The 8 Best Live Coding Interview Platforms in 2023

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

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

[Read: The 5 best code assessment platforms for screening software developers in 2023]

I’ve used each interview 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:

• Level of service: Do you and your team want a self-service tool to conduct the interviews and have full control over evaluating candidates? Or do you want a full-service solution where a third-party conducts the interviews on your behalf and provides recommendations? Alternatively, some companies with limited hiring needs and primitive processes repurpose several tools to create a duct-taped solution. I’ll cover each below.
• Depth of technical evaluation: How closely do your interviews match “real world” work? Do you want to see a candidate write some basic functions or debug a complex full-stack app? Do you want to review architectural diagrams together?
• Breadth of roles: Are you only interviewing full-stack developers or do you also want a platform that can help you evaluate DevOps engineers, data engineers, data scientists, and more?
• Ease-of-use: How important is it for your team to have a platform where you can easily create workflows and templates to ensure that interviews are consistent and unbiased? Or do you just want to start with a blank coding IDE each time? How important is the candidate experience?
• Affordability: Do you know how many candidates you want to interview? 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 nine 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
Type: Self-service

In the past two years, Coderbyte revamped their live coding interview feature 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

• Technical evaluations: Coderbyte has a full-stack multi-file coding IDE with built-in video/audio and support for multiple interviewers.
• Breadth of roles: In addition to a coding IDE, you can toggle to embedded whiteboards, Jupyter Notebooks, and spreadsheets to evaluate candidates for a number of other technical roles.
• Ease-of-use: Coderbyte offers unmatched convenience. Enjoy a number of killer features like unlimited admins, the ability to create custom questions and multi-question interview templates, passcodes for non-admins to start interviews, custom scorecards, and interview playback.
• Affordability: Coderbyte offers the industry’s only unlimited candidate and admin plan that includes automated assessments along with interviews, 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

• If you only need a single admin account to interview a handful of candidates, there are cheaper starter plans elsewhere. But those plans will quickly get more expensive at any moderate scale.
• 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.

CoderPad

Website | Pricing ($$$) | G2 Reviews
Type: Self-service

CoderPad used to be the clear winner and household name in the space, but has been slow to innovate since they were acquired by a PE firm and need to now focus on enterprise deals. Nevertheless, they have a tried and true interview experience that many engineering managers and candidates are familiar with.

Pros

• Ease-of-use: CoderPad makes it super easy to start an interview (or a “pad” as they call it) with built-in video/audio. They even have a Google Chrome extension for scheduling and starting interviews. You can toggle to an embedded drawing mode and access a playback mode.
• Affordability: You can interview two candidates for free per month.

Cons

• For how long CoderPad has been around, their platform is shockingly limited in terms of languages and features. They don’t offer Jupyter Notebooks, don’t offer support for back-end frameworks like Django or Ruby on Rails, and have a very primitive capability for multi-file, full-stack applications. You’re also very limited in overall candidate management and scorecard capabilities.
• Virtually every company will exhaust the free plan immediately, and then CoderPad actually becomes one of the most expensive platforms on a per-candidate basis. You’ll have to pay even more if you want their automated assessment features.

HackerRank

Website | Pricing ($$$) | G2 Reviews
Type: Self-service

When it comes to evaluating engineers, HackerRank is the IBM in the space and as the saying goes: “nobody gets fired for buying IBM.” They have an impressive enterprise-grade feature set and user experience which of course comes with a steep cost and annual commitment.

Pros

• Technical evaluations: HackerRank has a full-stack multi-file coding IDE with built-in video/audio and a slick integration with Zoom with support for multiple interviewers.
• Breadth of roles: In addition to a coding IDE, you can toggle to embedded whiteboards and Jupyter Notebooks.
• Ease-of-use: HackerRank offers impressive convenience including a virtual lobby, multi-question interview templates, custom scorecards, and interview playback.
• Affordability: HackerRank offers 5 free interviews per month for a single interviewer and a strictly limited feature set. After that, the price begins to increase dramatically with plans typically beginning at $10,000/year.

Cons

• While HackerRank offers virtually every feature you could want, the experience can feel bloated and cluttered as though it’s designed for Fortune 500 organizations and requires months to implement.
• Don’t be fooled by a “free” starter plan that has endless restrictions. You’ll easily spend at least $3,000/year to interview a moderate amount of candidates and that’s if you only have one interviewer. You’ll pay additionally for more interviews and automated assessments. Expect to spend $10,000+/year when you use HackerRank.
• 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.

CodeSignal

Website | Pricing ($$) | G2 Reviews
Type: Self-service

For organizations that want premium support with a great interviewer and candidate experience, CodeSignal truly delivers. They provide a robust feature set and are typically at the cutting-edge of the industry. They built a proprietary IDE with some advanced features, although it may feel less familiar than other platform’s IDEs that are typically powered by Monaco.

Pros

• Technical evaluations: CodeSignal’s proprietary IDE has powerful autocomplete and terminal access with built-in video/audio.
• Breadth of roles: In addition to their IDE, you can toggle to an embedded whiteboard. They’re focused exclusively on software development and don’t have many features for any other roles.
• Ease-of-use: CodeSignal offers the best and most modern coding challenge library and grading systems.

Cons

• If you’re hiring for more technical roles beyond software development, CodeSignal isn’t a great fit. While they have a great assessment platform, it’s entirely focused on coding.
• 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%.

Byteboard

Website | Pricing ($$$$) | G2 Reviews
Type: Full-service

Built by former Google engineers, Byteboard aims to rethink the traditional coding interview to be more unbiased and candidate-friendly (somewhat ironic since Google is the company that notoriously made interviews into intimidating riddles in the first place). By conducting the interview process end-to-end and providing a recommendation to your engineering team, Byteboard controls the experience to ensure consistency. Because it’s a full-service offering, it’s many times more expensive than self-service platforms, but venture-backed cash-rich startups in Silicon Valley will appreciate the time savings.

Pros

• Technical evaluations: Byteboard maintains a roster of vetted engineers and calibrated questions to conduct the interviews on your behalf.
• Ease-of-use: In theory you can completely offload the technical interview process to Byteboard and you’ll get a robust report and recommendation to inform your candidate evaluation.

Cons

• Limited languages: Back-end interviews can only be conducted in Java, Python, Ruby, C++, C#, node.js, Go, and PHP and front-end interviews are limited to HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
• Limited question set: Interviews must use one of Byteboard’s questions for the interview. You cannot use a custom interview question designed to match your day-to-day project requirements.
• Lack of control: You offload the entire interview process to Byteboard and must trust their engineers, questions, and recommendations.
• Expect to spend at least $25,000+/year if you’re doing even a moderate amount of hiring.

Karat

Website | Pricing ($$$$) | G2 Reviews
Type: Full-service

Like Byteboard, Karat is a full-service engineering interviewing solution for teams that want to offload interviews entirely. They have a variety of packages with more robust enterprise-grade features like ATS integrations, but each plan is going to be considerably more expensive than self-service platforms.

Pros

• Technical evaluations: Karat has a staff of trained engineers to conduct 60-minute interviews in 26 different languages for all skill levels.
• Ease-of-use: While primarily a professional services firm, Karat has built some of their own technology to make the candidate experience solid and to deliver insightful reports with thoughtful rubrics to employers.

Cons

• Limited customization: Interviews must defer to Karat’s questions for the interview. You cannot use a custom interview question designed to match your day-to-day project requirements.
• Lack of control: You offload the entire interview process to Karat and must trust their engineers, questions, and recommendations.
• Expect to spend at least $25,000+/year if you’re doing even a moderate amount of hiring.

Replit + Zoom

Website | Pricing ($)
Type: Duct-taped

Replit is the cloud-based coding IDE that has taken the world by storm, gaining adoption across universities. They offer a primitive feature set for conducting interviews. If your organization already uses Replit and wants the benefit of a familiar and powerful coding IDE, you can duct-tape a workflow that includes Zoom and Calendly to conduct interviews.

Pros

• Technical evaluations: Replit is undoubtedly the best online coding IDE available and will provide the most powerful environments for full-stack technical evaluations. It also comes with embedded whiteboards.
• If you’re already using Replit, upgrading to get interview features via Teams Pro is an affordable add-on and you already have environments configured for running a “real world” interview.

Cons

• Running the interviews via a duct-taped process can feel janky and unprofessional. You’ll have to create bespoke processes for scheduling, custom questions, interview templates, candidate scorecards, etc. You’ll almost certainly run into bumps in the road that offset any conveniences.

CodeSandbox + Zoom

Website | Pricing ($)
Type: Duct-taped

Like Replit, CodeSandbox is a popular cloud-based coding IDE with a primitive feature set for conducting interviews. If your organization already uses CodeSandbox and wants the benefit of a familiar and powerful coding IDE, you can duct-tape a workflow that includes Zoom and Calendly to conduct interviews.

Pros

• Technical evaluations: Like Replit, CodeSandbox offers a better coding IDE than what you’ll find across interview platforms. It has elegant built-in comments.
• If you’re already using CodeSandbox, you don’t have to pay anything additional to use it for interviews, plus you already have environments configured for running a “real world” interview.

Cons

• Running the interviews via a duct-taped process can feel janky and unprofessional. You’ll have to create bespoke processes for scheduling, custom questions, interview templates, candidate scorecards, etc. You’ll almost certainly run into bumps in the road that offset any conveniences.