Clicky vs Sider: Voice, Privacy, Pricing (2026)

Clicky and Sider are both AI Chrome extensions that sit on top of the browser and answer questions about what you are looking at. They overlap on the surface — both install from the Chrome Web Store, both talk to frontier models, both promise to make browsing faster. Underneath, they make very different trade-offs about how you invoke the assistant, what the assistant is allowed to see, and how long your data lives. This post lays out those trade-offs as of April 2026, so you can decide which shape fits your workflow.

Same category, different shape

The category is AI Chrome extension. Inside that category, Clicky and Sider occupy different corners. Sider is a multi-model chat sidebar: open a panel, pick a model, type or paste, get an answer, continue the thread across tabs and days. Clicky is a push-to-talk pointer: hold the Alt key on any tab, ask a question aloud, hear the answer, watch a halo land on the DOM element the model is referring to.

Neither model is objectively better. They are different answers to different questions. Sider’s question is “I want one conversation layer across the whole web, with access to every major model from one pane.” Clicky’s question is “I want targeted, voice-first help on the page I am looking at right now, and I want the microphone and the DOM to be inert until I ask.” Pick by which question matches how you browse.

At a glance

• Sider. A side-panel Chrome and Edge extension that puts 20+ AI models into a single sidebar — GPT-5, Claude, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek among them. Strong at writing, translation, long-form summarisation, document analysis, and cross-tab research threads. Voice input added in v4.41.0 as an in-chat button. Manifest V3, uses the activeTab permission among others. Ships on the Chrome Web Store.
• Clicky. A push-to-talk Chrome extension by Fleece AI. Hold Alt, ask about the current tab, get a voice answer from Anthropic Claude and a halo drawn on the exact DOM element the answer refers to. Strictly activeTab — the extension does not read any page until you press the key. Session-only memory by default. Models: Claude Haiku 4.5 on the free tier, Claude Sonnet 4.6 on the paid tiers. Voice through ElevenLabs. Listing pending review on the Chrome Web Store as of April 2026. See how it works.

Side-by-side comparison

Sider figures sourced from sider.ai, the Chrome Web Store listing, and public third-party permission audits, verified April 2026. Exact prices and permission lists can change; check sider.ai/pricing and the extension’s Chrome Web Store page for the current numbers.

Interaction model

Sider’s default surface is a side panel. You click the Sider icon in the toolbar, or use the hotkey, and a vertical chat pane opens. From there, you pick a model, paste or type, and iterate. The panel stays open across tabs — useful for research threads that span many pages, less useful when you want a quick pointer on a single screen. The interaction centre of gravity is the panel itself; the page is a source of context the panel reads on demand.

Clicky’s default surface is the page. Alt is held, the mic opens, the question is asked and answered. A halo settles over the DOM element the model is talking about. When Alt is released, the mic closes and the overlay collapses. There is no panel to keep open, no thread to manage, no model picker. The centre of gravity is the tab you were already looking at.

A useful heuristic: if your question is “rewrite this paragraph,” the panel shape fits. If your question is “where is the export button on this page,” the pointer shape fits. Most people’s browsing days contain both kinds of question, which is why the two tools are not mutually exclusive — but if you only install one, pick by which question dominates.

Privacy and permissions

Chrome extensions advertise their permissions in manifest.json. Reading that file tells you what the extension is allowed to do to your browser. Both extensions use Manifest V3. Where they differ is the breadth of the permission set.

Public permission audits of Sider’s extension (as listed on the Chrome Web Store) show a set that includes activeTab, tabs, scripting, cookies, storage, unlimitedStorage, contextMenus, sidePanel, offscreen, and alarms. That is the shape you would expect of a multi-model sidebar that persists threads, synchronises across tabs, and schedules background tasks. The tabs permission in particular lets the extension enumerate open tabs and read their URLs and titles at any time.

Clicky’s extension requests activeTab and nothing broader. The practical implication is that Clicky is blind to every tab you have not explicitly pressed Alt on. It cannot enumerate your open tabs, it cannot read URLs or titles in the background, it cannot run scripts on pages you did not invite it to. The trade-off is real — Clicky cannot cross-reference things you read an hour ago on another tab, because it never saw them. That limitation is the product.

Retention differs too. Sider’s published privacy policy states, as of April 2026, that communication information is retained for 99 years from the date of the last interaction, and usage and analytics data for three months. That long retention is a deliberate product choice — Sider keeps threads so you can come back to them — but it is a posture worth knowing about before you paste sensitive context into a chat. Clicky’s default is session-only memory: when you close the tab, the turn’s context is gone. The full Clicky retention story is spelled out on the privacy page. For the audit framework that produced these comparisons, see our privacy audit for Chrome extensions.

Voice capability

Sider shipped voice input in v4.41.0. It is a speech-to-text button inside the chat input: open the sidebar, click Chat, press the Voice Input button in the bottom-left of the input box, speak, watch the text appear, click Send. The microphone permission is prompted on first use. It is a typing accelerator — voice to text — rather than a conversational surface. Output remains on-screen text.

Clicky is voice in and voice out, gated by a physical key. Alt goes down, the offscreen document spins up a microphone session, the Chrome offscreen lifecycle tears it down when Alt is released. Output is a spoken ElevenLabs voice, timed to the halo landing on the DOM element. The architectural reason for the key-held invariant is described in our push-to-talk deep-dive.

If the question is “I want to dictate a message into a chatbox,” Sider’s voice button is fine. If the question is “I want to ask the page a question without taking my hands off the keyboard, and I want the answer spoken back,” the shape you want is push-to-talk with voice output — which is Clicky.

Pricing and plans

Both products run a freemium model. Both gate on usage, not features. The numbers below are as of April 2026 and may have moved; the linked pricing pages are canonical.

Sider. A free tier with limited daily credits; paid tiers advertised on sider.ai/pricing. Public reviews and aggregators list Basic around $8.30/mo, Pro around $12.40/mo, and Unlimited around $16.70/mo when billed annually; monthly billing is higher. The credits split advanced-model calls (GPT-4-class, Claude Sonnet-class, Gemini Pro-class) from basic-model calls (mini and Haiku-class). Prices quoted in USD.

Clicky. Explorer free (10 turns per day, Claude Haiku 4.5). Pro at 19€/mo when billed yearly (228€/yr) or 25€/mo monthly, with Claude Sonnet 4.6 and higher daily quota. Team at 99€/mo yearly (1188€/yr, five seats) or 129€/mo monthly, same model tier and human support. Prices quoted in EUR. Models are managed — no API key to bring, no per-call vendor billing to reconcile. See the full pricing page.

Feature-for-feature, the starting prices land in similar territory when you control for currency. The meaningful difference is not the headline number but what each tier is buying. Sider’s tiers buy credits across a vendor catalogue and enable more sidebar features. Clicky’s tiers buy a higher daily turn quota and a stronger model; the core interaction is the same at every tier.

When Sider is the better pick

• You want many models in one pane. If you regularly A/B between GPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek and Grok for the same task, Sider’s sidebar model picker is the shortest path. Clicky is Claude-only by design.
• Writing, translation, and document analysis dominate your day. A panel-first interaction with long-form input and editable output fits these jobs. Paraphrasing a three-page article or translating a PDF is awkward in a voice-first pointer and natural in a sidebar.
• You want persistent threads across tabs and days. Sider’s long-retention posture is exactly what you want if the value is continuity — revisit the conversation next week, pick up where you left off. Clicky’s session-only default works against that use case.
• You need the extension to keep one running conversation while you switch tabs. Clicky’s per-tab, session-only model is wrong for cross-tab threads; Sider is built for them.

When Clicky is the better pick

• You live in complex SaaS dashboards and keep hunting for buttons. A halo drawn on the DOM element is the shortest distance between “where is export” and actually exporting. A sidebar that describes the button is slower and more brittle.
• You want a strict permission model on a corporate machine. A security review that sees an extension with only activeTab has less to reason about than one that also holds tabs, cookies, and scripting. Clicky is built to be boring on that audit. See our audit framework for the checklist we use.
• You want voice in and voice out, gated by a physical key. Push-to-talk with spoken answers is a different product shape from a transcription button. If hands-free, eyes-on-page help is the job, Clicky was built for it.
• You care about short retention on assistant conversations. Session-only memory by default means there is less context to mis-handle. Read the details on the privacy page.

A reasonable configuration, if you are torn, is to install both and let them settle into their niches. Sider handles translation and drafting in its sidebar. Clicky handles the mid-task pointer question — which button, which field, which link — without touching the sidebar. They do not conflict; they answer different questions.

Frequently asked questions

Does Sider have push-to-talk voice like Clicky?

As of April 2026, Sider’s publicly documented voice feature is a click-to-toggle speech-to-text button inside the chat input, added in v4.41.0. It is voice in, text out. Clicky’s model is push-to-talk (hold Alt) with spoken answers on the way back. If push-to-talk with voice output is the specific feature you want, Clicky is the fit.

Is Sider’s Chrome extension considered safe?

Sider uses Manifest V3 and includes the activeTab permission along with tabs, scripting, cookies, and others. Third-party audits generally classify it as high impact, very low likelihood of actual risk — meaning the extension could do a lot if compromised, but there is no evidence of abuse. It is a reasonable install on a personal machine; on a locked-down corporate endpoint, the broader permission set is worth a security review. Clicky is deliberately narrower for that second audience.

Which is cheaper?

At the entry paid tier, the two are roughly comparable in absolute terms once currency is normalised — Sider’s Basic lands near $8.30/mo (annual), Clicky’s Pro at 19€/mo (annual) buys a different shape of usage. Sider sells credits across 20+ models; Clicky sells a daily turn quota on Claude Sonnet 4.6. The better question is which shape matches your workload — heavy credits for long-form generation, or a predictable daily cap for targeted pointer questions.

Can I use both at once?

Yes. They do not overlap at the permission layer in any way that would conflict — Clicky only activates on Alt, Sider only activates when its panel is opened. The risk of running both is organisational, not technical: two assistants for two different job shapes can be useful, but a year from now you will want to decide which one is the primary surface so your muscle memory is not split.

Next in this series: how Clicky compares to Monica AI — another chat-sidebar extension that leans into writing workflows and image generation. We line up the same axes again.