate iOS app for on-the-go notetaking, billed independently from the desktop plans. At $8/week, this works out to roughly $416/year.

The jump from $19.99 to $149.99 for the undetectability feature tells you where Cluely makes its money. The free tier works as a teaser, but the core selling point, invisible AI coaching, costs 7.5x more than the base plan. A user running both desktop and mobile at monthly rates pays over $560/year.

Three problems have pushed users away from Cluely through 2025 and into 2026.

The first is the data breach. In mid-2025, hackers from a group called Ivy Dark Agent found admin credentials in a public GitHub repository. The breach exposed personal data, interview transcripts, and screenshots from more than 83,000 accounts. For a product that captures everything on your screen by design, this is the worst breach scenario possible. Security researcher Jack Cable later discovered a separate vulnerability in Cluely's Electron app: a postMessage handler flaw that allowed any website opened through Cluely to capture screenshots continuously without the user's knowledge. When Cable reported the finding, Cluely responded with DMCA takedown notices instead of patches.

The second is the credibility crisis around leadership. In March 2026, CEO Roy Lee admitted to inflating the company's annual recurring revenue. He had told TechCrunch the figure was $7 million; he later acknowledged on X that the real number was $5.2 million and called his earlier claim "bs." The company's SOC 2 certification, issued by a firm called Delve, also came under scrutiny after Delve was accused of fabricating audit evidence. Cluely currently holds a 1.8 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot.

The third is that detection is catching up. Recruiter platforms including FabricHQ, Sherlock AI, CoderPad, and Talview now ship Cluely-specific detection. Fabric purchased a $75 Cluely subscription, used it in a live interview, and detected it with an 85% probability score. The $149.99/month "undetectability" promise is becoming less reliable as detection tools improve.

If you want AI support during or after meetings but prefer something transparent, auditable, and unlikely to get you fired, these seven tools take a fundamentally different approach. All of them operate visibly, meaning participants know AI is present.

How we evaluated: We compared transparency (does the tool operate openly?), data security (certifications, encryption, breach history), transcription quality, pricing, and workflow integration.

1. Otter.ai

A meeting transcription and note-taking platform that joins calls as a visible participant.

Key strengths:

• Real-time transcription with speaker identification and timestamps
• Native integrations with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams
• OtterPilot joins meetings automatically and produces shareable summaries

Limitations:

• Transcription accuracy drops with heavy accents or crosstalk
• Free tier limited to 300 minutes per month

Best for: Teams that want transparent, shareable meeting records.

Pricing: Free tier available. Pro starts at $16.99/month.

2. Fireflies.ai

A meeting intelligence platform that records, transcribes, and analyzes conversations with CRM integration.

Key strengths:

• Transcription in 100+ languages with AI-powered topic detection
• Auto-syncs notes and action items to Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive
• Conversation analytics including sentiment analysis and talk-time metrics

Limitations:

• Audio-only recording on the free tier
• Advanced search and analytics locked behind the Business plan

Best for: Sales and customer success teams that need conversation analytics tied to their CRM.

Pricing: Free tier available. Pro starts at $18/month per seat.

3. tl;dv

Records and transcribes meetings, then lets you clip, tag, and share key moments with your team.

Key strengths:

• Free unlimited recording and transcription for Zoom and Google Meet
• Clip and timestamp specific meeting moments for async review
• AI-generated summaries with action items and follow-ups

Limitations:

• Microsoft Teams support requires the paid plan
• Integrations limited on the free tier

Best for: Remote teams that share meeting highlights asynchronously instead of requiring live attendance.

Pricing: Free tier with unlimited recording. Pro starts at $25/month per seat.

4. Granola An AI notepad that listens to your meeting audio and enhances the notes you type during the call.

Key strengths:

• You write notes during the meeting; AI fills in what you missed from the transcript
• Processes audio locally on macOS, keeping data on your device
• Minimal interface designed to stay out of your way

Limitations:

• macOS only, with no Windows or Linux support
• No video recording or screen capture

Best for: Individual contributors who write their own notes but want AI to catch what they missed.

Pricing: Free tier available. Business plans start at $12/month.

5. Bluedot

Records meetings through a browser extension, transcribes in 100+ languages, and produces summaries without joining as a visible bot.

Key strengths:

• No bot joins your call; records via Chrome extension instead
• SOC 2 Type II certified with GDPR compliance
• Auto-generates follow-up emails and CRM entries from meeting content

Limitations:

• Chrome-only browser extension
• No standalone mobile app

Best for: Consultants and client-facing professionals who need meeting recording without a bot presence.

Pricing: Free tier available. Paid plans start at approximately $18/month.

6. Natively

A free, open-source AI meeting assistant that runs entirely on your local machine.

Key strengths:

• All transcription and AI processing happens locally with no cloud dependency
• BYOK (bring your own key) support for any LLM provider
• Active community on GitHub with ongoing development

Limitations:

• Requires local hardware capable of running inference models
• No hosted cloud option or mobile app

Best for: Developers and privacy-focused users who want complete control over their meeting data.

Pricing: Free and open source.

7. Fast.io

A cloud workspace where teams and AI agents store, organize, and share files. Not a meeting recorder, but it solves what comes after the meeting: organizing and searching all your notes, transcripts, and deliverables in one place.

Key strengths:

• Intelligence Mode auto-indexes uploaded documents for semantic search and AI chat with citations
• MCP server lets AI agents read, write, and organize meeting outputs programmatically
• Branded shares let you package meeting deliverables for clients with custom branding

Limitations:

• Not a recording or transcription tool; pairs with the tools above rather than replacing them
• Intelligence features focus on file-based workflows, not live audio

Best for: Teams that generate meeting outputs across multiple AI tools and need a persistent, searchable workspace to organize and share everything.

Pricing: Plans start with a 14-day free trial, with workspaces, monthly AI credits, and storage scaled to each tier.

The right choice depends on what you actually need from AI during and after meetings.

For real-time transcription with full transparency, Otter.ai or tl;dv deliver accurate records that everyone on the call knows about. If your priority is conversation analytics tied to a CRM, Fireflies.ai handles that natively. If you value privacy above everything else, Natively runs entirely on your hardware with no cloud dependency.

If your workflow involves AI agents generating content across multiple tools, the bottleneck usually is not the transcription step. It is what happens afterward: organizing outputs, making them searchable, and sharing them with the right people. That is where a workspace like Fast.io fits. Upload transcripts from any recording tool, enable Intelligence Mode, and your team can search across every meeting record by meaning rather than just keywords.

One pattern that works well: pair a transparent recorder (Otter, tl;dv, or Fireflies) with a shared workspace for outputs. The recorder handles the live call. The workspace handles everything after. This gives you real-time AI support and a persistent, searchable archive without hiding anything from anyone.

The industry trend is clear. Companies like Amazon, Anthropic, and dozens of Fortune 500 firms have banned screen-scraping AI overlays from corporate devices. The tools that will last are the ones that work in the open.