Hedy AI Alternatives: A Meeting Coach and an Interview Copilot Are Not the Same Product

Hedy AI runs on macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, a web app at web.hedy.ai, and Apple Watch. That device list tells you almost everything about what it’s for. It’s a general conversation coach built to follow you between a boardroom pitch, a lecture, a medical appointment and a sales call, and job interviews are one entry on a list of about eight use cases it names. Craqly is narrower and heavier: two desktop platforms, five session modes, and OS-level screen-capture exclusion as a first-class feature.

If you landed here searching for a Hedy alternative for interviews specifically, the comparison is less lopsided than most vendor posts would tell you, and Hedy wins several rounds outright.

Does Hedy AI target job interviews?

Yes, but as one use case among many rather than the product’s centre of gravity. Hedy’s site names business meetings, boardroom pitches, job interviews and recruiting, coaching sessions, classes and lectures, journalist interviews, medical appointments, sales calls, and international team collaboration. There’s a job-seeker section promising interview prep, real-time coaching during calls, and post-call review of what you said.

So framing Hedy as purely a meeting notetaker would be wrong. But the design pressure on a tool that also has to work on an Apple Watch is different from the design pressure on a tool built to sit invisibly over a shared screen. Those are different products aimed at overlapping moments.

Hedy costs less than Craqly, and it isn’t close

From Hedy’s pricing page (checked 22 July 2026): the free plan gives up to 5 hours per month, conversations in 30+ languages, summaries and meeting notes, and real-time AI insights for the first 30 minutes of each session. Pro is $12.99/month billed monthly, or $99.99/year, and removes limits on meeting length and session count. There’s also a Lifetime plan at $299 as a one-time payment.

Craqly, from the live pricing page on 22 July 2026: Starter $0 with 20 credits a month, Pro $19/mo with 180 credits, Pro Max $39/mo with 420, Ultra $69/mo with 780. One credit is one minute. Yearly billing saves 20%.

Hedy’s free tier alone gives you 5 hours a month. Craqly’s gives you 20 minutes. Hedy’s Pro removes the meter entirely for $12.99. Craqly’s Pro gives you 3 hours for $19. On raw minutes per dollar this isn’t a contest, and if what you need is a lot of transcription and summarisation across long meetings, Hedy is the better buy and I’d say so to anyone who asked.

What Craqly’s credits buy instead is a different kind of session: mode-specific prompting for interview, sales, pitch, meeting notes and recruiting, with resume and job-description context loaded in, plus the window behavior described below. Whether that’s worth the premium depends entirely on whether you need the window behavior.

The on-device processing gap

This is the round Craqly loses most clearly, and it’s worth spelling out rather than burying.

Hedy ships Local AI Processing, which runs summarisation, note-taking, chat replies, in-session suggestions and feedback on your own device, keeping transcript data off their servers. It requires an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later), a Windows machine with a Vulkan-capable GPU, an iPhone 15 Pro or newer, or an iPad with an M-series or A17 Pro chip. Android and web support are listed as roadmap items, not shipped. Their own documentation is honest about the trade: responses are slower than cloud, and the on-device models are smaller. Speech recognition can still route to cloud providers such as Deepgram or OpenAI if you leave it there.

Craqly has nothing equivalent. Audio is captured locally on your machine and the app never joins the call as a participant, so no bot appears in the meeting, but the language model work happens server-side. For a conversation covered by a legal privilege or a strict data policy, Hedy’s local mode is the stronger answer and I don’t have a counterargument.

Side-by-side

All Hedy figures checked 22 July 2026 on their own pricing page.

What Craqly does that Hedy doesn’t appear to

Craqly’s window calls Electron’s setContentProtection, which on Windows becomes SetWindowDisplayAffinity with WDA_EXCLUDEFROMCAPTURE (Windows 10 version 2004 and later; older builds degrade to WDA_MONITOR and show a black rectangle instead), and on macOS sets the window’s sharingType to NSWindowSharingNone. That’s the mechanism behind stealth mode, and it’s on every Craqly plan including the free one.

I searched Hedy’s public help centre and product pages and found no documented screen-capture exclusion. That’s not proof it lacks one. It’s an absence of documentation, and I could be wrong. But if hiding a window from a screen share is your requirement, a vendor that doesn’t document the behavior is a vendor you’d have to test blind.

Worth adding the honest caveat that applies to Craqly too. Electron’s docs state that “newer Mac applications using ScreenCaptureKit may still capture your window despite this setting enabled,” and Microsoft’s page warns that unlike a security feature or DRM, “there is no guarantee” that display affinity protects window content. OS updates change capture behavior. Test your own build with your own meeting client rather than trusting a feature list.

Who should pick Hedy AI

Pick Hedy if your problem is conversations in general rather than interviews in particular. It’s cheaper, it covers more devices, its free tier is fifteen times more generous in minutes, and it has an on-device processing mode Craqly can’t match. If you’re a student capturing lectures, a consultant across back-to-back client calls, a journalist recording interviews you’re conducting, or anyone whose sessions have to stay on their own hardware for policy reasons, Hedy is the better tool and it isn’t a close call.

Pick it too if you want a phone or Apple Watch in the loop. Craqly has no mobile client at all, and Hedy’s mobile builds work when you’re not at a desk (with the caveat, from their own guidance, that mobile capture uses the device microphone and can’t pull audio from another app on the same phone).

Pick Craqly if you need a native desktop overlay with documented OS-level screen-capture exclusion, if you want mode-specific prompting tuned separately for interview, sales, pitch, meeting notes and recruiting rather than one general coach, or if you want a botless meeting recorder that never shows up in the participant list. Our notes on botless meeting capture and on how AI meeting notes actually get produced go into that architecture, and our roundup of note-taking apps covers the wider field.

And if you came here for interviews specifically, neither of these two is the obvious answer. Disclosure first: the same team that builds Craqly also builds LastRoundAI, which is organised around the job search rather than around conversations. Auto-apply, a resume builder with ATS scoring, AI voice mock interviews, company research, and a live copilot that also runs on a phone. Craqly has none of that, and neither does Hedy. So the short version: LastRoundAI if you’re still applying and rehearsing, Hedy if you want cheap unlimited capture across every kind of conversation, Craqly if you want a documented screen-capture exclusion on a desktop overlay. Worth knowing before you sign up that LastRoundAI’s free plan doesn’t include its live copilot, where Craqly’s free tier does.

The interview caveat, plainly

If you’re considering either tool for a live job interview, know that most employers prohibit undisclosed AI assistance and many hiring managers would disqualify a candidate for using it. Hedy’s own framing leans toward coaching and review rather than covert answer generation, which is arguably the more defensible posture. Craqly’s stealth mode makes the covert use technically possible, and that doesn’t make it permitted. Practice sessions, interviews you’re running as the interviewer, disclosed sales calls, and accessibility needs are where either tool sits on solid ground.

FAQ

Is Hedy AI built for job interviews?

Partly. Hedy names job interviews and recruiting among roughly eight use cases alongside meetings, lectures, sales calls and medical appointments, and offers a job-seeker section with prep and real-time coaching. It is a general conversation coach rather than a dedicated interview copilot.

How much does Hedy AI cost?

Checked 22 July 2026 on Hedy’s own pricing page: a free plan with up to 5 hours per month, Pro at $12.99 per month or $99.99 per year with unlimited meeting length and sessions, and a Lifetime plan at $299 as a one-time payment.

Does Hedy hide from screen sharing?

No screen-capture exclusion is documented in Hedy’s public help centre or product pages, which is not the same as confirming it lacks one. Craqly documents its mechanism explicitly through Electron’s setContentProtection, mapping to Windows and macOS content-protection APIs.

Which tool keeps my data on my own device?

Hedy. Its Local AI Processing mode runs summaries, notes and suggestions on-device on Apple Silicon Macs, Vulkan-capable Windows GPUs, iPhone 15 Pro and newer, and M-series or A17 Pro iPads. Craqly captures audio locally but runs model inference server-side.

Does Craqly work on iPhone or Android?

No. Craqly is a native desktop application for macOS and Windows only, because its system-audio capture and screen-capture exclusion depend on desktop OS APIs. Hedy covers iOS, Android, web and Apple Watch in addition to both desktop platforms.