Control vs Cluely
Cluely is a meeting copilot with an interview mode attached. Control is built for interviews — and includes screen-share invisibility on a $12 day pass instead of a separate $149.99 monthly tier.
$12
Control day pass, every feature included
$149.99
Cluely's monthly invisibility tier
12.5×
the price gap for one covered interview
5–10s
response latency independent tests report, vs the 300ms claim
The short version
Cluely's Pro plan looks affordable at $19.99 a month, but it does not include the capability this category exists for: staying invisible during screen share. That lives in a separate tier at $149.99 a month — or $44.99 a month if you commit to a full year, roughly $540 charged up front. And the product underneath is a meeting notetaker first: built to summarize calls and suggest replies, with interviews as one use case among many. Control ships invisibility, live voice, screenshot solving, and a phone remote on every pass it sells. The cheapest covered interview on Cluely costs $149.99. On Control it costs $12.
Pricing
Free trial
5 messages and 2 minutes of voice. No card.
$0
Day pass
24 hours. Every feature. One-time purchase.
$12
Sprint pass
72 hours. Built for onsite loops.
$19
Monthly
Full access all month. Cancel anytime.
$39
Every pass includes every feature. The passes only change how long you have it.
Starter (free)
Limited responses. A demo, not interview coverage.
$0
Pro
Per month. Unlimited responses — but no screen-share invisibility.
$19.99
Pro + Undetectability
Per month. The tier that actually hides.
$149.99
Undetectability, annual
Per month, full year (~$540) committed up front.
$44.99
Features
Capability
Control
Cluely
Invisible to screen share at base paid price
Invisible to Zoom (6.16 and earlier) and browser-based screen recording, on every pass including the $12 day pass.
Invisibility is a separate product at $149.99/month. Pro at $19.99 shows up in shares.
Hidden from system process checks
Doesn't appear in Activity Monitor while running, so a system-level process check stays clean.
No equivalent claim. Cluely's visibility story is about screen share, not process lists.
Live voice transcription
Real-time transcription of the interviewer on every pass — questions are picked up and answered automatically, before you ask.
Core strength — 12+ languages, claims 95% accuracy and 300ms responses (see the record below).
Screenshot-to-answer for coding problems
The problem on your screen is captured and sent to the AI automatically — no retyping, no trigger to remember.
"Ask about your screen" exists, but tuned for meetings — not LeetCode-style extraction.
Capability
Control
Cluely
Phone remote control
Phone connects through secure servers: trigger screenshots, read responses, type remotely — the interview machine stays untouched.
Mobile app exists for notes, not for driving the desktop session.
Focus-free global hotkeys
Global hotkeys work regardless of window focus and aren't seen as input by the browser.
Cmd/Ctrl + Enter assist plus custom keybinds on Pro.
Movable in-round overlay
Overlay moves with Ctrl + arrow keys, so your eyes stay near the code you're writing.
Window is movable; positioning is part of its undetectability pitch.
Built for interviews first
Interview and assessment workflows are the whole product, not a mode.
A meeting copilot — notes, recaps, "what should I say" — with interviews as one use case.
Capability
Control
Cluely
Unmetered while you have access
No credits, session counts, or clocks while a pass is active. A 6-hour final loop costs the same as a phone screen.
Paid tiers are unlimited — metering isn't the catch here; the tier split is.
Pay for days instead of months
$12 for 24 hours, $19 for 72 hours. One-time purchases that can't renew themselves.
Monthly and annual only. One covered interview costs a full month.
Capability
Control
Cluely
Free tier runs the real product
The trial runs the real product — actual AI, actual voice — before any charge.
Starter limits responses — enough to see the interface, not to cover a round.
Public, unambiguous pricing
Every price is on the public pricing page. What you see is what checkout charges.
Prices are public; the catch is which tier carries the feature you want.
In practice
Cluely's product DNA is meetings: automatic notes, recaps, follow-up suggestions, "what should I say" prompts for sales calls. That's what the engineering serves, and it shows in the interview experience — the assistant is optimized to summarize a conversation, not to extract a LeetCode problem from a shared editor and return working code under time pressure.
Control is built in the other direction. Voice transcription exists to catch the interviewer's question, screenshot capture exists to feed the exact problem to the model, and the overlay exists to put the answer next to where you're typing. There is no meetings product underneath competing for the roadmap.
Cluely advertises 300ms responses and 95% transcription accuracy. Independent tests in 2026 report 5–10 second response times under real conditions, and reviewers describe transcription that degrades badly on accented or technical speech. In a meeting, a slow suggestion is a shrug; in a live coding round, ten seconds of silence while you wait for a hint is the moment the interviewer notices.
Everything routes through Cluely's cloud, so their server load and your network both sit between the question and the answer. Control's pipeline is built around the live round: streamed transcription, automatic capture, and answers rendered in a local overlay the moment they arrive.
Cluely marketed itself into being the most recognizable name in this category — which is why recruiter-side tooling now ships Cluely-specific detection, and why interviewers who know one product in this space know this one. The $149.99 tier hides the window from screen share; it doesn't hide the category's most famous brand from an interviewer's checklist.
Control's posture is quieter on every layer: invisible in the shared window (Zoom 6.16 and earlier, and browser-based recorders), absent from Activity Monitor during system checks, hotkeys the browser can't see, and a phone remote so the interview machine never even shows unusual input. Staying unremarkable is the product.
Cost
The cheapest option on each side that fully covers the scenario — invisibility on, enough sessions to finish.
Scenario
Control
Cluely
One interview tomorrow
A single covered session with invisibility on.
$12
$149.99
Invisibility is sold monthly only.
One onsite loop
Four or five rounds inside a week.
$19
$149.99
Same monthly minimum.
Active three-month search
Coverage across a full search cycle.
$117
$449.97
Or $539.88 committed for a full year.
Track record
The other side
Fine print
Common questions
Starter (free): $0 — Limited responses. A demo, not interview coverage. Pro: $19.99 — Per month. Unlimited responses — but no screen-share invisibility. Pro + Undetectability: $149.99 — Per month. The tier that actually hides. Undetectability, annual: $44.99 — Per month, full year (~$540) committed up front. Control, by comparison, is $12 for a 24-hour day pass, $19 for a 72-hour sprint pass, or $39 a month — with every feature included on every pass.
Not reliably. Invisibility is a separate product at $149.99/month. Pro at $19.99 shows up in shares. Control is invisible to Zoom (6.16 and earlier) and browser-based screen recording on every pass, including the $12 day pass, and doesn't appear in Activity Monitor while running.
Yes. Control covers a full interview day for $12, an onsite loop week for $19, or a month for $39 — unmetered, with screen-share invisibility, automatic question capture, live voice transcription, and a phone remote included at every price. There's also a free trial (5 messages and 2 minutes of voice) with no card required.
Control is built specifically for live interviews and assessments: it listens to the interviewer in real time, captures the problem on your screen automatically, and renders answers in an overlay that screen sharing doesn't see — controllable from your phone so the interview machine stays untouched. Coverage starts at $12 for 24 hours.
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Read the comparisonDownload Control and run the included free messages and voice minutes against your own setup before spending anything.