Cluely
Cluely is a real-time AI meeting assistant for macOS, Windows and iPhone. It captures system audio without joining the call, transcribes live, writes the notes and feeds you suggested answers in an overlay only you can see.
What is Cluely?
Cluely is an AI meeting assistant built around one deliberate choice: it helps you during the conversation rather than summarising it afterwards. It is published by Cluely, Inc., a San Francisco company that launched the product in 2025, and it runs as a desktop application on macOS and Windows with a companion iPhone app.
The architecture explains most of the rest. Cluely never joins the meeting as a participant. The desktop app captures the system audio of your own machine, so nothing shows up in the guest list on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex or Slack calls, and no per-app integration has to be configured. Everything surfaces in a translucent overlay only you can see. Press Cmd or Ctrl + Enter and the assistant answers on the spot; dedicated controls offer Assist, suggested replies to "What should I say?", follow-up questions and a running recap. Because Cluely also reads what is displayed on your screen — a pricing page, a specification, a candidate's CV — its answers draw on the document as much as on the discussion.
Alongside the live assistance it behaves as a conventional notetaker: it records, transcribes and produces shareable notes, and lets you question the AI across every past meeting. The homepage claims support for more than twelve languages, a 300 ms response time and 95% transcription accuracy, and the company's own comparison articles add an AI-drafted follow-up email once the call ends.
Invisibility is sold as a tier rather than a default. Every plan keeps Cluely out of the participant list; the Pro + Undetectability plan adds operating-system level protection so the overlay stays out of screen shares and recordings, with app-support limitations Cluely documents itself. An interactive tester on the site lets you check the behaviour before you rely on it.
The company makes no secret of its stance. Its manifesto opens with "We want to cheat on everything" and puts the tool in the lineage of the calculator, spellcheck and Google. That framing is inseparable from the product, and the responsibility for recording-consent laws and internal rules stays entirely with the user.
What it does
- Listen to a live conversation and pick up its context in real time
- Return an instant AI answer on a Cmd or Ctrl + Enter keystroke
- Suggest what to say next, propose follow-up questions and keep a running recap
- Transcribe the meeting live, with 12+ languages, 300 ms latency and 95% accuracy claimed
- Read what is on your screen and answer from the document as well as the discussion
- Produce shareable meeting notes automatically and draft the follow-up email
- Answer questions across every meeting you have already had
When to use Cluely / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Cluely is the right fit.
When to use Cluely
- Sales teams running back-to-back calls who need objection handling and technical answers while the prospect is still on the line
- Recruiters and hiring managers who want live notes and follow-up questions without a bot sitting in the interview
- Consultants, freelancers and solo founders on client calls, with no colleague to lean on for a fact they cannot recall
- Customer success and account managers who have to look prepared on renewal, escalation and QBR calls
- Students and job seekers using it in lectures, seminars and interview preparation, where the free Starter plan is enough to start
When not to use Cluely
- Android users and anyone who works from a browser only: Cluely ships as a macOS and Windows desktop app plus an iPhone app, with no web version
- Windows 10 machines, which the site excludes from guaranteed support and from refunds
- Developers looking to build on top of the tool: there is no public API and no API documentation
- Teams on the free or Pro plans with confidential client material, since the terms let Cluely train its models on their data unless they move to Enterprise
- Anyone bound by strict recording-consent rules, exam regulations or interview policies, because the responsibility for those stays entirely with the user
How to use Cluely
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Check the requirements: macOS 10.15 Catalina or later on Apple Silicon or Intel, or Windows 11 on a 64-bit processor, with 500 MB of disk space and 8 GB of RAM recommended
- Download the desktop app from the download page, as a .dmg for macOS or an .exe for Windows
- On a phone, use the mobile page to text or email yourself the desktop download link, or install the iPhone app from the App Store
- Create an account with an email address, or sign in through Google or GitHub
- Open Cluely, then join your meeting in whatever software you normally use: Cluely stays outside the call
- Let it listen and transcribe; recording starts and the live conversation becomes the assistant's context
- Press Cmd or Ctrl + Enter for an instant answer, or type a question about the discussion or about your screen
- Use the Assist, What should I say?, Follow-up questions and Recap controls as the conversation moves
- Tailor it with custom instructions, uploaded files (three at most on the free plan) and custom keybinds
- On the Pro + Undetectability plan, switch invisibility on and verify it with the screen-share tester on the undetectability page
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Genuinely helps while the call is happening, which no transcript-after-the-fact tool does
- Nothing joins the meeting: no bot in the participant list, nothing for the other side to install or accept
- Works with any software that plays audio through the machine, with no per-app integration to set up
- A permanent free plan with no credit card required, enough to try it on real calls
- Screen awareness lets the assistant answer from the document in front of you, not just the audio
- Fast transcription is claimed and quantified: 300 ms response time, 95% accuracy, 12+ languages
- Reasonable operational transparency for a young company: a public status page, a help centre, a published bug bounty and an accessible trust centre
Cons
- On the Free and Pro plans the terms let Cluely and its sub-processors train their AI models on customer data; only the Enterprise tier is contractually excluded
- The privacy policy states that Cluely does not train on your data, which directly contradicts section 3.2 of the terms published the same day
- Invisibility to screen sharing costs $149.99 per month against $19.99 for Pro, and comes with app-support limitations Cluely acknowledges
- No Android app and no web app; Windows 11 is required and Windows 10 support is neither guaranteed nor refundable
- The refund window is 24 hours and demands video evidence, with slowness and detection by screen-sharing software explicitly excluded
- No public API, no published sub-processor list and no security certification displayed on the site itself
- GDPR compliance is never claimed, no Article 27 EU representative is named and no data protection officer is appointed
Pricing & Plans
Cluely offers a permanent free plan, called Starter, which requires no credit card. The cheapest paid entry point is the Pro plan at USD 11.99 per month billed annually, or USD 19.99 per month without commitment. The Pro + Undetectability plan is charged at USD 149.99 per month. Payments are made in US dollars and handled by Stripe. Enterprise pricing is not published.
- limited AI responses
- limited meeting notetaking
- custom instructions and up to 3 uploaded files
- and the ability to ask AI about past meetings
- the comparison pages state a 3-meeting allowance
- unlimited AI responses
- unlimited meeting notetaking
- unlimited access to the latest AI models
- priority support
- unlimited files and customisation
- Pro + Undetectability — $149.99 per month — everything in Pro
- plus complete invisibility to meeting screen-sharing software
- Enterprise — price not published
- governed by a separate agreement
- the terms specify that Cluely does not train any AI model on Enterprise customer data
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Cluely handles your data.
GDPR overview
Cluely never claims GDPR compliance anywhere on the site, an absence worth noting in itself. What the privacy policy of 10 June 2025 does provide is a section for European residents setting out the legal bases relied on — consent, performance of the contract, legitimate interests and legal obligation — followed by eight data subject rights: withdrawal of consent, access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, objection and complaint to a supervisory authority. Requests go to help@cluely.com. Section 3.5 of the terms adds that the parties may enter into data processing agreements, expressly including those required under Article 28 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679. Cluely describes itself as controller in some contexts and processor in others, in which case you must approach its customer instead. No Article 27 EU representative and no data protection officer is named, and the company states it is based in and operated from the United States.
Who owns the data?
You keep ownership. Section 3.1 of the terms states that the customer retains all rights, title and interest in Customer Data, including the related intellectual property. In exchange, section 3.2 grants Cluely a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to reproduce, adapt, transmit and otherwise use that data to operate and improve the service, address security issues, act on your instructions and meet legal obligations. Authorised sub-processors may act on Cluely's behalf, and the company remains responsible for them. Everything on the other side of the line — the platform, the software, usage data and aggregated de-identified data sets — belongs exclusively to Cluely.
Reuse rights
Nothing in the terms requires you to ask permission before reusing your own notes, transcripts or the answers the assistant produces, and no restriction is placed on what you do with them commercially. The counterpart is that you carry the risk: section 4.3 delivers all Output "as is" and "with all faults", disclaims any warranty as to accuracy, completeness or suitability, and makes every decision taken in reliance on it your own. Section 9.2 goes further and has you indemnify Cluely against third-party claims arising from your use of the Output. The limits are on the service, not the content: section 4.1 forbids reselling or redistributing the platform, acting as a service bureau, scraping it, and granting access to a direct competitor of Cluely. Use is otherwise confined to lawful internal business purposes, and your rights end the day the agreement does.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Cluely states that it is based in the United States and that the services are controlled and operated from there. The privacy policy is explicit that personal information may be stored and processed in any country where the company has facilities or engages service providers, including the United States, and that using the service means consenting to those transfers — with the acknowledgement that courts and authorities in those countries may in some circumstances gain access. Sub-processor categories are described but never named: cloud and database services, hosting and communications, payment processing, advertising, support, security and fraud prevention, analytics and audio transcription providers. Only Stripe, the payment processor, is identified. No hosting provider is named anywhere on the site, and the trust centre is hosted by a third party. The domain resolves to a Cloudflare anycast node, which is a network point of presence rather than a storage location. Stated safeguards are encryption, firewalls and SSL, with end-to-end encryption available on request by email.
Where Cluely works
Country-level availability.
Not available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Cluely.
- On Free and Pro, meeting transcripts, screenshots and recordings may feed Cluely's model training by default, and the site's own documents disagree on this point
- What you capture includes other people's voices; they never consented to Cluely being in the room, and compliance with recording-consent laws is left entirely to you
- Using it in a job interview, an exam or a negotiation carries a real disciplinary, contractual or reputational risk — one the brand itself advertises rather than hides
- Being fed answers live can quietly erode preparation and genuine command of a subject, which is the cost of leaning on the tool rather than learning from it
- The terms warn that Output can be inaccurate or inappropriate and carry no warranty; repeating an answer on a live call without checking it is a risk you own
- Invisibility can fail: Cluely documents app-support limitations, and detection by screen-sharing software is explicitly excluded from refunds
- Subscriptions renew automatically with 30 days' notice required to stop them, and fees are non-refundable outside the narrow 24-hour window
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Straightforward. You install a desktop binary — a .dmg on macOS 10.15 or later, an .exe on Windows 11 — create an account by email or through Google or GitHub, and start a meeting; the site claims setup takes under a minute. Nothing has to be configured inside Zoom, Teams or Meet, since Cluely captures system audio rather than integrating per application. The one step the site glosses over is granting the operating system permissions for audio and screen capture, which desktop assistants of this kind require. A help centre with dedicated getting-started and troubleshooting collections covers the rest.
Deployment
Apps stores
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Cluely
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Cluely.
Frequently asked questions
How is Cluely different from a normal AI notetaker?
Does Cluely join my meetings as a bot?
Is there a free version?
What does Cluely cost?
Which devices and platforms are supported?
Is my meeting data used to train the AI models?
What languages does it handle?
Can I get a refund?
Is there a minimum age or a support contact?
Should you pick Cluely?
Cluely occupies a genuinely distinct position: where the rest of the category delivers a transcript once the meeting is over, it aims to be useful while the conversation is still running. The no-bot architecture is the technical foundation of that promise and a real convenience — nothing to install on the other side, nothing in the participant list, no per-app integration — and it is well executed, with a free plan substantial enough to test on real calls and a paid entry point at $11.99 per month.
Two reservations deserve a decision before adoption, not after. The first is contractual: on the Free and Pro plans the terms allow Cluely and its sub-processors to train their models on customer data, while the privacy policy published on the same day states the opposite. Since what passes through the tool is meeting audio, transcripts and screenshots — often involving people who never agreed to Cluely being there — that ambiguity is not a detail, and only the Enterprise tier resolves it contractually. The second is a matter of judgement: the product is explicitly marketed on staying undetectable, in interviews and exams as much as in meetings, and the terms leave recording-consent laws and internal rules entirely to the user.
Practical limits round out the picture: no Android app, no web version, Windows 11 required, a 24-hour refund window that requires video evidence, and no security certification displayed on the site. The company is young, well funded and heavily exposed in the press, and its own published revenue figures have been publicly disavowed by its CEO.
For a salesperson, recruiter or consultant who has weighed those points, Cluely does something no notetaker does. For a regulated environment, or for confidential client material on anything below Enterprise, the case is much harder to make.
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