Honest comparison
Skilly vs Cluely
Both are AI tools that see what is on your screen. They are built for very different jobs. Skilly teaches you how to use an app. Cluely positions itself as an undetectable assistant for live calls, sales pitches, and interviews. Here is the breakdown without the marketing gloss.
You are learning a new app (Blender, Figma, Xcode, Photoshop) and you want a tutor that answers “how do I do this” out loud and moves your cursor to the exact spot. You prefer an open-source Mac-native tool that only records when you actually speak.
You want real-time help during a live call — sales pitches, interviews, negotiations — and are comfortable with its undetectable positioning (it is designed to stay invisible to meeting software and other participants). You are fine with a closed-source tool that reads your screen and audio during a session, and you need Windows support.
Feature by feature
| Feature | Skilly | Cluely |
|---|---|---|
| Primary use case | Live tutor for any app you are learning (Blender, Figma, Xcode…) | Real-time assistant during live meetings, calls, sales pitches, and interviews — marketed as "undetectable" |
| Trigger | Voice-gated: screen is captured only when you press push-to-talk or speak in Live Tutor mode | Always-on during a session — continuously listens + reads your screen |
| Platform | Native macOS menu bar app (14.0+) | macOS + Windows desktop apps |
| How it guides | Moves your cursor to the exact UI element + live transcript beside it | Shows AI-generated prompts and answers in an overlay window |
| Skills / curriculum | Pluggable Markdown curriculum per app — Blender, Figma, Xcode, Photoshop, After Effects, VS Code | No per-app curriculum — general-purpose assistant |
| Language support | 20+ languages auto-detected via OpenAI Realtime | English-primary with multilingual support |
| Model layer | Single-call OpenAI Realtime API (voice-to-voice, lower latency) | Multi-model, proprietary pipeline |
| Privacy posture | Screen capture gated by voice activity. macOS Screen Recording permission required and revokable anytime. | Continuous screen + audio access during an active session |
| Open source | Yes — Apache-2.0 (fork of farzaa/clicky, MIT) | No — proprietary |
| Pricing | 15 minutes free, then $19/month for 3 hours of tutoring | Paid tiers starting around $20/month |
Common questions
Is Skilly cheaper than Cluely?
Skilly is $19 per month after a 15-minute free trial (no credit card required). Cluely's paid tiers start around $20 per month. Skilly is also open source under Apache-2.0, which means you can run it free with your own OpenAI API key (BYOK option, in beta). Cluely is proprietary with no self-hosted option.
Can Skilly do what Cluely does in meetings?
Not really — Skilly is push-to-talk by design and only captures your screen when you actively speak, which makes it the wrong tool for continuous meeting assistance. Cluely is built specifically to run silently during a live call and surface AI prompts in an overlay. If your job is "help me during a sales pitch or interview," Cluely is the right product. If your job is "teach me how to use Blender," Skilly is the right product.
Why is Skilly open source and Cluely isn't?
Skilly is forked from Farza Majeed's open-source clicky (5,332 GitHub stars, MIT license) and inherits its open-source ethos under Apache-2.0. The full source is at github.com/tryskilly/skilly. You can audit the screen-capture code, the OpenAI Realtime call, and the privacy guarantees yourself. Cluely is proprietary. The "undetectable" positioning is harder to verify without source access.
Does Skilly work on Windows like Cluely?
Not yet. Skilly is currently macOS-only (requires macOS 14.2 or newer) because it's built natively in Swift on the ScreenCaptureKit framework. A Windows port is in development on a separate branch. If you need a screen-aware AI tool today on Windows, Cluely is the better fit. If you can wait or you're on Mac, Skilly is open source and 5 free skill curricula ship with it (Blender, Figma, After Effects, DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro).
How do I switch from Cluely to Skilly?
Download Skilly from tryskilly.app — it's a single .dmg, ~30MB. Cancel your Cluely subscription separately. There's no data migration because Skilly doesn't store anything from your sessions (audio and screenshots stream live to OpenAI and vanish after each session). The 15-minute free trial gives you enough time to confirm the cursor-pointing + voice tutor flow fits your workflow before committing to $19/month.
Want to try Skilly?
15 minutes free, no card. Apache-2.0 open source, fork of Farza's Clicky (MIT).
Download Skilly