Acedly AI vs LockedIn AI: Real-Time Interview Copilot Comparison (2026)
Acedly AI vs LockedIn AI: latency, language coverage, platform verification, ecosystem breadth, and pricing — an honest comparison from the Acedly team for candidates evaluating real-time interview copilots in 2026.
Devon Park
Head of Research, Acedly
Acedly vs LockedIn AI: what each product actually is in 2026
LockedIn AI launched as one of the early entrants in the real-time interview copilot category and has spent the years since broadening into a full job-search ecosystem. Today the product surface includes a live "Interview Copilot" overlay, an AutoApply tool that pushes a candidate's profile against open roles, a Job Tracker for managing the funnel, and a Resume Builder. The company publishes a 97,000+ professional user count and headline numbers of 116 ms response time and 50+ supported languages.
Acedly extends in the other direction. The funnel-top tools — AutoApply, Job Tracker, job-board scraping — are intentionally not part of Acedly. The funnel-bottom prep workflow is where Acedly is built: a Resume Builder with ATS-aware issue surfacing (PDF upload or LinkedIn import, layout-risk detection, JD tailoring, draft management), a Mock Interview mode with role-targeted scenarios (salary negotiation, team-conflict resolution, project-delay communication, constructive feedback, client complaints, promotion pitch), a Phone Interview mode tuned for voice-only screens, an Assessment Assistant with screenshot capture for online tests, the real-time Interview Assistant during live calls across 8 verified meeting platforms, AcedlyAI Assist (a trusted helper joins the candidate's live session via session code + password, sees the live transcript + AI responses + screen share, and can send private text hints only the candidate sees — the same shape as LockedIn's Duo mode), and a post-call AI review that scores per question. The same résumé and JD thread through every stage — Acedly is engineered to own the prep workflow, not the application funnel.
This is the honest LockedIn AI vs Acedly comparison: where each tool wins, where each trades off, and the decision rule we use internally to recommend one over the other.
Latency: published claims, and what to actually test
Both companies quote a sub-200 ms response time. The wording matters:
- LockedIn AI publishes 116 ms as a response-time figure. The marketing pages don't specify whether this is model latency (prompt sent → first token back from the LLM) or true end-to-end (interviewer finishes question → first character on the candidate's screen). The two can differ by 300–500 ms depending on the audio pipeline.
- Acedly publishes a measured ~98 ms end-to-end median on consumer hardware, with sub-200 ms as the explicit ceiling. End-to-end is the only number that matters in conversation; model-only latency under-states the experienced delay by the duration of the speech-to-text and end-of-utterance detection.
Both numbers are competitive. The cleanest way to compare is to run the ten-minute test in the section below. Both products offer a free tier sufficient for one timing pass.
Stealth and per-platform verification
Both products use OS-level capture exclusion under the hood: NSWindowSharingNone on macOS, SetWindowDisplayAffinity(WDA_EXCLUDEFROMCAPTURE) on Windows. Any serious 2026 copilot has implemented these correctly. The difference is verification cadence.
Acedly publishes a status board enumerating eight meeting platforms (Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Webex, Lark/Feishu, Amazon Chime, Coderpad, HackerRank) with re-verification triggered by each platform's client release. The expectation is that an interview tool's stealth claim should be falsifiable per platform.
LockedIn AI's marketing claims undetectability on major meeting platforms. LockedIn does not publish a comparable per-platform verification log. The product also ships a "Duo mode" — a feature where a second human helper can join the candidate's side alongside the AI. Acedly ships the same capability as AcedlyAI Assist: a trusted helper (coach, friend, mentor) joins the candidate's live session via session code + password, sees the live transcript + AI responses + the candidate's screen share, and can send private text hints visible only to the candidate. End-to-end encrypted, invite-only, and revocable mid-call.
In practice both probably work on vanilla Zoom, Meet, and Teams. The verification-log gap matters for two cases: edge platforms (Webex, Lark, Chime) where the meeting client's capture API can change without notice, and senior candidates whose interviewers run unusual setups (custom OBS captures, third-party recording tools) that bypass the standard screen-share path.
Platform coverage matrix
| Feature | Acedly | LockedIn AI |
|---|---|---|
| Zoom | Verified, published cadence | Supported |
| Microsoft Teams | Verified, published cadence | Supported |
| Google Meet | Verified, published cadence | Supported |
| Webex | Verified | Supported |
| Lark / Feishu | Verified | Less prominent in listings |
| Amazon Chime | Verified | Less prominent in listings |
| Coderpad live coding | Editor + audio reading | Audio supported; editor reading less explicit |
| HackerRank live coding | Editor + audio reading | Audio supported; editor reading less explicit |
| Second-person helper alongside AI | AcedlyAI Assist (session code + password, encrypted) | Duo mode |
| AutoApply / Resume Builder / Job Tracker | Not offered | Offered |
The shape: on the live round, Acedly's per-platform verification and editor-aware coding integration are the two concrete differentiators. On the funnel side — applying, tracking, resume work — LockedIn AI's ecosystem is the clear value.
Language coverage
LockedIn AI's marketing cites 50+ supported languages. The figure refers to the transcription tier on the audio pipeline; documentation past the top tier is less explicit about the accuracy floor across the list.
Acedly publishes 30+ named spoken languages at a stated single accuracy tier — English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Hindi, Vietnamese, and more. The choice is named coverage at a tested accuracy bar, not a long list with a quality gradient.
For most candidates the difference is academic — both cover the languages an interview is likely to be conducted in. For multilingual loops (cross-language pairs, a Chinese-speaking founder + an English-speaking PM in the same call), Acedly's per-utterance routing on a named tier is the safer pick.
Pricing
| Feature | Acedly | LockedIn AI |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 30 credits on signup, no card | Limited free usage |
| Headline monthly plan | $69 / month (Pro, unlimited credits) | Premium tier typically above $69 |
| Lifetime / one-time option | $988 lifetime | Not offered |
| Refund window | 7-day refund guarantee | Per current terms |
| Funnel features included | No (interview only) | Yes (AutoApply, Tracker, Resume Builder) |
The shape, durable across pricing-page changes: Acedly is the cheaper pure-interview tool with a lifetime tier; LockedIn AI charges more but bundles funnel-stage tools that Acedly intentionally does not ship.
How to test both yourself in ten minutes
A useful LockedIn AI vs Acedly test is not a feature checklist; it is timing data on the round that decides outcomes. The smallest test:
- Install both. Each has a free tier sufficient for one session.
- Have a friend read five scripted behavioural questions. Use a stopwatch app on a second phone.
- Time the gap between the end of the question and the first character on the overlay. Three trials per tool.
- Share your screen on Zoom, Meet, and Teams. Confirm the overlay is invisible to the other side on each.
- If coding interviews matter, paste a LeetCode problem into a Coderpad sandbox and start sharing the editor. Does either tool read the editor, or only the audio?
Under 200 ms end-to-end is conversationally invisible. Over 250 ms is a beat the interviewer can hear. Anything that fails the screen-share test on any platform you'll actually use is a non-starter regardless of the marketing claim.
How to choose between Acedly and LockedIn AI
The decision rule from the Acedly team — biased, but transparent:
- Pick Acedly if the live round is the bottleneck and you'd rather own the prep workflow than the application funnel. The lower published end-to-end latency, the per-platform verification, the editor-aware coding integration, and the lifetime price below LockedIn's monthly headline tier are all consequences of focusing engineering on the rounds themselves.
- Pick LockedIn AI if you want a single subscription covering the entire job-search funnel — applying, tracking, resume work, and the live round. The breadth is genuine and unique to LockedIn in this category.
- Pick both only if you need LockedIn's funnel-top tools (AutoApply, Job Tracker) at the same time as Acedly's prep workflow, and budget isn't a constraint. The human-helper feature — Duo mode on LockedIn, AcedlyAI Assist on Acedly — exists on both, so it isn't the reason to double up.