The Best Code Assessment Platforms in 2021
Find the best alternatives to HackerRank and Codility
[Read the updated version: The 5 best code assessment platforms for screening software developers in 2023]
All companies hire engineers a little bit differently, but the general flow is as follows:
- Begin with a 1–2 hour coding assessment to automatically screen and filter out candidates who lack the required skills or experience. This typically removes about 60–90% of applicants.
- Then schedule a 1-hour remote interview with real-time coding and whiteboarding.
- After determining that the candidate possesses the sufficient skillset, invite them to an “onsite” (or remote) culture interview. This usually involves giving them a sales demo so they understand the product, and then having their potential coworkers interview them.
- Finally, some companies that have multiple high-quality candidates will offer a take-home project where the candidates spend a few hours building an app and then upload it to a repository where their code can be reviewed and tested. This typically helps to identify a clear top candidate if you can only hire one.
Today, there are countless platforms for each of the above capabilities, and some platforms that offer all three. In this article, I’m going to focus on my experience with automated screening processes with coding challenges. Generally speaking, here are the factors that matter when selecting a platform:
- Fair and un-intrusive candidate experience. Remember that a good software engineer has many career options. If you use a platform with a terrible candidate experience that requires them to turn their video camera on, prevents them from using normal functions in their browser, and answer endless algorithmic riddles, don’t be surprised when most candidates, especially the best ones, simply don’t complete your screening process.
- Clear, straightforward, and affordable pricing. You don’t want a platform that severely limits how many candidates you can screen because that defeats the point of creating an equitable unbiased process where all candidates get a fair shot.
- Robust, modern challenge library. You need to ensure that the platform you select has challenges that match the skills and experience that you’re hiring for. Odds are the job you’re hiring for doesn’t merely involve solving riddles, so you’ll need a platform that offers more than algorithmic challenges.
- Easy-to-use interface for recruiters and non-technical stakeholders. Even if you’re an engineer, trust me that you don’t have the time to configure and manage every screening process. Pick a platform that even a recruiter can use to select a template and run a screening process without tons of technical implementation required.
Other important features like cheating detection and API integrations depend on your business and candidate pool. I’ll mention the pros and cons of various platforms below.
Beyond code assessments for screening, check out our other reviews for:
HackerRank
Let’s begin with HackerRank because they’re the most well known and serve as a good reference for the rest of my reviews. They’ve been around for more than a decade and have raised $60m+, earning them household name status. They focus on the world’s largest corporations and offer the most robust platform, essentially functioning as an entire applicant tracking system for your developer hiring, from sourcing to negotiating offers. If you have the budget for extensive implementation and configuration, need custom integrations and enterprise-grade functionality, then this is the solution for you.
HackerRank is a leading technical screening platform, backed by leading growth and venture firms. They target the Fortune 2000 with a robust and customizable platform for technical teams to recruit and hire for roles such as data science, DevOps, front-end developers, and more. They offer online coding assessments, real-time code-pair sessions, and take-home projects.
Pros
- All-in-one platform including screening, interviewing, take-home projects, and more
- Massive library of challenges, multiple choice questions, and tasks
- Enterprise-grade functionality from integrations to SSO
Cons
- Don’t expect to get very far on the free tier (maybe you can screen candidates for one role) before you encounter surprise limitations and an exhausting and opaque upsell process for a $20,000+/yr plan no matter what your company size is.
- Candidates frequently complain about HackerRank’s screening experience and intrusive approach to cheating detection (example and example) and may publicly shame your company’s unrealistic assessments on social media
Recommended for
- HackerRank is great for multinational organizations in regulated industries that require and can afford enterprise software with highly technical implementations and a public relations team to monitor social media and address candidate complaints
Coderbyte
Website | G2 | Subscription pricing | Pay-per-candidate pricing
Coderbyte has many of the everyday features you need from HackerRank, but packaged into a modern, self-service platform with straightforward pricing and a guaranteed high-quality candidate experience. They’re a newer entrant in the market, but have grown rapidly and now have 1,000+ customers, including some of the best brands in tech.
Coderbyte has the same, if not better, real-world challenge library and feature set for code assessments, while offering more clever approaches to cheating detection that your candidates won’t hate. With the option to screen unlimited candidates at 90% lower pricing than most of the industry (and the option for monthly subscriptions), the only reason not to use Coderbyte is if for whatever reason they lack an obscure skill that you’re screening for or if your IT team absolutely requires direct API access.
Pros
- It’s cost-effective: Coderbyte is the only platform that offers unlimited admins (recruiters/hiring managers), assessments, and candidates on any subscription plan, beginning at just $99/month when you pay annually.
- Coderbyte takes candidates cheating very seriously and has the industry’s only code editor with a built-in capability for candidates to search Google. This feature not only gives candidates a wonderful assessment experience, it also enables you to better understand how candidates think and code, and to detect plagiarism more comprehensively than any other platform in the market.
- Coderbyte’s candidate reports is the only one that gives you a full-screen recording (powered by Session Rewind). It also shows you when and how frequently candidates leave the tab, how frequently and legitimately candidates use the Google search, and all copying and pasting.
- Coderbyte offers advanced customizability and 1,000+ integrations via Zapier including Greenhouse, Workable, BreezyHR, Zoho Recruit, Bamboo HR, and Recruitee.
Cons
- Coderbyte does not offer direct API access
Recommended for
- Coderbyte is great for tech-forward organizations that are interviewing at scale or intermittently, and are comfortable operating a self-service tool.
- Coderbyte is also great for organizations that want to optimize the candidate experience to increase their hiring rates and decrease the number of candidates that drop out of the interview process.
Codility
Codility went through an impressive rebrand and updated user experience recently to modernize their platform. Like HackerRank, they target large corporations with similar enterprise functionality and customizability. There aren’t huge differences between the two platforms so if you’re thinking about moving forward with HackerRank, definitely consider at least getting a demo of Codility (unfortunately they don’t even offer a free trial without first talking to their sales team).
Pros
- Codility offers real-time coding interviews and take-home projects in addition to automated screening with code challenges
- Codility also offers many of the same enterprise features and challenges library as HackerRank
- Codility also offers advanced cheating detection. However, like HackerRank, many candidates may choose not to take the assessment because of it.
Cons
- No pricing information available online, but expect to go through a lengthy sales process and to pay a little bit less than you will with HackerRank, especially if you’re switching
Recommended for
- Codility is great for multinational organizations that want to switch from HackerRank and lock in a lower price for the same enterprise features
CodeSignal
Website | G2 | No pricing page
CodeSignal used to offer straightforward pricing for self-service functionality, however, as they’ve grown they’ve begun to focus more on enterprise customers, and now require you to request a demo to get pricing information. That being said, it still offers an intuitive and modern experience and will require way less technical configuration than HackerRank or Codility.
Pros
- Like the other platforms above, CodeSignal also offers coding interviews and take-home projects, in addition to screening
- By far the best user experience for any of the platforms that focus on enterprise.
- A high-quality candidate experience — unlike HackerRank, you won’t find candidates complaining online en masse
- More affordable than Codility or HackerRank
Cons
- No free trial or sense of price until you engage with a salesperson
Recommended for
- CodeSignal is for hyper-growth, venture-backed startups and multinational organizations hiring 25–50 engineers per quarter.
HackerEarth
HackerEarth bridges the gap nicely between self-service and enterprise functionality. It offers a comprehensive screening product at a reasonable price, but the flexibility to upgrade when you need advanced functionality and API access. Unfortunately, their user experience is clunky and outdated, and the candidate experience leaves a lot to be desired. HackerEarth is unique however in its approach to offering a ‘hackathon’ capability and for using AI for grading.
Pros
- Like the other platforms above, HackerEarth also offers real-time interviews. In addition though, they offer the ability to conduct community hackathons, which are great for career fairs and employee engagement.
- HackerEarth is the rare platform that offers both a truly self-service option at a reasonable price but also enterprise pricing as needed
Cons
- A large portion of candidates drop-off during the tests because of the extremely invasive anti-plagiarism features (like recording candidates faces while they code).
Recommended for
- HackerEarth is great for staffing agencies and companies hiring developers right out of school, where there is a high likelihood of inexperienced candidates and cheating.
- HackerEarth is also great for companies using a legacy technology stack, like .NET.
DevSkiller, iMocha, TestDome, and Qualified
DevSkiller, iMocha, TestDome, and Qualified
I’ve grouped all these companies together because they share a lot in common and are honestly all difficult to give an honest review. Each of these solutions seems to rebrand and change their pricing frequently, so you really just need to do your own research at the time of reading this. On any given day, they might have a pricing page and then the next day you’ll have to request a demo.
I’ve had mixed experiences using each, but they more or less all offer some version of automated screening and customization, with some nuanced features and differences. The most compelling reason to use them is to diversify your assessments because some of the more well-known brands I reviewed earlier suffer from candidates leaking answers to their older challenges on Reddit.
