Cluely charges $149.99 per month just to hide its own AI overlay from screen sharing. That is not a typo. One hundred and fifty dollars. Every month. For the privilege of making a single floating window invisible to Zoom and Teams. And if you want the annual discount, it is still $539.88 upfront — for a tool that only hides one window, had a data breach exposing 83,000 users, and fabricates answers with a 5-to-10-second delay.
This is not a comparison between two similar tools. This is a comparison between a narrow interview overlay and a comprehensive privacy architecture. Cluely is built to hide one thing: its own AI-generated answer box. NoCapture is built to hide everything: every app, every window, every widget, every dialog, every notification, every title, every metadata leak — across your entire workstation, across every platform, for free.
If you are looking at Cluely's pricing page and wondering whether there is a better way to stay invisible during screen sharing, the answer is yes. And the better way does not cost $150 a month. It costs nothing.
What Cluely Actually Does
Cluely is a real-time AI interview assistant. It listens to your call, transcribes the audio, feeds it to a large language model, and displays AI-generated answers in a floating overlay window. The overlay is rendered through low-level GPU hooks — DirectX on Windows, Metal on macOS — that bypass the virtual framebuffer that screen sharing software captures. Cluely uses DirectX...to write its overlay directly to the GPU's physical display output
That is the entire product. One overlay. One window. One floating box of AI text. And the "undetectability" feature — the only reason most users consider Cluely — is paywalled behind the $149.99/month Pro + Undetectability tier. The $19.99 Pro plan does not include it. The free plan does not include it. If you want the overlay to be invisible during screen sharing, you pay seven and a half times the base price.
But here is what Cluely does not do. It does not hide your Slack. It does not hide your password manager. It does not hide your browser tabs. It does not hide your terminal. It does not hide your desktop folders. It does not hide your notifications. It does not mask your window titles. It does not remove your apps from Alt-Tab or the taskbar. It does not protect your second monitor. It does not cloak your floating widgets. It does not handle your 32-bit legacy tools. It does not touch your Qt applications.
Cluely hides Cluely. Nothing else.
What NoCapture Does
NoCapture hides everything. And the undetectability that Cluely charges $150 a month for is the baseline — included in the free tier, applied to every window automatically, with no upsell and no tier gating.
When you install NoCapture, you get:
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Capture exclusion for every window type. Qt QML, 32-bit WOW64, .NET WinForms, Electron, WPF, UWP, MAUI, Avalonia, floating widgets, tool windows, popups, dialogs, context menus, splash screens, system tray notifications, transparent overlays, layered windows, and hardware-accelerated surfaces. If the compositor renders it, NoCapture can cloak it.
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Title masking for every app. Not just the one overlay window — every window title on your system is sanitized in the OS window manager. "Zoom — Q3 Financial Review" becomes "Zoom." "Slack — #competitor-intel" becomes "Slack." AI scrapers, monitoring tools, and metadata harvesters see nothing useful.
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Alt-Tab and taskbar skipping. Protected windows are removed from enumeration entirely. When you switch apps, only unprotected windows appear in the switcher. When someone looks at your taskbar, they see only what you intend to share.
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Notifications shielding. Alerts from protected apps are intercepted and held during cloaking. Not system-wide Do Not Disturb — surgical suppression that blocks only what you have chosen to protect.
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Pin on top. Your protected notes, reference documents, and private chat windows remain visible and interactive on your local display while being completely absent from the capture stream.
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Multi-monitor support. Every connected display is a potential broadcast surface, and every display is protected by default. No upsell. No tier gating.
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Cross-platform coverage. Windows, macOS, and Linux — identical protection behavior on all three. The same routine. The same hotkey. The same capture API coverage.
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Live preview pane. See exactly what the capture stream sees before you click "Share." Not a mockup. The actual frame that Zoom, Teams, or OBS will broadcast.
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Smart routines. Auto-activate protection based on calendar events, app launches, time of day, or learned behavior patterns. Zero-click. Zero-thought. Zero configuration after setup.
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Featherweight performance. Under 1% CPU. Under 20 MB RAM. No hooks. No injection. No kernel drivers. Native OS APIs only.
All of this is free. The undetectability that Cluely charges $150 a month for is not a premium feature in NoCapture. It is the foundation.
The Scope Gap: One Window vs. Every Window
The most important difference between Cluely and NoCapture is scope. Cluely is a single-purpose tool that solves one problem for one user profile: job candidates who want to hide an AI cheating overlay during interviews. NoCapture is a general-purpose privacy architecture that solves screen sharing privacy for every professional who shares their screen.
Consider a typical consultant's workstation during a client call. They are running:
- A browser with twelve tabs, three of which contain competitor research
- A password manager with client credentials
- Slack with internal channels and DM threads
- A spreadsheet with client financials
- A PDF with confidential strategy documents
- A terminal with internal repo names
- A floating note-taking widget
- A second monitor with reference materials
- A calendar with sensitive meeting titles
- A system tray with VPN and security tool indicators
Cluely hides none of these. It hides its own overlay. If the consultant is using Cluely to cheat on an interview, the overlay is invisible. But their password manager is fully visible. Their Slack is fully visible. Their spreadsheet is fully visible. Their terminal is fully visible. Their second monitor is fully visible. Every notification that arrives during the call is fully visible.
NoCapture hides all of them. Every app. Every window. Every widget. Every notification. Every title. Every monitor. The consultant shares their screen with absolute confidence because the capture stream contains only what they intend to share — and nothing else.
This is not a feature gap. It is a category gap. Cluely is an interview cheating tool with a screen-share evasion feature. NoCapture is a professional privacy tool with comprehensive window cloaking.
The Pricing Reality
Cluely's pricing structure is deliberately deceptive. The headline is $19.99/month for Pro. The reality is $149.99/month for the only plan that includes the feature most users actually need. the feature most users pay for...is only available on the $149.99/month plan.
The annual plan drops the monthly rate to $44.99 — but that requires a $539.88 upfront commitment with a 24-hour refund window and a documented data breach on record. upfront for interview prep is a real number Users report being charged approximately $500 without a confirmation screen when upgrading between tiers, and refunds require video proof of a malfunction within 24 hours. Several users report being charged approximately $500 without a confirmation screen...refund eligibility to 24 hours after the charge
NoCapture's pricing is transparent. The free tier includes full single-device protection across all features — capture exclusion, title masking, Alt-Tab skipping, taskbar hiding, notifications shielding, pin on top, multi-monitor support, smart routines, live preview, and cross-platform coverage. Team plans add centralized deployment and per-role configurations at a per-seat price. There is no $150 paywall for undetectability. There is no tier that gates the core feature. Undetectability is not an upsell. It is the product.
The Security Reality
In mid-2025, hackers exposed the data of over 83,000 Cluely users — including personal information, interview transcripts, and screenshots — because the company left admin credentials in a public GitHub repository. 83,000+ users; personal data, interview transcripts, screenshots exposed The exploit required zero sophistication. The password was just sitting there.
When a security researcher disclosed an additional vulnerability — an Electron postMessage flaw allowing any website to capture screenshots silently — Cluely responded with DMCA takedown notices rather than patches. When Cable disclosed the findings responsibly, Cluely responded with DMCA takedown notices rather than patches
The SOC 2 certification Cluely cites was issued by Delve, a compliance platform expelled from Y Combinator in April 2026 over alleged fabricated audit reports. The SOC 2 certification...was issued by Delve, a compliance platform that was expelled from Y Combinator in April 2026 over alleged fabricated audit reports
NoCapture has no tracking bloatware. No analytics. No behavior logging. No cloud processing of your screen data. No third-party subprocessors routing your audio and screenshots through fifteen vendors.Cluely routes audio, transcripts, screenshots, account data, and device information through 15 named third-party vendors The only network activity is session management for multi-device team plans. Your screen data never leaves your machine. Not for processing. Not for analysis. Not for anything.
The Detection Reality
Cluely markets itself as "undetectable." It is not. The overlay is invisible to screen sharing because it renders through GPU hooks — but the Cluely process itself is fully visible to OS-level monitoring. Zero Assist detects the Cluely executable in under 500 milliseconds by scanning the running process list, regardless of how the overlay is rendered. Zero Assist's agent monitors the OS process list continuously...Cluely appears as a named process — it cannot hide at this layer
Behavioral detection is equally effective. Cluely's 3-to-5-second processing pipeline creates a consistent "lag loop" — a visible pause after every question as the candidate waits for the AI answer. Cluely must capture audio, transcribe it, send it to an LLM, receive an answer, and display it. This pipeline takes 3–5 seconds Experienced interviewers learn to spot this pattern. Eye tracking and gaze analysis tools flag candidates whose eyes drift to the same screen quadrant repeatedly.
NoCapture does not have a detection problem because NoCapture is not a cheating tool. It is a legitimate privacy tool that uses native OS APIs — WDA_EXCLUDEFROMCAPTURE, kCGWindowSharingNone, compositor-level exclusion — that are indistinguishable from normal system behavior. There is no named process to scan for. No GPU hook signature to flag. No behavioral lag loop to spot. The protection is architecturally invisible because it is architecturally native.
The Use Case Reality
Cluely is built for one use case: hiding an AI overlay during a job interview. That is it. If you are not a job candidate using AI to generate interview answers, Cluely has nothing to offer you.
NoCapture is built for every use case where screen sharing privacy matters:
- Consultants presenting to clients
- Streamers broadcasting to audiences
- Developers pair programming
- Executives in board meetings
- Healthcare workers in telehealth sessions
- Financial professionals in compliance calls
- Legal professionals protecting attorney-client privilege
- Remote workers defending against employee monitoring
- Anyone who shares their screen professionally and cannot afford a leak
Cluely's scope is one window. NoCapture's scope is your entire workstation.
Who Should Use Cluely
If you are a job candidate who wants to use AI-generated answers during live interviews, and you are willing to pay $150 a month for the privilege, and you accept the risk of detection through process scanning and behavioral analysis, and you trust a company with a documented data breach and fabricated audit reports — then Cluely is the tool for that specific, narrow use case.
Who Should Use NoCapture
You should use NoCapture if you are a professional who shares your screen daily and needs comprehensive privacy — not just for one overlay, but for every app, every window, every widget, and every metadata leak on your system. If you believe that undetectability should be a baseline feature, not a $150 premium. If you believe that privacy tools should not have data breaches. If you believe that your screen data should never leave your machine. If you believe that protection should cover Qt apps, 32-bit legacy tools, WinForms dashboards, floating widgets, and every other window type — not just the one window the tool vendor wants to hide.
The Bottom Line
Cluely charges $149.99 per month to hide one window — its own AI overlay — while leaving every other app on your PC fully exposed to capture, metadata harvesting, and AI scraping. NoCapture hides every window for free while protecting your titles, your enumerations, your notifications, your multi-monitor setup, and your cross-platform workflow.
The choice is not between two similar tools at different price points. The choice is between a narrow interview cheat overlay and a comprehensive privacy architecture. Between a $150 monthly fee for one hidden window and a free tool that hides them all. Between a vendor that leaked 83,000 user records and a tool that processes everything locally.
Your screen is a broadcast surface. Your protection should cover all of it — not just the one window you paid extra to hide.
NoCapture is the only app hider that offers comprehensive undetectability for free — covering every app, every window type, every monitor, and every platform. No $150 paywall. No data breaches. No third-party subprocessors. Just native OS-level window cloaking that protects your entire workstation, not one overlay. Download free today.
