The best coding interview prep tools are LeetCode for problem volume, NeetCode for a free, ordered problem list with a video for every problem, Grokking the Coding Interview or AlgoExpert if you want a paid pattern course, interviewing.io for mock interviews with senior engineers, and CoPilot Interview for scored AI mock interviews you can run free every day. Most people need one problem source, one way to learn patterns and one way to practice out loud, not all nine tools.
We compared nine tools on what they teach, what's free, what they cost and where they run, using each vendor's own site in October 2026. We make CoPilot Interview, so read our pick with that in mind. CoPilot Interview isn't affiliated with Microsoft Copilot or GitHub Copilot.
The best coding interview prep tools at a glance
Prices are in USD, checked on each vendor's own pricing or purchase page in October 2026. Several vendors show a sale price next to a crossed-out higher one; we list what the page charged when we checked.
| Tool | Best for | Free option | Price (as of Oct 2026) | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CoPilot Interview | Best choice for scored coding mock interviews you answer out loud | Best choice: 15 minutes every day, all four modes including Mock Interview, no card or signup; free browser mock, cheat sheet and Big-O visualizer | $14.99/mo Standard (sale; regular $19.99) | Windows 10+, macOS 12+; browser mock interview |
| LeetCode | The biggest problem bank and company-tagged lists | Most problems, including every problem in LeetCode 75 and Top Interview 150 | Premium $35/mo or $159/yr | Web |
| NeetCode | A free, ordered roadmap with video walkthroughs | Blind 75, NeetCode 150 and NeetCode 250, with a video for every problem | Pro $119 for one year or $297 lifetime | Web |
| Grokking the Coding Interview (DesignGurus) | Learning patterns from a written course | Free account to start the course | $197 one-time for the course; all courses $149.20/yr on sale | Web |
| AlgoExpert | A finishable set of 200 problems with video explanations | None listed on its purchase page | $119 for one year of All Access (7 products) | Web |
| Educative | Text-based courses with in-browser coding | Free account with some free lessons | Standard $149/yr; Premium $199/yr (both on sale) | Web |
| interviewing.io | Anonymous mock interviews with senior engineers | Free AI Interviewer for coding and system design | Human mock interviews from $179 each | Web |
| Aced (formerly Exponent), including Pramp | Free peer mock interviews | Basic plan: 5 peer mocks a month | Pro $79/mo, or $12/mo billed annually | Web |
| Tech Interview Handbook and Grind 75 | A free study plan sized to your weeks | Everything | Free | Web |
Disclosure: we make CoPilot Interview.
The 9 coding interview prep tools, reviewed
1. CoPilot Interview: best for scored mock interviews out loud
CoPilot Interview is a desktop app for Windows 10+ and macOS 12+. For coding prep, the part that matters is Mock Interview. You paste your résumé and the job description, then pick the level, 3, 5 or 8 questions, the mix (behavioral, technical, system design, coding) and your coding language. It reads each question aloud, listens to your spoken answer and scores it out of 10 with what to fix and a model answer, then gives you a report card. Coding questions never auto-submit, so you can think in silence the way you would in a real round.
Strengths:
- A free plan that isn't a trial: 15 minutes every day, all four modes, no card and no signup.
- A browser version with nothing to install: 113 real questions across 9 tracks, including coding, system design and SQL.
- Free study tools: the coding interview cheat sheet maps 17 core patterns to the phrases that signal them, with a full Big-O reference, and the Big-O complexity visualizer shows how seven complexity classes scale as you drag the input size.
Limits: it isn't a problem bank, so you still need LeetCode or NeetCode for volume. Free sessions stop at 15 minutes, and there's no Linux build.
Price: Standard is $14.99/mo (sale; regular $19.99) with 60-minute sessions, up to 100 minutes a day and no gap between sessions. Pro is $29.99/mo.
Fits: people who can solve problems quietly but lose the thread when they have to explain their approach and complexity out loud.
2. LeetCode: best problem bank and company-tagged lists
LeetCode is the default place to solve interview problems against a judge. The free tier is larger than many people assume: LeetCode 75, Top Interview 150 and Top 100 Liked contain no Premium-only problems, as our LeetCode Premium breakdown found when it checked the site in October 2026.
Premium costs $35/mo (shown against $39) or $159/yr (about $13.25/mo), per its subscribe page as of October 2026. It adds company-specific questions you can sort by role, time or frequency, timed interview simulations, Premium problems and solutions, a debugger, autocomplete, and 500 extra monthly credits for its Ask Leet AI coding agent.
Limits: it doesn't teach patterns in a learning order, and many official editorials are Premium-only. The yearly plan only saves money if you'd otherwise keep Premium for five months or more.
Fits: everyone, as the problem source. Pay for Premium only for a month or two before a booked loop at a company with a large tagged list. Our guide to how many LeetCode problems to solve before an interview helps you size the work.
3. NeetCode: best free roadmap with videos
NeetCode orders problems into a roadmap by topic (arrays and hashing, two pointers, stack, sliding window, trees, graphs, dynamic programming and more). Its homepage lists the Blind 75, NeetCode 150 and NeetCode 250 study plans and a detailed video explanation for every problem, free.
Pro costs $119 for one year (shown against $199, with auto-renew off by default) or $297 for lifetime access, per its Pro page as of October 2026. It adds 11 structured courses, from a 25-hour Algorithms and Data Structures for Beginners course to system design, Python, SQL and object-oriented design, plus extra problems and AI hints.
Limits: there's no monthly plan, and NeetCode generally doesn't give refunds, so use the free lists first. See whether NeetCode Pro is worth it and NeetCode 150 vs Blind 75 vs LeetCode 75.
Fits: most candidates. If you only use one free resource, make it this one.
4. Grokking the Coding Interview (DesignGurus): best written pattern course
Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions, created by Arslan Ahmad on DesignGurus, teaches 30 common and 11 advanced coding patterns across 671 lessons, with a listed study time of 90 hours. Solutions are in Python, Java, C++, JavaScript, Go and C#.
Price: $197 one-time for lifetime access to this course, as of October 2026. DesignGurus also sells all its courses by subscription; during a 60%-off sale that month it listed $49.20/mo or $149.20/yr. Prices on the site move with frequent sales, so check the checkout total.
Limits: it's long and mostly written, which suits some people and loses others. DesignGurus says early text-only versions of its courses were hosted on third-party platforms, which is why you'll also see "Grokking" courses on Educative.
Fits: you keep solving problems but can't tell which approach a new one needs. Our LeetCode patterns guide is a free overview of the same idea.
5. AlgoExpert: best finishable set with video explanations
AlgoExpert is a closed set of 200 coding interview questions, each with a two-part video explanation, a space-time complexity analysis and written solutions in 9 languages. It also includes a data structures crash course, an in-browser editor and 4 timed coding assessments.
Price: it's sold as All Access, $119 for one year of access to 7 products (AlgoExpert, SystemsExpert, FrontendExpert, MLExpert, InfraExpert, iOSExpert and BlockchainExpert), shown against $693 under a "flash sale" timer on its purchase page in October 2026.
Limits: 200 problems is a much smaller pool than LeetCode, access ends after a year, and the purchase page lists no free tier.
Fits: you want one teacher, one format and a set you can actually finish.
6. Educative: best text-based courses with in-browser coding
Educative sells a subscription to text-based courses where you run code in the browser, and every plan includes its "Grokking" interview courses. As of October 2026, both plans below were shown at 50% off, billed annually: Standard at $149/yr ($13/mo) and Premium at $199/yr ($17/mo). Premium adds a code debugger and 3 AI mock interviews a month; Premium Plus, at $249/yr, has 7.
Limits: if you learn from video, this format won't suit you, and the prices we saw were promotional.
Fits: readers who want coding patterns, system design and language courses under one subscription.
7. interviewing.io: best mock interviews with senior engineers
interviewing.io runs anonymous mock interviews with engineers from large tech companies. Its FAQ, as of October 2026, says interviews start at $179, the price varies with the subject and whether you want an interviewer from a specific company, and it gives a full refund if you're unhappy. Sessions have voice but no video.
Free option: an AI Interviewer that simulates a FAANG-style interview for coding and system design.
Limits: too expensive for daily reps. Use it for two or three sessions near the end. Our interviewing.io review covers how a session works.
Fits: the last week or two before an onsite.
8. Aced (formerly Exponent) and Pramp: best free peer mocks
Exponent renamed itself Aced in August 2026. Its pricing page lists, as of October 2026, a free Basic plan with 5 peer mock interviews a month and no credit card; Pro at $79/mo or $12/mo billed annually, with all courses, video and written solutions and unlimited peer mocks; and Expert at $99/mo or $20/mo billed annually, which adds AI mock interviews and AI feedback.
Pramp is part of the same company. Its homepage says that since July 2024 all new Pramp sessions run on Aced Practice, still free: you're paired with a peer, you interview each other for 30 to 45 minutes over video, then you swap feedback.
Limits: feedback quality depends on your partner, and Aced's deepest content is for product management and system design. See our Exponent (Aced) review.
Fits: getting used to a real person watching you code, at no cost.
9. Tech Interview Handbook and Grind 75: best free study plan
The Tech Interview Handbook is a free collection of coding interview preparation material. Its Grind 75 planner, from the author of Blind 75, lets you set the time you have, the difficulty and the topics, and builds a problem schedule to match.
Limits: it's a plan and a guide, with no mock interviews or feedback.
Fits: anyone who wants a schedule instead of an endless list.
Which tool covers which part of coding prep
Coding rounds test four things: recognizing the pattern, writing working code, explaining complexity, and doing all of it out loud under a clock. Here's what to use for each.
| What you need | Free option | Paid option (as of Oct 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Learn the patterns | NeetCode videos; CoPilot Interview coding interview cheat sheet | Grokking the Coding Interview $197; AlgoExpert $119/yr |
| Problem volume | LeetCode free tier; Grind 75 | LeetCode Premium $35/mo for company lists |
| Explain complexity | Big-O complexity visualizer; our Big-O cheat sheet | AlgoExpert complexity analyses |
| Practice out loud | CoPilot Interview Mock Interview (15 minutes a day); interviewing.io AI Interviewer; Aced's 5 peer mocks a month | interviewing.io human mocks from $179 |
| Company-specific prep | Our company guides, such as Google coding interview questions | LeetCode Premium company lists |
How we chose these tools
We didn't run paid hands-on tests of every product or survey users. We compared each vendor's published features, free tier, prices and platforms, checked on its own site in October 2026, and left out vendor user counts, ratings and success stories because they aren't independently audited.
The criteria:
- Does it teach something a coding round actually scores: patterns, correct code, complexity, or explaining your approach?
- How much can you do for free before paying?
- What does a 4 to 8 week search cost?
- Is the content a finishable set or an open-ended bank?
System design prep is a different job, with different resources. We cover it in our list of the best system design interview resources, and AI practice tools in general in the best AI mock interview tools.
Which coding interview prep tool should you pick?
- Interview in two weeks: a trimmed Grind 75 or NeetCode 150 plan, a daily 15-minute CoPilot Interview Mock Interview with coding in the mix, and one interviewing.io session near the end. Our two-week coding interview plan lays out the days.
- Two months or more: learn the patterns first with NeetCode's free videos, Grokking the Coding Interview or AlgoExpert, then move to LeetCode volume. The 8-week FAANG prep plan shows one way to split it.
- A $0 budget: NeetCode free, LeetCode free, Grind 75, Aced's 5 free peer mocks a month, interviewing.io's free AI Interviewer and the CoPilot Interview free plan cover the whole job.
- A booked onsite at a big tech company: one month of LeetCode Premium for the company's recent list, plus two or three human mock interviews.
- You freeze when you have to talk: practice out loud every day. A scored AI mock interview is the cheapest way to get daily reps; read how to get better at LeetCode for the solving side.
Looking at AI coding assistants rather than prep platforms? Our Interview Coder alternatives page covers that category.
Practice a coding round out loud, free
Run a free AI mock interview in your browser, with nothing to install. The CoPilot Interview desktop app adds Mock Interview: questions from your résumé and the job description, each spoken answer scored out of 10, free for 15 minutes every day.
Try a free AI mock interviewFAQ
What is the best coding interview prep tool?
There isn't one tool that covers everything. Use LeetCode or NeetCode as your problem source, a pattern course such as Grokking the Coding Interview or AlgoExpert if you learn better from a structured course, and a way to practice out loud. For that last part, CoPilot Interview's Mock Interview scores each spoken answer out of 10 and is on the free plan (15 minutes every day). We make CoPilot Interview, so weigh our pick accordingly.
Is LeetCode enough to prepare for coding interviews?
For problem practice, mostly yes: the free tier covers most problems, and LeetCode 75 and Top Interview 150 contain no Premium-only problems. What LeetCode does not train is explaining your approach while you code, which interviewers score. Add timed mock interviews, with a peer, an engineer on interviewing.io or an AI mock interview.
Is NeetCode better than LeetCode?
They do different jobs. LeetCode is the problem bank and judge. NeetCode puts problems in a learning order (Blind 75, NeetCode 150, NeetCode 250) with a free video walkthrough for every problem. Many people follow the NeetCode order and solve the problems on LeetCode.
Should I buy AlgoExpert or Grokking the Coding Interview?
As of October 2026, AlgoExpert is sold as a $119 one-year All Access bundle with 200 coding questions and two-part video explanations, while Grokking the Coding Interview on DesignGurus is $197 one-time for lifetime access to a written course built around 41 patterns. Pick AlgoExpert if you learn from video, Grokking if you learn from reading and want access that does not expire.
Is Pramp still free?
Yes. Pramp's homepage says that since July 2024 all new Pramp sessions run on Aced Practice and are still free. As of October 2026, Aced's free Basic plan includes 5 peer mock interviews a month, and Pro adds unlimited peer mocks.
What are the best free coding interview prep tools?
NeetCode's free lists and videos, LeetCode's free tier, the Tech Interview Handbook and its Grind 75 planner, interviewing.io's free AI Interviewer, Aced's 5 free peer mocks a month, and CoPilot Interview's free plan, free browser mock interview, coding interview cheat sheet and Big-O complexity visualizer.
Is CoPilot Interview the same as GitHub Copilot?
No. CoPilot Interview is an interview practice and assistant app made by NeuraSense AI LLC. It is not affiliated with Microsoft, Microsoft Copilot or GitHub Copilot.