Disclosure first: we build Flintalk, a direct competitor. That gives us a reason to be unfair to Cluely, so this review sticks to facts you can verify yourself, with sources, and gives credit where the product earns it. Prices and claims were checked on August 24, 2026.
What Cluely is
Cluely is a desktop assistant that helps you during live calls rather than after them. It runs as an overlay on Mac, Windows, and iOS, captures your system audio, reads what is on your screen, and surfaces AI answers in real time while you talk. No bot joins your meeting. It launched in April 2025 and raised a $15M Series A from a16z.
That real-time design matters. Most tools marketed as meeting assistants are note takers that summarize after everyone hangs up. Cluely, like us, is built for the moment the question is still hanging in the air. Their own pricing page puts it well: it helps during the call, not after.
Does Cluely actually work?
For the core job, yes. The overlay is genuinely real-time, the screen reading is useful for shared documents, and the multi-platform support is ahead of most of the category. Enterprise customers can upload documents to a knowledge base so answers draw on their own material.
Two functional gaps are worth knowing before you rely on it in front of a client. First, citations: Cluely's documentation does not describe answers citing the source document they came from, so you are trusting a suggestion without seeing where it originated. Second, invisibility: staying hidden from screen-share software is not included in the $19.99 Pro plan. It is a separate tier called Pro + Undetectability at $149.99 a month.
Is Cluely safe? The trust question
This is where the review has to talk about the company, not the software.
Cluely built its brand on deliberately provocative marketing: the launch tagline was about cheating, and the founder, Roy Lee, first became known for an AI tool built to beat coding interviews, which got him suspended from Columbia. You may or may not care about marketing tone. Harder to set aside: in March 2026, Lee publicly admitted that the $7M revenue figure he had claimed in 2025 was fabricated (TechCrunch, March 5, 2026). The company has since repositioned itself as a meeting notetaker.
None of that means the software will fail you on a call. It does mean the vendor's own statements have a documented credibility problem, and if you are putting an assistant into sales calls or client meetings, the vendor is part of what you are trusting.
Cluely pricing
| Tier | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | Free | Limited responses, limited notes, 3 file uploads |
| Pro | $19.99/mo | Unlimited responses, notes, and uploads |
| Pro + Undetectability | $149.99/mo | Hidden from screen-share software |
Who should use it, and who should compare first
If you want real-time help on Windows or iOS and screen-share invisibility does not matter to you, Cluely's Pro tier is a reasonable buy. If invisibility, source citations, or vendor trust matter, compare before you commit. We keep an honest list of Cluely alternatives that includes note takers for people who actually need notes, and our guide to what a real-time AI meeting assistant does explains the category split in two minutes.
And since we are the competitor here: Flintalk cites the file every answer came from, includes screen-share invisibility in every plan starting at $12, and ships a safety test that lets you verify the hiding yourself before the call. The free 30 minutes is the fastest way to check whether we are describing our own product honestly.
Sources: cluely.com/pricing, docs.cluely.com, TechCrunch (March 5, 2026). Checked August 24, 2026; tell us if something has changed and we will correct it.