Comparison
An AutoHotkey alternative, without the scripting.
AutoHotkey is a programming language for Windows automation. It is free, open source, twenty years old, and there is very little it cannot be made to do. The price is that you write code: to automate something, you learn the syntax, or you find a script and hope you understand what it does.
Polter Click is the other trade. Every step, condition and timeout is a control in an editor, and the things people most often write AutoHotkey scripts for — press a key on a hotkey, click on a timer, wait until an icon shows up — are built in.
Side by side
| AutoHotkey | Polter Click | |
|---|---|---|
| How you build it | A script you write, in its own language | A chain of steps in an editor, or a recording you edit |
| Waiting for what is on screen | ImageSearch and PixelSearch exist; you write the loop, the
coordinates and the retry yourself |
A step: wait for this icon, this colour, this sound, this timer |
| Learning curve | A language — hours to days, and it pays off forever | An afternoon, and it stops where the editor stops |
| Ceiling | Very high: files, windows, COM, HTTP, GUIs of its own | Input, the screen, sounds, timers, branches, loops, counters |
| Price | Free, forever, no account | Free while the open beta runs; paid plans come after it, and it needs a free account |
| Source | Open source | Closed |
| Maturity | Two decades, an enormous body of scripts and answers | In beta, since 2026 |
When AutoHotkey is the better choice
- You already have scripts. Polter Click cannot run
.ahkfiles, and never will — it is not an interpreter for that language. - The job is not about input. Renaming files, driving a window's menus, talking to a program over COM, building a small GUI: that is what a language is for.
- You want it free, open and account-free. Ours asks for an account and does nothing without one, and the plans after the beta are not decided. That is a real difference, not a detail.
- You enjoy writing the thing. For a certain kind of person an editor is a cage, and that is a fair reason.
When this one fits better
- You do not want to learn a language to press a key every two seconds.
- The macro has to watch the screen. In AutoHotkey, "click when the icon appears"
is an
ImageSearchin a loop, with coordinates, tolerance and a retry you write. Here it is one step, and the object is a cutout you outline with the mouse. - You would rather record than build. Record what you do and get back an editable chain, already grouped into clicks, holds and typing.
- You want to see it run. Every step lights up as it executes, with counters and statistics for the run.
The same macro, both ways
Press F6, send the "1" key ten times, half a second apart. In AutoHotkey v2:
#Requires AutoHotkey v2.0
F6:: {
Loop 10 {
Send "1"
Sleep 500
}
}In Polter Click: set the macro's trigger key to F6, then build a chain of a loop node set to ten passes, containing a keypress action for "1" and a timing node of 500 ms. Same thing, no syntax.
The difference shows on the next requirement. "Only press it when the skill is off
cooldown" is, here, a wait for object step in front of the keypress — outline the
icon once and it is done. In AutoHotkey it is a loop around ImageSearch, a
saved reference image, a search region, a tolerance and a decision about what to do when it
is not found.
What both of them are not
Neither reads a program's memory, and neither plays anything for you: both send keys and mouse input, and both are automated input. Plenty of programs and online games forbid that outright, and some ship anti-cheat that looks for it — which applies to a script and to a visual macro exactly alike. Read those rules first; where automation is not allowed, use neither.
Try it
Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit, installs into your own user folder with no administrator prompt. Open beta: free while it runs, needs a free account, and builds change quickly.