LockedIn AI claims 116ms response time. It also claims 1 million users and a 4.8/5 rating. These are impressive numbers, and if they held up consistently in real interviews I’d lead with them. The problem, based on user reports and my own testing, is that the 116ms figure describes ideal conditions, not what happens when you’re 47 minutes into a technical screen and the tool is processing a complex system design prompt under load.
Let me walk through the actual comparison.
How each tool handles the live interview moment
Both Craqly and LockedIn AI are designed to give you real-time support during a live interview without the interviewer seeing the tool on your screen. That’s the core use case. The differences show up in how reliably they deliver on that promise.
Craqly processes locally on your device. Response times consistently come in under 3 seconds across standard behavioral, technical, and system design questions. The local architecture means the response time doesn’t depend on server load at peak usage hours, which is when a lot of people run interviews (mid-morning weekdays, specifically Tuesday through Thursday based on common recruiter scheduling patterns).
LockedIn AI’s 116ms claim appears to be a best-case routing time, not an end-to-end response time including model inference and rendering. Users in their community forums and on Reddit have reported noticeable lag on multi-part technical questions. 116ms is a real-time network latency metric. The actual experience you have during a coding interview is slower than that.
This matters a lot. An interview tool that lags on exactly the questions where you most need help is worse than one that’s slightly slower but reliable.
LockedIn AI’s Duo mode: the interesting one
LockedIn AI has a feature called Duo mode where a friend can view your interview feed remotely and help you in real time. This is a genuinely creative idea. If you have a technical friend or mentor who is available during your interview window and willing to help you live, this is something Craqly doesn’t offer.
The practical limitation: it requires coordination. Your friend needs to be available at the exact time your interview happens, focused, and knowledgeable enough to help on the specific questions that come up. In practice, I’d guess most people can’t consistently arrange this. But if you can, it’s a distinct capability.
Craqly doesn’t have an equivalent. I’ll just say that directly.
Coding interview support
LockedIn AI supports 50+ languages. Craqly supports 20+. On the surface, LockedIn wins this category.
In practice, the question is which languages you’re actually interviewing in. If you’re doing Python, JavaScript, Java, C++, Go, or SQL interviews, both tools cover you. The long tail of languages where LockedIn’s larger count matters is real but narrow. Most people interviewing at tech companies are doing it in one of 5-7 languages.
Code quality and context retention are harder to compare directly. My experience with Craqly’s Code Assistant is that it handles multi-step debugging questions well and maintains context across a longer coding problem. I’d want to do a more systematic head-to-head on this to give you a reliable comparison.
Career tools beyond the interview
LockedIn AI is primarily an interview tool. Craqly covers 8 products including interview support, but also Resume Builder, Meeting Copilot, Sales Assistant, and Auto Notes. If your only goal is passing interviews this month, the extra products might not matter to you right now.
If you’re job searching while currently employed, managing meetings and potentially doing sales calls at your current job, a single subscription that covers all of those is more efficient than 3 separate tools. That’s the practical case for Craqly’s breadth.
Pricing reality
LockedIn AI runs $30-55/month depending on the plan. Craqly offers a free tier with 15 minutes of real usage and paid plans that are competitive in the same range. The specific tier comparison shifts as both companies update pricing, so I’d check current pricing directly rather than relying on any comparison post including this one.
What doesn’t change: Craqly’s free trial gives you enough real usage to evaluate the tool before paying. If the live performance in your 15-minute test session is strong, that’s meaningful signal. If it’s not, you’ve spent nothing.
Reliability as the real decision factor
Here is my honest take: for an interview tool, reliability matters more than almost any feature comparison. A tool that works 97% of the time but has strong language support is worse than a tool that works 99.5% of the time with slightly more limited features. The stakes in a final round are asymmetric. Dropping context or lagging in the last 20 minutes of a 4-hour onsite can affect outcomes that take months to recover from.
LockedIn AI’s community feedback suggests their reliability is good but not exceptional under load. Craqly’s local processing model is an architectural choice that specifically trades off against server-side features in exchange for consistent local performance.
The 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey shows that 76% of developers now use AI tools in their work, with interview AI tools growing as a specific category. According to LinkedIn’s Economic Graph, AI fluency now appears in over 30% of tech job postings as either a required or preferred skill, which reflects how central these tools have become to the job search itself.
Both tools are worth trying. Given that Craqly has a real free tier and LockedIn AI charges from the start, testing Craqly first is the lower-friction path. If the live session performance holds up on your actual interview stack, the decision becomes easy.
The 116ms headline number is marketing. What happens at minute 47 of a system design interview is what actually matters.