The 5 best code assessment platforms for screening software developers in 2023

Thoughtfully-crafted reviews and recommendations by experts about Codility, HackerRank, Coderbyte, and more

Fortunately for engineering teams, we’re experiencing a golden age of code assessment platforms. The pandemic forced recruiting to go remote which led to a massive amount of investment and innovation in the space. Today, organizations have countless code assessment platform options (50+ according to a quick Google Search) and the biggest challenge is finding the right tool.

[Read: The 8 Best Live Coding Interview Platforms in 2023]

I’ve used each assessment tool and have been doing the best annual reviews since 2019, but before sharing reviews of each, you should consider which of the following factors matter most for your decision:

• Challenge library: Are you using lower-level programming languages or more modern frameworks? How closely do your assessments match “real world” work? Do you want to use a platform’s build-in library or the ability to customize your own challenges? Do you want to see a candidate write some basic functions or debug a complex full-stack app? Or do you just want them to answer some basic multiple choice questions?
• Grading and reporting: Do you want a basic score based on test cases or a more comprehensive score based on code efficiency? Do you want to leave notes and fill out a custom scorecard?
• Cheating detection: What measures do you want taken to prevent or catch cheating? Do you need video proctoring, plagiarism detection, tab leaving, and screen recording?
• Ease-of-use: How important is the admin and candidate experience? Do you want to use pre-built templates for assessments or create your own from scratch? Do you need customer support?
• Affordability: Do you know how many candidates you want to assess? Do you have an unlimited budget with deep-pocketed investors? Or are you trying to be cost-effective? Keep in mind that with all the layoffs happening across tech, you will likely receive significantly more qualified candidates than ever before so should account for that as you price out various platforms.

With each of the above factors in mind, let’s review the best five platforms. There are certainly other impressive platforms out there, but given the range in services, feature set, and affordability of the platforms below, I can’t think of any legitimate reasons to use anything else.

Coderbyte

Website | Pricing ($) | G2 Reviews

In the past two years, Coderbyte revamped their assessment capability set to be the most powerful on the market with a number of unique features not found elsewhere. With 3,000 customers and an affordable unlimited candidate and admin plan, organizations will find few reasons not to love Coderbyte.

Pros

• Code challenges: Coderbyte offers more code types than other platforms. For coding, you can use or create custom front-end challenges, back-end challenges, full-stack multi-file project-based challenges, database challenges, and use unit tests for grading.
• Other question types: Coderbyte also offers more other challenge and question types than other platforms. You can create challenges in Jupyter Notebooks and Spreadsheets, along with multiple choice questions and open-ended questions with optional video responses.
• Groundbreaking cheating detection and prevention: Coderbyte’s exhaustive list of capabilities include full-screen recording (not just coding) with IP tracking powered by Session Rewind, challenges that require 100% unique code solutions, cross-candidate plagiarism detection, copy and paste detection, tab leaving, and even what candidates Googled during the assessment.
• Candidate experience: Coderbyte has long been a pioneer when it comes to candidate assessments, providing features and best practices to reinforce employer branding and advocate for more transparent recruiting practices. To that end, two notable features are the ability to compensate candidates with one-click and the ability to anonymize reports to eliminate internal bias with regard to recruiting decision-making.
• Advanced reporting: Each assessment includes an individualized report per candidate with overall and breakdown scores, skill ratings, scorecards completed by your team, and custom notes.
• Enterprise-grade: You can expect all the standard enterprise functionality with Coderbyte, including SSO and API access.
• Affordability: Coderbyte offers the industry’s only unlimited candidate and admin plan that includes live coding interviews along with automated assessments, and it’s just $199/month plus you get a 14-day free trial. As tech layoffs continue, employers that are still hiring will receive many more applicants than before, so the unlimited plan is very useful. Alternatively, you can pay-as-you-go.

Cons

• Coderbyte has a large library of technical challenges with the ability for you to create your own, but other platforms will typically offer larger libraries.
• In order to ensure the industry’s best reputation for candidate experience, Coderbyte takes a firm stand against video proctoring. You cannot use Coderbyte to activate the candidate’s webcam and intimidate them while they code.

HackerRank

Website | Pricing ($$$$) | G2 Reviews

HackerRank has long been the brand name in the code assessment space, and for good reason. They offer a reliable, enterprise-grade platform, even if it is at the expensive end of the price spectrum.

Pros

• Code challenges: HackerRank offers an impressive library of 3,100 challenges spanning 27 roles and 170 skills. You can also easily create your own questions and automated scoring, and manage your own library.
• Other question types: While not nearly as exhaustive as Coderbyte, HackerRank also offers a variety of question types, including Jupyter Notebooks, multiple choice, and open-ended question.
• Cheating detection: HackerRank has a solid but rudimentary list of cheating detection and plagiarism features, from checking code similarity to video proctoring.
• Reporting: HackerRank’s candidate reports are daily standard with benchmarking and a combination of automated and manual grading.
• Enterprise-grade: Focused on the Fortune 500, HackerRank is unbeatable when it comes to enterprise features. From comprehensive audit logs to ATS integrations, SSO, GDPR, and ISO 27001 compliance, HackerRank truly checks all the boxes. They also have advanced team management and library sharing permissions.

Cons

• While HackerRank offers a slew of enterprise features and functionality, the experience can feel bloated and cluttered as though it’s designed for Fortune 500 organizations and requires months to implement.
• Beginning at $319/month, HackerRank’s pricing seems reasonable until you realize their entry plan is capped at just 30 candidates per month and one admin. If you’re assessing a moderate amount of candidates, you’ll almost certainly have to engage a sales rep and be forced into an annual contract for $10,000+/year.
• You may encounter candidates who downright refuse to use HackerRank because of legal threats they’ve made targeting the open source community about code samples.

Codility

Website | Pricing ($$$$) | G2 Reviews

Focused exclusively on enterprise buyers, Codility emphasizes high-volume hiring, a robust library of integrations, extensive customization, and plagiarism prevention and detection. It has become an all-around reliable and consistent platform.

Pros

• Advanced cheating detection and prevention: If you have a massive pipeline of candidates you can’t definitively trust, Codility offers the industry’s best features to mitigate cheating. They have identity verification, network IP detection, leaked solution alerts, and code similarity checks.
• Collaboration: For large organizations, Codility offers some sophisticated team management tools like the ability to assign a candidate review to an admin, account-wide settings, email reports, and folder-based organization.
• Account management: With every subscription, you’re going to get lots of hands-on support from specialists to help you create custom assessments, workflows, and integrations during a lengthy implementation process.

Cons

• Limited capabilities beyond coding assessments: If you’re hiring for more technical roles beyond software development, Codility isn’t a great fit. They don’t have assessments for interpersonal skills or even tech-adjacent roles like data analytics or product management.
• Codility doesn’t have a free trial or transparent pricing. As they’re focused on Fortune 500 buyers, you have to go through a lengthy sales and “discovery” process to get a price quote. Expect to pay minimally $6,000/year for a limited volume of candidates.

CodeSignal

Website | Pricing ($$$) | G2 Reviews

CodeSignal offers premium support and an elegant experience, and is typically at the cutting-edge of the industry. However, they invest heavily in proprietary features like their custom-built IDE called “Flight Simulator” and their expert-crafted assessments called “Certify” that are uniquely valuable but difficult to compare to other platforms and can lead to frustrating lock-in.

Pros

• Proprietary IDE: CodeSignal’s custom IDE has some advanced features like terminal access and auto-tabbing configurations, although it may feel less familiar than other platform’s IDEs that are built on more standardized environments.
• Proprietary assessment: In addition to being able to create custom assessments with hand-selected questions, CodeSignal has expert-configured “Certify” assessments that offer more robust grading than you’ll find elsewhere.
• Premium library: With a robust library consisting of various question types including code challenges in 40+ languages, multiple choice, and text response questions, CodeSignal offers one of the industry’s best libraries. They also enable you to see and create solutions and apply custom scoring.

Cons

• Lock-in: Because CodeSignal has so many proprietary features, your organization is at risk of building a hiring process that can’t easily be replicated if you ever decide to migrate to another assessment platform.
• Limited capabilities beyond coding assessments: If you’re hiring for more technical roles beyond software development, CodeSignal isn’t a great fit. They don’t have assessments for interpersonal skills or even tech-adjacent roles like data analytics or product management.
• CodeSignal doesn’t have a free trial or transparent pricing. You have to go through a lengthy sales process just to discover that it’s expensive and that the pricing often feels arbitrary (as in, another customer may be paying way more or less for the exact same limits). You will often have your pricing increased each year, sometimes by more than 100%.

TestGorilla

Website | Pricing ($$) | G2 Reviews

As the newest entrant in the market, TestGorilla has quickly made a splash with a jaw-dropping question and assessment library for a wide variety of roles, and an interface that’s easy to use for admins and candidates alike.

Pros

• Library: While they don’t exclusively focus on technology roles, TestGorilla has assessments for every coding language and skill in addition to interpersonal skills. However, their assessments primarily consist of multiple choice questions which are surface-level and easy to cheat on.
• Ease of use: Because all the assessments are multiple choice questions in plain English, getting started for admins is very easy. The candidate experience is simple and predictable.
• Customization: From custom branding to creating custom questions with custom time limits, TestGorilla probably has the most customization options in the market.
• Ambitious roadmap: TestGorilla is very transparent about their recent product updates and upcoming priorities.

Cons

• Limited question types and technical evaluation depth: TestGorilla offers a limited and primitive code editor, so the ability to test technical skills is severely limited.
• No interviewing: If you want a platform for both assessments and real-time interviews, you’ll need to purchase a license from another vendor as well since TestGorilla only offers assessments.
• Confusing pricing: You need a PhD to understand their pricing page, which changes on an almost weekly basis (and sometimes even when you just reload the page). At first their plans seem affordable but most of the features and differences are not actually discernible until you become an expert user on the platform.