Best Cluely Alternatives in 2026 (After the Data Breach)

Cluely built a devoted following by doing something nobody else was willing to say out loud: it marketed itself openly as a tool to help you "cheat on everything" — interviews, sales calls, exams, and live conversations. The pitch worked. The product grew fast. Then, in mid-2025, the company suffered a data breach that exposed the personal information, interview transcripts, and screenshots of more than 83,000 users.

That breach changed how people think about this category of tool.

If you're looking for a real-time AI assistant for interviews or calls, your options haven't disappeared — but the breach made something concrete that was previously abstract: when a tool watches your screen during sensitive, high-stakes conversations, it holds data you cannot afford to lose. The question of who stores it, how, and how well matters.

Here's what happened with Cluely, why the structural problem extends beyond the breach itself, and which alternatives are worth using.

What Actually Happened

The intrusion didn't require a sophisticated exploit. According to the hacker group Ivy Dark Agent, Cluely's developers had left an admin password file in a public GitHub repository. That single mistake, combined with weak GraphQL protections and a client-side paywall check, gave attackers unrestricted access to the database. The data exposed included personal information, interview transcripts, and in-session screenshots belonging to more than 83,000 users.

Separately, security researcher Jack Cable identified a critical vulnerability in Cluely's Electron desktop app: a postMessage handler flaw that allowed any website opened through Cluely to continuously capture screenshots without the user's knowledge. The company acknowledged both issues and made security improvements.

The improvements are real, but they don't undo the structural exposure. A tool that observes your screen and captures audio during the moments when you're most vulnerable — job interviews, salary negotiations, sales pitches — is a single point of failure for that data. If the security is imperfect, the consequences are unusually high.

The Structural Concern Goes Beyond One Breach

The breach is the most dramatic illustration, but the category of risk is worth understanding clearly.

Cluely's pricing includes a $75/month add-on specifically sold as "Pro + Undetectability." The existence of that tier tells you something about who the product was built for and how the company thinks about its use: the core value proposition includes operating in ways the other party on your call doesn't know about.

That's a legitimate business positioning, but it means the product is optimized for a use case that makes data sensitivity unusually high. The sessions being recorded aren't generic meetings — they're moments when you're actively trying to make an impression, sharing context about your work history, discussing compensation, or handling objections. The transcripts and screenshots from those sessions are more sensitive than ordinary meeting notes.

This isn't an argument against using AI assistance in interviews. It's an argument for thinking carefully about which tool holds that data and what their security track record looks like.

What to Look for in an Alternative

Before comparing specific tools, here's the short list of things that actually matter:

Invisibility that works. The overlay needs to be excluded from screen capture at the OS level — not just hidden in a window or tucked into a corner. Desktop Electron apps can do this reliably; browser extensions and web apps generally cannot.

Real-time speed. If the suggestion arrives more than two seconds after the question lands, it's not useful. You've already started speaking. Streaming AI responses — where you see the suggestion building as you listen — is the benchmark.

Context loading. Generic AI suggestions sound generic. The tool should let you load your resume, the job description, company research, and talking points before the session. That context is what makes suggestions sound like you rather than a language model.

Control over your data. You should be able to control when recording starts and stops, see what's retained, and delete it. A tool that records passively in the background without explicit start/stop controls is a liability.

Post-session value. Transcripts, summaries, and the ability to review your performance afterward separate a real productivity tool from a one-trick overlay.

The Main Alternatives

Final Round AI

Final Round AI is the most direct competitor in the interview space. The Interview Copilot runs as a desktop application, listens to the conversation through your microphone, and delivers structured response guidance in real time. It works with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, and also integrates with technical coding platforms — LeetCode, HackerRank, and CodeSignal — making it particularly useful for engineering candidates facing live coding exercises.

Beyond live assistance, Final Round AI includes mock interview functionality with AI-simulated interviewers tuned to your resume and the specific role you're targeting. Performance analytics track speech clarity and engagement across sessions, which is genuinely useful for candidates doing high-volume job searches who want to improve over time.

Pricing: $149/month, which is the highest in this category. The price reflects a broader platform — if you want both live assistance and structured mock interview prep in one tool, Final Round AI bundles that. If you only need the real-time overlay, it's harder to justify at this price.

Verdict: Strong product, especially for engineering roles. Expensive relative to alternatives. Worth evaluating if the mock interview and coding platform integrations are relevant to your job search.

LockedIn AI

LockedIn AI sits in the $55–70/month range depending on the plan, with a free tier available for limited sessions. The real-time overlay covers the same core functionality as other tools in this category — transcription, AI-generated response suggestions, invisibility to screen-sharing. The most distinctive feature is Duo, which lets a trusted person join your session and provide input in real time alongside the AI suggestions. That's an unusual capability: most tools assume you're running solo.

Pricing: Free tier with limited sessions; paid plans in the $55–70/month range, with quarterly and lifetime options available.

Verdict: Solid option, particularly if you want a human collaborator in the loop alongside AI. Mid-tier pricing is more accessible than Final Round AI. Less documentation and publicly visible security posture than the larger players.

Meeting Copilot

Meeting Copilot is built around a different philosophy: it's a calendar-first tool that works across interview prep, the live session, and post-meeting artifacts. You connect your calendar, and the tool prepares a briefing pack before each event — attendee research, talking points, company background — so you walk in already prepared rather than scrambling to load context at the last minute.

During the interview or call, the desktop overlay delivers real-time response suggestions based on the briefing you loaded. After the call, it generates a transcript, summary, and action items. The whole session — before, during, and after — is integrated rather than just the live moment.

The overlay is built as an Electron desktop app and uses OS-level screen capture exclusion, which is the same technical approach used by Final Round AI and the standard for reliable invisibility.

Pricing: Available at meetingcopilot.app.

Verdict: Best fit if you want preparation, live assistance, and post-meeting artifacts in one product, or if you're using the tool across multiple meetings per week rather than just for interviews.

How to Choose

The honest answer is that these tools are close enough in their core real-time functionality that the deciding factors are usually peripheral: price, what you're using it for, how much you care about the pre- and post-session features, and how much trust you're willing to extend to each company's security practices.

Given the Cluely breach, that last criterion is more concrete than it was a year ago. It's worth reading each company's privacy policy and data retention practices before you commit — not because a breach is inevitable, but because the data these tools collect during interviews is genuinely sensitive, and the consequences of exposure are high.

If your primary use case is job interview prep and live assistance:

• Final Round AI if you want the most comprehensive platform and don't mind the price
• LockedIn AI if you want a mid-tier option with a human-in-the-loop option
• Meeting Copilot if you want calendar-integrated prep plus live overlay plus post-meeting artifacts

If you're using Cluely now and reconsidering after the breach, all three of these are mature enough to cover the same core use case. The overlay functionality — the real-time suggestion during a live call — works similarly across all of them. Where they diverge is in everything around it.

One Thing Worth Remembering

The value of any real-time AI tool in an interview depends on how well you prepared before you started. A suggestion is only useful if you have enough context to evaluate whether it's right. If you've loaded your actual experience, the specific role, and the company's recent news, the AI is filling in the gaps around things you already know. If you haven't, you're reading suggestions cold — and that shows.

Whatever tool you choose, the preparation still has to happen. The overlay makes the live moment easier; it doesn't replace the work that makes the suggestions actually sound like you.