Free AI interview assistant: what you really get on a live call

Why live help is never free for long

A live assistant is costly to run because it listens the whole time. It turns a full call into text, sends each question to an AI model, and repeats. The speech step alone has a published price per minute.

These are list prices as of October 31, 2026. Deepgram charges $0.0077 a minute for its Nova-3 streaming speech-to-text in one language. AssemblyAI charges $0.15 an hour for Universal-Streaming in English. OpenAI charges $0.017 a minute for gpt-live-transcribe.

The next part is our own arithmetic, not a vendor figure. One hour of one voice costs about $0.46 on Deepgram, $0.15 on AssemblyAI and $1.02 on OpenAI. An interview has two voices, yours and the interviewer’s, so if a tool transcribes both, that becomes about $0.92, $0.30 and $2.04 an hour. Those sums are before any volume deal and leave out AI answers, servers and payment fees.

Most vendors do not say what they use, so treat this as the size of the bill, not one company’s real cost. CrackIt is an exception. Its FAQ names Deepgram Nova-3 for speech and Claude for answers.

So every free minute of live help costs the vendor real money, which is why free plans come as short sessions and monthly caps. In our view, practice tools can be more generous because they process short answers, not a continuous call. That is our reasoning, not a published fact.

What is free, tool by tool

The six ranked tools get their own entries below. In brief, PiriPiri AI gives 3 free sessions of 10 minutes each, ParakeetAI 10 sessions of up to 10 minutes, LockedIn AI 5-minute sessions up to 60 minutes a day, Ophy AI one 15-minute live session, Interview Hunter about 8 to 12 minutes a month, and Linkjob AI a 30-minute trial. All say no card is needed, except Linkjob AI, which does not say.

Some other tools renew their free time. CoPilot Interview gives 15 minutes of live help every day, in sessions of up to 15 minutes, on free AI models, with no card and no end date. Verve AI has a forever free plan with three 15-minute copilot sessions a month and five mock interviews, also with no card.

Two more renew on tighter terms. Javih AI gives a 15-minute pass on first launch, then 15 answers a day for three days, then 3 a day, and it needs a Google sign-in before download. Interview Fury gives free minutes every day in a shorter session, but does not say how many, and it asks for a verified email.

Two are one-time allowances. Savyly gives 15 free minutes in total, counted only while in use, with no card. InterviewAlly gives 20 credits once, also with no card, which it estimates as one interview of about 15 minutes. Javih AI, Savyly, InterviewAlly and Interview Fury price their paid plans in Indian rupees, so check each site for the amount.

Sensei AI gives free live sessions with no card, but its own pages disagree on the length. The homepage card says 15-minute sessions, and its refund page says unlimited 10-minute sessions.

Two offers are closer to a demo. Interview Sidekick gives unlimited test sessions of up to 2 minutes each, meant for testing your setup. Two minutes will not carry a real interview. Cluely’s free Starter plan gives limited AI responses and limited meeting notes, with no published number.

Three give no live help for free at all. Final Round AI has a free plan for resume work and a prep checklist, but it says there is no free trial and live sessions need Pro, from $25 a month. Interview Coder is a free download, but its AI needs a subscription, at $299 a month or $799 once. We found no free tier at CrackIt, which offers a 7-day money-back guarantee instead.

The catches inside free plans

The biggest catch is hiding from a screen share. LockedIn AI’s Stealth Mode needs a paid plan, so on a screen share its free app is not hidden. Cluely hides only on its $149.99 a month tier, and its $19.99 Pro plan leaves that out. Interview Sidekick contradicts itself, with a help page saying test sessions include stealth mode and its FAQ saying that needs a paid plan. ParakeetAI does not state whether every privacy feature works on a free session.

The second catch is a weaker AI. Linkjob AI’s trial runs on basic models, CoPilot Interview’s free time uses free AI models, and Verve AI keeps its reasoning models for Pro. So the answers you judge on a free plan may not be the answers you would get after paying.

The third is loose wording. “Unlimited” on a free plan usually means unlimited short sessions, as at LockedIn AI and Interview Sidekick.

The fourth catches people who plan to chain free sessions through one interview. LockedIn AI makes you pause for a minute between sessions, ParakeetAI allows one new session every 12 minutes, and PiriPiri AI also makes you wait between free sessions. Each gap means no help, and you would be clicking to restart during the call.

Open source and bring your own key apps: free software, not free AI

First, two terms in plain words. “Bring your own key” means you make an account with an AI company, get a private code, and pay that company for what you use. The app is free, and the AI is not, unless the provider has a free tier. A “local model” means the AI runs on your own computer through a program such as Ollama. There is no per-use bill, but your computer does the work, so quality and speed depend on your machine.

We did not install or run any app in this section, and we do not vouch for any of them. What follows is what each project’s own page and GitHub repository say, as of October 31, 2026.

Natively’s GitHub description says open source, but its licence says it is source-available and not open source, for personal and non-commercial use. It costs $0 with no card, using your own API keys or Ollama. Its feature table shows the catch. Job description and resume context are not in the free version, so free answers do not draw on your resume. Its README warns of a Mac “App is Damaged” message, fixed by a Terminal command, and says its stealth is best effort, not a guarantee.

These projects do carry open source licences. NexQ is MIT licensed and says no account, no subscription and no usage caps, with a fully offline option, but it is small, its Windows installer is not code-signed, and its Mac build is a beta that needs a Terminal command. free-cluely is Apache 2.0, needs a Gemini key or Ollama plus Node.js, and was last updated on April 7, 2026. MeetingCopilot is Apache 2.0, with an unsigned Windows beta and your own keys.

Be careful with names. Open-Cluely shows no licence on GitHub, so your rights to reuse it are unclear. The interview-coder repository holds only releases and is not open source.

One data point is easy to miss. The Gemini API has a free tier, and some of these apps take a Gemini key, but Google’s pricing table says free tier content is used to improve its products, while the paid tier says no. So your interview audio or text may be used by Google on that tier.

Deepgram offers a free $200 credit with no card, which by our arithmetic covers over 200 hours of two voices at the list price above, if your app can use Deepgram. So the money can be close to nothing. The real cost is your time, because you set up the software alone, often past a warning from your computer, with no promise of help if it fails.

How to spend free minutes before a real interview

Start days early, not an hour before, on the same computer and meeting app you will use. Grant the microphone and system audio permissions your computer asks for, then quit and reopen the app. Skipping that is a common reason a tool hears you but not the interviewer.

Use the first session for sound alone. Interview Sidekick suggests playing a mock interview video on YouTube, and that works as the other voice for any tool. Watch whether the transcript catches the words, and how long a draft answer takes to show.

Use the next one for a test share. Ask a friend to join your meeting app, share your entire screen, ask what they see, then share one window and ask again. No page we read gave independent proof of any hiding claim, so this test is the only proof you get.

Keep your last free time for a rehearsal, answering out loud with your CV and the job description loaded. A draft answer is no use if reading it makes you sound lost, so practise putting it in your own words.

With PiriPiri AI, a session is used up the moment it starts, even if you stop early, apart from 90 seconds in which you can cancel a mistaken start. So finish your setup first.

If your round is booked for 30 or 45 minutes, a free session will end partway, and in our view a tool that disappears mid-answer is worse than one you never leaned on. Either pay before the call, or use the free time to prepare and go in without it. You can also try two tools on the same question, which tells you more than any list, this one included.

Check the rules before you use any of these

Some employers ban these tools, so read the instructions you were sent. ITPro reported in March 2025 that Amazon’s guidelines tell candidates not to use generative AI tools during interviews unless explicitly permitted, and that breaking this may mean disqualification. We did not see Amazon’s official text ourselves. Consent and recording laws where you live apply too.

Is there a free AI interview assistant that works on a live call?

Yes, for short stretches, but no online service is free without limits. As of October 31, 2026, PiriPiri AI gives 3 free sessions of 10 minutes each, ParakeetAI 10 sessions of up to 10 minutes, and LockedIn AI 5-minute sessions up to 60 minutes a day. Final Round AI and Interview Coder give no live AI help for free.

Which free AI interview helper gives you the most time?

It depends how you count. LockedIn AI gives 60 minutes a day but cuts each session at 5 minutes and leaves out Stealth Mode. CoPilot Interview gives 15 unbroken minutes every day. ParakeetAI gives up to 100 minutes across 10 sessions, by our arithmetic, which is more than PiriPiri AI’s free trial.

Can a free plan get me through a whole interview?

Rarely. Most free sessions stop between 5 and 15 minutes, and tools make you wait before the next one, so only a very short screening call fits. For a longer round, use the free time to test your setup.

Do free AI interview assistants stay hidden on a screen share?

Not always. PiriPiri AI includes hiding in its free trial. LockedIn AI’s free plan is not hidden, and Cluely hides only on its $149.99 a month tier. Run a test share in your own meeting app, whatever the vendor says.

Is there a completely free open source AI interview assistant?

The software can be free, but the AI usually is not. Apps such as NexQ and free-cluely are open source and need your own AI key or a local model on your computer. Natively is free but source-available, not open source. We tested none of them. On Gemini’s free tier, Google’s pricing table says content is used to improve its products.