Cluely

Cluely is just another AI chat wrapper as many others. The main differentiation is its ability to persist across calls and actively listen, while supplying recommended questions as the meeting goes on.

To explain this in a more tangible way, in comparing Cluely vs Granola (one of the AI notetakers on the market), Granola ultimately sits in the background recording the call and only presents itself when a meeting is active. It then summarizes the transcript afterward and enriches any notes taken, allowing for perfect recollection of what was said in the conversation. Cluely on the other hand makes itself an active participant in the call.

For example, say you're on a call and the topic of another software product comes up, Cluely will begin recommending information to search that will give you more context without leaving the call:

The context of Windsurf came up, so it recommends relevant questions to search

The reality here is that it's no different than using the ChatGPT desktop app, pressing "CMD + Spacebar" and just writing a question. It's just that it's more preemptive taking the entire context of the call into consideration, and most specifically what was said in that moment to suggest showing information that might be relevant.

Like most of the common AI chat apps, they too have:

• Starter Tier: Free (with limited access to lower-end AI models - GPT 4.1, GPT o4-mini)
• Pro Tier: $20/mo (with unlimited access to paid AI models - e.g. GPT 5, Claude 4)
• Enterprise Tier: $200/mo (everything in Pro + custom integrations, RBAC, post-call analytics, SSO, centralized billing, and usage analytics & reporting dashboard)

If the proactive context bit is particularly interesting to you, then it is one of the only meeting recorder and AI tools currently on the market that does this.

That said, we're going to continue using ChatGPT to build up the memory knowledge-base across our team, alongside Granola for those meetings when a bot can't join, and Motion for those that can.

It feels like the entire product is more of just a different opinionated UI, and one that will likely just be replaced by ChatGPT in time, especially with their recent "listening mode" that they've introduced.

So the bigger question I'd prompt here is: do we think Cluely is going to be around long enough for all of the historical data and memory from all the meetings to become a valuable asset for you and your team? I'm genuinely not sure. They're burning an immense amount on marketing (often "ragebait") which gets then in the news and viral on X from time-to-time, but what they are is more of a feature that could be made irrelevant overnight by ChatGPT, Granola, and others.

Definitely giving them credit though for some intuitive features and their ability to get eyeballs (in-fact the sole reason we're even writing about them), but as the founder Roy has said:

In the current phase of AI, “distribution is the product” and product quality becomes secondary to grabbing eyeballs.

His thesis is not on building the best product in the space, but rather getting Cluely to be in the minds of those considering what AI chat/meeting recorder they should use, because things that aren't yet possible (that they may market are), will be possible one day as the models get more powerful in time. And while he's sorta right and I wouldn't bet against them, it does feel like they're 1 feature away from being made irrelevant by ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini.

Cluely fits into multiple categories based on what it actually helps you do. Each category highlights a different strength and the efficiency points it earned, helping you compare tools not just by features, but by how well they actually perform.

Keep exploring the best software across categories