Cluely is genuinely good. Let me say that first, because most comparison posts skip it. The product went viral for a reason: a system-level overlay that answers questions during any meeting or screen, polished iOS app, capable general model, and marketing that landed perfectly. If you want one AI assistant for sales calls, client meetings, and the occasional job interview, Cluely makes a real case for itself.

The thing is, there is one number in the Cluely pricing page that changes the entire conversation for interview candidates: $149.99 per month for the stealth tier. Not the top tier as a bundle of nice extras. The stealth feature specifically sits behind that paywall, and only that paywall. The $19.99 Pro plan does not include it.

That is the whole story. Everything below is detail.

Side by side

The pricing structure, explained plainly

As of June 2026, Cluely has three tiers. Free Starter gives you a limited number of responses to try the product. Pro at $19.99 a month gets you unlimited responses and access to the latest models. Those two tiers run the general assistant without any screen-share exclusion.

Pro + Undetectability at $149.99 a month is the stealth tier. That is the one where Cluely uses OS and GPU-level screen capture exclusion so the overlay does not appear in Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, or Webex screen shares. There is no annual pricing option; you pay month to month.

The math for a candidate prepping for a three-month job search: $449.97 for stealth access on Cluely, versus $57 for everything on LastRound AI over the same window. That gap is not small. If you are interviewing regularly and want the overlay invisible during screen shares, the pricing structure on Cluely is the deciding factor for most people we talk to.

LastRound AI is $19 flat. Stealth is included. No separate tier, no multiplier.

General assistant vs purpose-built interview tool

This is where the products genuinely diverge, and it is worth being specific rather than just saying "interview-focused."

Cluely is a general assistant. Feed it a meeting transcript, a sales objection, a client email, an interview question: it handles all of them with the same underlying model. That is a real value proposition. The product is not trying to be an interview specialist. It is trying to be the assistant that sits behind everything you do on your screen.

LastRound AI is narrower by design. The coding mode knows which language you are in and calibrates hints accordingly, rather than giving you a generic code completion. System design questions surface diagrams alongside text. Behavioral rounds pull from a library of 7,000+ questions organized by company and role. The mock interview mode is a full practice session, not a prompt wrapper.

The tradeoff is obvious: if your use case extends outside interviews, Cluely covers more ground. If you are spending the next two months grinding for a senior engineering or product role, the narrower tool does more of the specific thing you need.

Detection in 2026: what is actually happening

Both products use OS-level or GPU-level screen capture exclusion rather than browser extensions, so the overlay does not show up in a standard screen share. That part works. But the counter-detection industry has grown fast, and it is worth naming what exists now.

Validia (which makes a tool called Truely) and Fabric both claim to detect AI overlay tools by looking at process-level behavior and GPU layer anomalies rather than just capture output. Talview now includes behavioral proctoring that flags attention patterns inconsistent with someone reading off a screen. CoderPad has published that it can detect the Cmd+Enter shortcut pattern associated with Cluely specifically. None of these catch every case, and most standard corporate interviews still use plain Zoom or Meet without any of this tooling. But if you are interviewing at a company that runs a dedicated technical assessment platform or uses a proctored coding environment, "undetectable" should be read as "not visible in screen share" rather than "undetectable in all contexts." That is true of Cluely and of LastRound AI both. We do not claim otherwise.

The detection landscape will keep shifting. Stating confidently that any tool is permanently invisible to all proctoring is not something any honest vendor should do right now.

What we hear from candidates

This is qualitative and I want to be upfront about that. It comes from candidates the LastRound AI team has worked with through the product, not from a published survey or a controlled study, and it skews toward people who were already considering or using AI interview tools. With that caveat: the pattern we hear most often is that candidates who tried Cluely first came to us specifically because of the pricing tier, not because Cluely did not work. Several mentioned they liked the Cluely interface but could not justify $149.99 for what is, for most people, a tool they use two or three times over a job search cycle. A smaller group reported preferring the interview-specific depth, particularly around system design and behavioral question framing, but that varies a lot by role. Some people do fine with a general model for interview questions. It depends on the level and the company.

When Cluely is the better pick

A few scenarios where I would point someone toward Cluely instead:

You want one assistant for everything, not just interviews. If you are using an AI overlay for sales calls, internal meetings, and client pitches in addition to occasional interviews, the general-purpose design of Cluely fits better. LastRound AI is not trying to be your meeting assistant.

You use iOS as your primary device. Cluely has a polished iOS app and that matters if your workflow is not laptop-first. LastRound AI has mobile apps on both platforms but the primary experience is desktop and web.

You are willing to pay $149.99 for a premium product and you want the Cluely UX specifically. The overlay polish, the viral product energy, the general-model breadth: these are real advantages for the right person. If budget is not the constraint and you want a general assistant that happens to work in interviews, that is a coherent choice.

If you are interview-focused and working within a normal candidate budget, the math points the other way. The Cluely alternatives page has a fuller breakdown if you want to see more options in the space.

The bottom line

Cluely built something real. The viral moment was not manufactured out of nothing; the product earns its attention. But the pricing structure puts the most interview-relevant feature, the stealth overlay, behind a $149.99 wall, and for most candidates that is not a reasonable monthly spend on a tool they use during a specific job search window.

If you want interview-specific depth and stealth included at $19, that is what LastRound AI is built for. If you want a capable general assistant across all your screen time and you have the budget, Cluely is worth considering.

Pick based on your actual use case and your actual budget, not the marketing of either one.

More on AI interview tools: run a mock interview to see the question library and feedback loop, read how the live copilot works, or see the full list of Cluely alternatives.