Control vs Interview Solver
Interview Solver is the competitor most like Control: a stealth desktop app with global hotkeys, live coding help, and even a phone companion. Its smallest paid unit is $59 for a month. Control's is $12 for a day.
$12
Control's smallest unit — a covered day
$59
Interview Solver's smallest unit — a month
$39
Control monthly
$149
Interview Solver's quarterly plan
The short version
Interview Solver deserves respect: it's a desktop app that hides from screen share, drives by global hotkey, solves from your shared screen or highlighted text, ships system-design diagrams, and offers a phone companion mode — the same architecture conclusions Control reached. The comparison therefore comes down to terms. Interview Solver sells a $59 month or a $149 quarter; there is nothing sized to an interview. Control sells the same architecture by the day ($12), the loop ($19), or the month ($39 — twenty dollars under their monthly). Same play, smaller bets.
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.
Free
A taste of the copilot; limits aren't published.
$0
Monthly
Per month. Cancel anytime from the billing portal.
$59
Interview Cycle
Every 3 months (~$50/month).
$149
Features
Capability
Control
Interview Solver
Invisible to screen share
Invisible to Zoom (6.16 and earlier) and browser-based screen recording, on every pass including the $12 day pass.
Invisible operation during screen sharing is a core claim.
Hidden from system process checks
Doesn't appear in Activity Monitor while running, so a system-level process check stays clean.
Stealth claims cover screen share; process hiding isn't advertised.
Live voice transcription
Real-time transcription of the interviewer on every pass — questions are picked up and answered automatically, before you ask.
Voice input is part of the companion workflow.
Solve from what's on screen
The problem on your screen is captured and sent to the AI automatically — no retyping, no trigger to remember.
Screen analysis plus a highlight-to-explain flow; trained on the LeetCode set.
Capability
Control
Interview Solver
Phone remote control
Phone connects through secure servers: trigger screenshots, read responses, type remotely — the interview machine stays untouched.
Companion mode triggers screenshots, voice, and prompts from your phone — a real equivalent.
Focus-free global hotkeys
Global hotkeys work regardless of window focus and aren't seen as input by the browser.
Global-hotkey driven, same as Control.
Movable in-round overlay
Overlay moves with Ctrl + arrow keys, so your eyes stay near the code you're writing.
Runs silently in the background with an on-call overlay.
System-design round support
Voice + screenshots carry design rounds; answers track the conversation.
Ships flowchart and system-design diagrams — a nice specific touch.
Capability
Control
Interview Solver
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.
No credit meter advertised on paid plans.
Pay for days instead of months
$12 for 24 hours, $19 for 72 hours. One-time purchases that can't renew themselves.
$59/month or $149/quarter. The quarter is named "Interview Cycle" — the day isn't for sale.
Capability
Control
Interview Solver
Free tier runs the real product
The trial runs the real product — actual AI, actual voice — before any charge.
Free tier exists, though its limits aren't published anywhere.
Low-risk first purchase
Sales are final, but the most a first test can cost after the free trial is $12.
First paid step is $59 — five days of Control day passes.
In practice
Desktop app. Global hotkeys. Overlay hidden from screen share. Screenshot-driven solving. A phone in the loop. Interview Solver and Control converged on the same answers because the live-interview problem has a right shape, and both teams found it. On raw capability rows, this is the closest matchup on this site — including companion mode, a genuine analogue to Control's phone remote.
Which is exactly why the purchase terms become the decision. Feature parity makes price structure the differentiator, and the structures aren't close.
Interview Solver's smallest paid unit is a $59 month; its own branding admits interviews come in cycles — the quarterly plan is literally named "Interview Cycle" — yet nothing on the price list is smaller than 30 days. One interview next Tuesday costs $59. Control prices the actual shapes: $12 for the day, $19 for the loop, $39 for the month. Even the straight monthly-versus-monthly comparison reads $39 against $59 for a near-identical feature set.
The free tiers differ the same way: Control publishes exactly what the trial includes (5 messages, 2 minutes of voice); Interview Solver's free limits aren't published, so you find the wall by hitting it.
Past the architecture, the differences are at the edges. Interview Solver leans into coding specificity: LeetCode-trained answers, highlight-to-explain, rendered system-design diagrams. Control leans into the rest of the interview: live transcription that carries behavioral and design conversations, context that persists across a multi-round day, process-level quiet on top of screen-share invisibility.
If your interviews are exclusively LeetCode, Interview Solver's specificity is worth weighing against the price gap. If the loop includes humans asking follow-ups, the transcription-first design is the one that covers the whole day.
Cost
The cheapest option on each side that fully covers the scenario — invisibility on, enough sessions to finish.
Scenario
Control
Interview Solver
One interview tomorrow
A single covered session with invisibility on.
$12
$59
A month is the smallest unit sold.
One onsite loop
Four or five rounds inside a week.
$19
$59
Same monthly minimum.
Active three-month search
Coverage across a full search cycle.
$117
$149
The quarterly plan closes the gap — this one's nearly a draw.
Track record
The other side
Fine print
Common questions
Free: $0 — A taste of the copilot; limits aren't published. Monthly: $59 — Per month. Cancel anytime from the billing portal. Interview Cycle: $149 — Every 3 months (~$50/month). 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.
Yes, with caveats. Invisible operation during screen sharing is a core claim. 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.
Download Control and run the included free messages and voice minutes against your own setup before spending anything.