Clicky vs HARPA AI: Voice Assistant vs Browser Automation

HARPA AI and Clicky both ship as Chrome extensions, both call themselves AI, and both end up on the same shortlists. The similarity stops there. HARPA is a no-code automation runtime — its job is to make the browser do things on a schedule. Clicky is a push-to-talk voice assistant — its job is to answer one question about what is on your screen and point at the relevant element. Most comparisons get this wrong by listing features side by side; the feature lists overlap less than they look.

Two extensions, two categories

We mapped the AI-Chrome-extension landscape in Browser Copilot vs Browser Agent and the broader categories in our 2026 round-up. The short version: HARPA belongs to the “automation + sidebar” category, where the headline feature is the workflow builder and the chat panel is a useful side benefit. Clicky belongs to the “targeted voice assistant” category, where the headline is a single press-to-talk loop and there is no panel at all.

That distinction shapes everything that follows. A user who wants to scrape product prices into a sheet every Monday morning cannot do that with Clicky. A user who wants to ask “where is the export button on this Salesforce page” in 800 milliseconds cannot do that with HARPA. They are not really competitors so much as they share a Chrome Web Store category.

Side-by-side comparison

HARPA figures from the HARPA AI website and pricing page, read August 2026. Clicky figures from the product itself.

What it feels like to use each

The interaction shapes are the most honest comparison axis here.

HARPA: you click the toolbar icon, a sidebar slides in, and you choose between chat and the automation builder. The chat side reads the page, summarises, asks follow-ups; the automation side lets you assemble visual blocks (“open this URL,” “wait for selector,” “extract this column,” “send to webhook”) into a workflow and schedule it. That second part is the real product. The chat panel is more or less a chat panel; the automation runtime is the reason you install HARPA.

Clicky: you do not click anything. You hold the Alt key, ask a question (“where is the unsubscribe button on this page?”, “what does this percentage mean?”), and release. A voice answer starts within about a second, and a halo paints on the exact DOM element that matters. There is no sidebar, no scheduled job, no workflow. The next question starts fresh, in whatever tab you are on.

HARPA’s automation runtime

It is worth being specific about what HARPA actually offers in this category, because most reviews focus on the wrong half. As of August 2026, HARPA’s automation features include scheduled page monitors (notify when a price changes, when a competitor publishes, when an inventory drops), multi-step browser workflows that drive a real Chrome tab through a sequence of clicks and form fills, and outputs to Google Sheets, webhooks, Slack, or email.

For a SaaS operations team that has been pasting CSVs out of an admin dashboard every week, that is a real productivity unlock. For a marketer monitoring competitor pricing, same. The cost is the complexity of the workflow builder (it is not a 30-second tool to learn) and the broad permission surface (the extension needs host-level access to do its job by design).

Clicky does not compete on this axis at all. It does not run workflows. It does not schedule. It does not output to webhooks. It does one push-to-talk Q&A loop. If you need recurring automation, install HARPA; if you need a voice assistant that points at on-page elements, install Clicky. They can both live on the same browser without overlap.

Clicky’s voice + halo loop

The other side of the picture is the loop HARPA does not build for. Clicky’s entire product is one cycle: hold Alt, speak, release, hear an answer, see a halo on the relevant element, act on it. Median time end-to-end, on a paid Sonnet plan, is roughly two seconds. The halo persists through reflows because it tracks a CSS selector, not a screen position.

For users who spend their day inside complex SaaS dashboards (Salesforce, HubSpot, Stripe, Notion, Jira) the value is finding the right control without parsing dense UI. For low-vision users or users with motor impairments, the value is having a voice + visual confirmation loop instead of pixel-hunting. We covered both use-cases in detail in the accessibility cluster: AI Tools for Low-Vision Web Users and Hands-Free Browsing for Motor Impairment.

Privacy and permissions

This is the dimension where the two products diverge most sharply, and it is straightforward consequence of their shapes.

HARPA needs broad host permissions because it is, by design, a runtime that drives pages on your behalf. To monitor a price page every hour or to automate a multi-step form submission, the extension has to be able to open and read those pages without manual intervention. Its privacy policy describes server-side processing of inputs and stored workflows. That is not a privacy failing — it is the engineering required to deliver the product. It does mean an honest install conversation includes “this extension can see and act on every site I visit when its workflows fire.”

Clicky takes the opposite path. It requests only the activeTab permission, fired strictly when you hold Alt — never in the background, never on a tab you are not actively using. There is no server-side conversation store. The product simply cannot do scheduled automation, because the permission model rules it out by construction. That is a deliberate trade.

For a more general framework on extension privacy posture, see Chrome Extensions That Do Not Track You (2026 Audit).

Pricing and plans

Both products have free tiers; the paid ladders work differently.

HARPA, as of August 2026, lists a free tier with limited usage on basic models, a Premium plan around $19/month billed annually, and higher tiers (Bronze, Silver, Gold, etc.) that scale primarily on AI usage caps and number of automations. BYOK is supported, which for heavy automation users substantially shifts the unit economics in their favour.

Clicky is priced in EUR: Explorer free (10 push-to-talk turns per day), Pro at 19€/month billed annually (228€/year) with a high daily quota and Sonnet-class reasoning, and Team at 99€/month billed annually (1188€/year) for five pooled seats and human support. No BYOK — Clicky absorbs the model bill so the pricing can be predictable. Full breakdown on the landing page.

When HARPA is the better pick

• Recurring browser automation. Anything you do weekly that involves opening the same set of pages, extracting something, and putting it somewhere — HARPA exists for that work.
• Scraping into spreadsheets or webhooks. Pricing monitoring, competitor watching, lead enrichment from public pages — HARPA’s output blocks make the integration trivial.
• BYOK for heavy AI usage. If you are already paying for an OpenAI or Anthropic key and want the extension to consume from your own quota, HARPA supports that natively.
• Multi-step interactions across sites. Anything where the workflow is “open A, copy from A, paste into B, click submit on B” — Clicky cannot orchestrate that loop because its permission model does not let it.

When Clicky is the better pick

• Pointed questions about a single page. “Where is the export button?”, “What does this field mean?”, “Which one of these toggles disables notifications?” A halo on the actual DOM element is a different shape of answer than a sidebar paragraph.
• Strict privacy environments. Corporate machines under DPA constraints, regulated industries, or any setting where “the extension can see all my tabs in the background” is a non-starter. activeTab-only is an easier security conversation.
• Voice-first or hands-busy work. Walking a junior colleague through a tool while keeping your hands on the keyboard, working with a coffee in one hand, or pairing remotely — push-to-talk is dramatically faster than typing into a panel.
• Accessibility. Voice answer + visible halo consistently outperforms text-in-a-sidebar for low-vision and motor-impairment use-cases.

For the record: many users install both. HARPA does the background-running automation; Clicky does the foreground voice Q&A. They do not collide.

Frequently asked questions

Is Clicky a HARPA AI alternative?

Only if the work you do with HARPA is the “answer a quick question about this page” kind. If you use HARPA for its automation runtime — scheduled page monitors, multi-step workflows, scraping into sheets — Clicky cannot replace it. Those capabilities are deliberately outside Clicky’s scope and cannot exist within its activeTab-only permission model.

Can HARPA do what Clicky does?

Its sidebar can read the current page and answer questions about it, which covers the “summarise this” case. What it cannot do is paint a DOM-anchored halo on a specific element, or answer strictly via push-to-talk voice without opening a panel. The interaction shapes are different even when the underlying question is similar.

Which is cheaper?

Both have free tiers, both have paid plans starting around $19/€19 per month billed annually. HARPA wins on per-AI-token economics if you BYOK; Clicky wins on simplicity (no key management, all-in pricing). Pick by the job, not the unit price.

Can I install both?

Yes. The two extensions occupy different slots and rarely conflict. We would suggest disabling HARPA on the most sensitive of your admin sites using Chrome’s per-site permission controls, and keeping Clicky as the always-installed voice layer because its permission scope means it is dormant unless you press Alt.

Part of our comparisons series. See also Clicky vs Monica and Clicky vs Sider. Next: Clicky vs MaxAI.me and Merlin AI.