Source-backed analysis22
Review basis
Research-based review: the AppDuo Editorial Team compiled it from official pages, documentation, app stores, press and user feedback, without hands-on testing. Every claim links to a source with the date it was checked.
22 reference sourcesInformation updated Nov 15, 2026
How we review
Cluely Review
Live AI help and notes during calls, with no bot joining the meeting
By AppDuo Editorial Team · Fact-checked
- macOS
- Windows
- iOS
On this page
Decide at a glance
Our verdict
Cluely suits people who want live AI prompts and notes during sales or work calls and are happy to try it free before paying $19.99/month for Pro. The trade-offs: screen-share hiding costs more than seven times as much, support is mostly an AI bot, refunds are very narrow, and both its security record and company credibility carry marks.
Best for: Sales reps and consultants who want live answer prompts and notes on Zoom, Teams or Google Meet calls
Skip it if: Candidates planning to use it in interviews, exams or proctored tests: it usually breaks the rules, can be detected, and Cluely refuses refunds for these cases
Pros
- No bot joins the call: Cluely listens and reads the screen locally and suggests answers when you press Cmd/Ctrl + Enter
- The free Starter plan includes the latest models, meeting notes and drafted follow-up emails
- Pro at $19.99/month ($11.99/month billed yearly) gives unlimited AI responses and notes
Cons
- Screen-share hiding is only in the $149.99/month plan; the mobile app is billed separately at $8/week
- Support is mostly an AI bot with no dedicated agent; Trustpilot score of 1.6/5 with many complaints about charges and refused refunds
All pros and cons · Who is it for?
More pros
- An iPhone app records, transcribes and summarises in-person meetings too, rated 4.7/5 on the US App Store (583 ratings)
More cons
- Track record concerns: a researcher reported a covert-screenshot flaw and a Cluely employee filed a DMCA takedown against him (2025); the CEO admitted a false revenue claim (2026)
- English-only interface; speech input in 6 languages; no support for Windows 10, external webcams or custom graphics cards
Best for
- People who want meeting notes without a recording bot appearing in the participant list
- iPhone users who also need recording and summaries for in-person meetings, synced with the desktop app
Skip it if
- Teams and companies that need central account management, human support and clear security commitments
Experience & key features
What Cluely is
Cluely is an AI meeting assistant from Cluely, Inc., a US startup now based in New York. It was founded by Roy Lee and Neel Shanmugam after Columbia University disciplined them over Interview Coder, a tool for cheating in coding interviews. Cluely launched on 20 April 2025 under the slogan "Cheat on Everything", raised a $5.3 million seed round and then a $15 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz. Since late 2025 it has dropped the cheating pitch and positions itself as an AI meeting notetaker, competing directly with Otter.ai and Granola.
How it works
The desktop app (macOS Ventura or later, Windows 11) runs as a small floating window. It listens to call audio, reads the screen on request, and when you press Cmd/Ctrl + Enter it offers suggested answers, follow-up questions or a quick recap. After the call it produces notes, action items and a drafted follow-up email. It never joins the meeting as a participant, so no bot appears on the guest list. On the top plan the window is also hidden from screen-sharing software. An iPhone app, released in December 2025, handles recording, transcription and summaries for in-person meetings as well.
- Languages
English interface. Per the help center, Cluely understands speech in 6 languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese) and writes notes in 22, including Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean and Thai. - Meeting platforms
The homepage lists Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Webex and Slack calls.
Pricing and value
The free Starter plan caps daily AI responses and meeting notes, though Cluely does not publish the numbers. Pro costs $19.99/month, or $143.88/year ($11.99/month), and removes the caps. Hiding the window from screen shares requires Pro + Undetectability at $149.99/month or $959.88/year ($79.99/month), a plan split out on 22 October 2025. The iPhone app is billed separately at $8/week or $144/year on the pricing page ($7.99/week and $139.99/year as US App Store in-app prices). Refunds only apply within 24 hours when the app cannot run on your machine, not for forgotten cancellations or interview use. For ordinary meeting notes Pro is fairly priced; the expensive part is the hiding feature.
More analysis
Who it is for, and the alternatives
Unlike Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai or Read AI, Cluely helps while you are talking rather than only summarising afterwards, and, like Granola, it needs no bot in the room. That suits sales reps and consultants who want instant prompts. Buyers should weigh the downsides: support is mostly a bot, Trustpilot scores are very low over billing, a researcher reported a security flaw in 2025 and a Cluely employee filed a DMCA takedown against him, and in 2026 the CEO admitted a false revenue claim. Using Cluely in interviews or exams usually breaks the rules; Cluely itself refuses refunds for that use, and hiring platforms have built dedicated detection tools. Teams that want transparent shared notes should look at Fireflies.ai, Otter.ai or Fathom; people who prefer bot-free notes can consider Granola or TwinMind.
Screenshots
Plans & pricing
Prices last verified Nov 15, 2026
Starter
PersonalFree
Free. Daily cap on AI responses (resets every 24 hours) and on meeting notes; up to 3 files for custom context. No screen-share hiding.
Pro
Personal$19.99/mo
$11.99/mo billed yearly
$19.99/month, or $143.88/year ($11.99/month). Unlimited AI responses, meeting notes and file uploads; latest models (help center lists GPT-5 and Claude 4); priority support. The Cluely window still shows in screen shares.
Pro + Undetectability
Personal$149.99/mo
$79.99/mo billed yearly
$149.99/month, or $959.88/year ($79.99/month). Everything in Pro plus hiding the Cluely window from screen-sharing software. Not supported on Windows 10.
Cluely Mobile
Personal$12/mo
Separate plan for the iPhone app, billed apart from desktop: $8/week or $144/year ($12/month) on the pricing page. The US App Store lists in-app prices of $7.99/week and $139.99/year. No monthly option.
- Free plan limits
- The free Starter plan includes meeting notes, drafted follow-up emails and the latest models, but caps daily AI messages and meeting notes and has no screen-share hiding. Cluely does not publish the exact caps.
- Free trial
- No free trial
Cancellation & refunds
Refunds only within 24 hours, and only when system-level restrictions stop Cluely from working on your computer. No refunds for forgetting to cancel, changing plans, or interview/detection use cases. Requests go by email with the invoice; refunds arrive in 5–10 business days.
Privacy
Per its privacy policy (updated 10 June 2025), Cluely does not sell data or train on user data; end-to-end encryption is enabled only on request by email. The service collects audio recordings, transcripts and screenshots, keeps them while the account exists, and may retain backups or de-identified data after deletion. It shares data with cloud, transcription, analytics and advertising providers, uses cookies to "provide relevant advertising", and may transfer data to the US. The iPhone app's App Store privacy label declares Usage Data (Advertising Data) as used to track you across other companies' apps and websites and as linked to your identity for analytics; name, email address, payment info, user content, product interaction and diagnostics are declared "not linked to you". The listing also states the app "contains advertising". The two documents do not fully line up: the policy says Cluely does not sell data, yet the label declares cross-company tracking tied to advertising data; and the label files name and email as "not linked to you" while the policy describes account-based retention of exactly that data (name, email, recordings). In 2025 a security researcher reported a desktop-app flaw that let websites opened through Cluely capture continuous screenshots; Cluely has not publicly confirmed it or announced a fix.
Cluely alternatives
7.6/10Fireflies.ai
AI meeting notetaker with a free-forever plan
7.4/10Granola
Bot-free AI meeting notepad that blends your own notes with the transcript
Controversies & incidents
Issues documented by the press, regulators, courts or the vendor itself. Every item is sourced; unproven claims are labelled as allegations. Last researched: Nov 15, 2026
- Low impactConfirmedMisleading claims ·
CEO admits giving the press a false $7M revenue figure
On 5 March 2026 CEO Roy Lee wrote on X that the $7 million ARR he gave TechCrunch in summer 2025 was untrue.
Read the full account
In summer 2025 Roy Lee told TechCrunch Cluely's ARR had doubled to $7 million in a week. On 5 March 2026 he posted on X that this was "the only blatantly dishonest thing" he had said publicly and retracted it, sharing Stripe screenshots that put the figure at about $5.2 million (as summarised by Wikipedia). TechCrunch reported that his account of a "random cold call" was inaccurate, since Cluely's own PR representative had arranged the interview. It does not directly affect users' data or money, but it is relevant when weighing the company's marketing figures.
Vendor response
Roy Lee called his post a "formal retraction" and published Stripe figures from June 2025.
- Low impactAllegedBilling ·
Cluely warns that a look-alike "CluelyAI" is behind unrecognised charges
Cluely's help center says CluelyAI (cluelyai.com) is an unrelated company and describes it as an impersonator.
Read the full account
In a 3 December 2025 article and on its refund page, Cluely says many unrecognised charges come from people who signed up for CluelyAI, a similarly named service with purple branding and $15/month or $80/year plans that Cluely.com does not sell. Cluely calls CluelyAI "known scammers and impersonators" and advises affected users to contact that company or dispute the charge with their bank. This is Cluely's claim and has not been confirmed by any authority. Buyers should check the statement descriptor (CLUELY, INC) and the domain before paying.
Vendor response
Cluely says it cannot help with CluelyAI charges and explains how to recognise legitimate Cluely billing.
Sources:Cluely Help Center – Known impersonators and unrecognized chargesCluely Help Center – Refund policy
- Medium impactConfirmedSecurity ·
Cluely employee filed a DMCA takedown against a security researcher
After researcher Jack Cable published an analysis of Cluely's desktop app code, a Cluely employee filed a DMCA takedown and later admitted he should not have. The covert-screenshot flaw Cable reported has not been publicly confirmed by Cluely.
Read the full account
According to Ryan Broderick's Garbage Day newsletter (9 July 2025), Cluely filed a DMCA takedown against X posts by Jack Cable, a security researcher formerly at the US cyber agency CISA, after he reverse-engineered the app and published its system prompts; Garbage Day reported the findings showed Cluely was mostly a wrapper around OpenAI's GPT-4.1 and Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 3.7. The DMCA notice Cable published shows Cluely, Inc. claiming the posts contained "proprietary source code". CEO Roy Lee first wrote on X that the company "never filed this", but employee Kevin Grandon then admitted he had. On the flaw itself: Cable says, and the Critical Thinking security podcast summarised, that Cluely's Electron app ran without sandboxing so a website opened from the app could call a screenshot function and continuously record the user's screen after one click; he also says he privately reported 7 vulnerabilities to Cluely. These are the researcher's reports; neither Cluely nor another independent party has publicly confirmed them, and there is no public information on when they were fixed.
Vendor response
Cluely employee Kevin Grandon wrote on X that he had filed "a few of these", realised in hindsight he shouldn't have, had submitted a reversal request to X, and apologised. Roy Lee then wrote "Congrats on the clout" to Cable (per Garbage Day). Cluely has made no public statement about the flaw.
Sources:Garbage Day (Ryan Broderick, 2025-07-09)Vendor statement – Cluely employee Kevin Grandon on X (2025-07-08)Roy Lee (Cluely CEO) on X (2025-07-08)DMCA notice from Cluely, Inc., published by Jack Cable (GitHub Gist)Jack Cable on X – DMCA update threadCritical Thinking Bug Bounty Podcast – HackerNotes Ep. 136 (2025-08-26)
Show 1 more
- Medium impactConfirmedEthics ·
Launched with a "cheat on everything" pitch for interviews and exams
Cluely launched inviting users to "cheat" on interviews, exams and sales calls with a hidden AI, backed by a polarising promo video; it later removed that messaging and repositioned.
Read the full account
TechCrunch (21 April 2025) reported that Cluely pitched "cheating" on exams, sales calls and job interviews through a hidden window interviewers cannot see, with a video of the CEO using AI to lie about his age on a date; critics likened it to "Black Mirror". As summarised by Wikipedia, by late April 2025 Cluely removed references to cheating on exams and interviews from its website, and in November 2025 it repositioned as a meeting notetaker (TechCrunch). Its help center still explains how to avoid detection by browser-monitoring software. The risk sits with users: Amazon told TechCrunch candidates must agree not to use unauthorised tools in interviews, and Cluely's refund policy excludes interview detection cases.
Vendor response
Cluely published a manifesto comparing itself to the calculator and spellcheck, once derided as "cheating"; it now says Cluely is for meeting assistance and points interview use to its separate product, Interview Coder.
Sources:TechCrunch (2025-04-21)TechCrunch (2025-11-05)Wikipedia – CluelyCluely Help Center – Refund policyCluely Help Center – What apps are supported for undetectability
Frequently asked questions
Is Cluely free?
Yes, the Starter plan is free and includes meeting notes, drafted follow-up emails and the latest models, but caps daily AI responses and notes. Unlimited use needs Pro ($19.99/month, or $11.99/month billed yearly).
Can other meeting participants see Cluely?
Cluely never joins the meeting, so no bot shows in the participant list. Hiding its window from screen shares is only in Pro + Undetectability ($149.99/month) and does not work on Windows 10 or pre-2022 Macs. The help center also notes that clicking into Cluely can still be picked up by browser-monitoring software.
Does Cluely support Vietnamese?
Only partly. The interface is English and Cluely understands speech in just 6 languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese). Vietnamese is among the 22 languages for written notes and action items, but the help center says the app will not understand speech in those languages.
Can I get a refund if I'm not happy?
Barely. Cluely refunds only within 24 hours when system-level restrictions stop the app from running on your computer. Forgotten cancellations, plan changes and interview use are excluded. Test compatibility on the free plan before paying.
I was charged by "CluelyAI" — is that Cluely?
According to Cluely's help center, no. Cluely.com bills as CLUELY, INC with blue branding; CluelyAI (cluelyai.com, purple logo, $15/month or $80/year plans) is a separate company Cluely describes as an impersonator. Charges from CluelyAI must be taken up with that company or your bank.
Review evidence & sources22
Scores
- Ease of use
- 6.8
- Features
- 6.8
- Value for money
- 5.5
- Performance
- 6.0
- Support
- 4.0
- Privacy & security
- 4.5
Why this score
Simple to drive: one Cmd/Ctrl + Enter shortcut to ask the AI, a movable window, and no bot to invite. Against it: English-only interface, strict hardware requirements (Windows 11 or macOS Ventura and later only, no external webcams or custom graphics cards), and some Trustpilot reviews describe trouble uninstalling on Mac.
Why this score
Covers the core of a meeting assistant: live answer prompts, follow-up questions, recaps, notes, follow-up emails, asking AI about past meetings, file context, an iPhone app for in-person meetings, and screen-share hiding. Limits: speech is understood in only 6 languages (transcript output in 22), no team plan on the pricing page, and a short list of official integrations.
Why this score
Pro at $19.99/month ($11.99/month yearly) is a reasonable price for an unlimited meeting assistant. But the feature Cluely is known for, screen-share hiding, costs $149.99/month; the mobile app is a separate $8/week; and refunds only cover 24 hours when the app cannot run, with no pro-rated refunds on cancellation.
Why this score
Cluely claims 300 ms responses and 95% transcription accuracy, but journalists' tests at launch found 5–90 second delays and generic suggestions, and the CEO admitted it launched 'something that barely works'. The iPhone app holds 4.7/5 on the US App Store, while some 2026 Trustpilot reviews still report wrong transcripts and the app dying mid-call.
Why this score
The help center states the team is small with no dedicated support agent; email is answered by the Fin AI bot and direct replies are slow. On Trustpilot (1.6/5, 23 reviews, 96% one-star) most complaints concern charges after cancelling, yearly upgrades without a confirmation step, and bot-only replies.
Why this score
In its favour: no data sales, no training on user data, end-to-end encryption on request, and in-app account deletion. Against it: the app captures audio, transcripts and screenshots and shares data with advertising providers; the App Store label declares advertising data used for cross-company tracking and says the app contains ads, while filing name and email as "not linked to you", at odds with the policy's account-based retention. On top of that, a researcher reported a covert-screenshot flaw in 2025 and a Cluely employee filed a DMCA takedown against him, pointing to an immature security culture.
What users say
Sources
- Vendor-providedOfficial website (homepage)Nov 15, 2026
- Vendor-providedOfficial pricing pageNov 15, 2026
- Vendor-providedHelp Center – Using Cluely for freeNov 15, 2026
- Vendor-providedHelp Center – Refund policyNov 15, 2026
- Vendor-providedHelp Center – Do you have customer support?Nov 15, 2026
- Vendor-providedHelp Center – System requirementsNov 15, 2026
- Vendor-providedHelp Center – How to change languagesNov 15, 2026
- Vendor-providedHelp Center – Cluely Pro vs Pro + UndetectabilityNov 15, 2026
- Vendor-providedHelp Center – What apps are supported for undetectabilityNov 15, 2026
- Vendor-providedHelp Center – Known impersonators and unrecognized chargesNov 15, 2026
- Vendor-providedPrivacy PolicyNov 15, 2026
- storeApp Store listing (US)Nov 15, 2026
- storeApp Store listing (Vietnam)Nov 15, 2026
- review-siteTrustpilot – cluely.comNov 15, 2026
- pressTechCrunch (2025-04-21)Nov 15, 2026
- pressTechCrunch (2025-11-05)Nov 15, 2026
- pressTechCrunch (2026-03-05)Nov 15, 2026
- Community-reportedWikipedia – CluelyNov 15, 2026
- Community-reportedCritical Thinking Bug Bounty Podcast – HackerNotes Ep. 136 (2025-08-26)Nov 15, 2026
- Vendor-providedHelp Center – How to delete your accountNov 15, 2026
- pressGarbage Day (Ryan Broderick, 2025-07-09) – "Cluely Vs. The World Vs. Itself"Nov 15, 2026
- Community-reportedVendor statement – Cluely employee Kevin Grandon on X (2025-07-08)Nov 15, 2026
Specs & compatibility
- Developer
- Cluely, Inc.
- Headquarters
- United States
- Launched
- 2025
- Category
- AIProductivity
Capabilities
- AI features
- Mobile app
Platforms
- macOS
- Windows
- iOS
Interface languages
- English
Integrations
- Zoom
- Microsoft Teams
- Google Meet
- Webex
- Slack
Support
- Live chat
- Help center
- Community forum
Change history
- Company.CEO Roy Lee admits the $7 million ARR figure he gave TechCrunch in 2025 was false.
- Feature.Releases the "Cluely: AI Notetaker" iPhone app for recording, transcribing and summarising in-person meetings too.
- Update.Launches a new website repositioning the product as an AI meeting assistant; the CEO says the aim is to become the best AI notetaker.
Full change history (8)
- Price.Screen-share hiding is split into its own plan (Pro + Undetectability).
- Company.Raises a $15 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, bringing total funding to $20.3 million.
- Company.Announces a $5.3 million seed round from Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures.
- Launch.Cluely launches with the slogan "Cheat on Everything" and a polarising promo video; 70,000 sign-ups in the first week.
- Update.Roy Lee and Neel Shanmugam are disciplined by Columbia University over Interview Coder, an AI tool for cheating in coding interviews and Cluely's precursor.
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