Best technical interview platforms in 2026: coding and AI

As of November 2026, the best technical interview platforms are CoderPad for live pair-programming interviews in a multi-file IDE, HackerRank for take-home tests, live interviews and an AI interviewer on one published price, CodeSignal for standardized first-round assessments with AI interviewers and proctoring, Codility for assessing how engineers work with coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex, and Karat for outsourcing the live technical interview to its own trained interviewers. HackerEarth is a lower-cost option for tests plus panel interviews, and TestGorilla suits teams that add a coding test to a wider skills assessment. Most now let you switch AI assistance on or off and record every prompt, so the real decision is the format: live, take-home or outsourced.

How we chose these platforms

• It runs the technical step itself: the candidate writes or reviews code in the vendor's environment, or the vendor's own interviewers run the interview.
• It is sold today under that name. Byteboard appears under Karat, which acquired it. We left out DevSkiller: its site now redirects to SkillPanel, a workforce skills platform, and we could not confirm the hiring product is sold under that name.
• It says how it handles AI: whether candidates may use it, whether it is recorded, and what gets flagged.
• Every fact comes from the vendor's own site or help center, checked in November 2026 and linked below. We did not score or rank the products.

How do the technical interview platforms compare?

As published by each vendor, as of November 2026. "Not published" means we could not find it on the vendor's own site.

Sources, checked November 2026: CoderPad pricing, Interview, cheating prevention and integrations; HackerRank pricing and Interview; CodeSignal pricing, live interviews and cheating and fraud; Codility pricing; Karat Karat Interview, customer FAQ and ATS integrations; HackerEarth pricing, FaceCode and proctoring; TestGorilla pricing.

Which platforms are built for live coding interviews?

CoderPad

CoderPad Interview is a collaborative IDE, which CoderPad compares to VS Code, with a REPL, IntelliSense, multi-file environments, custom databases, npm package installs, a digital whiteboard, private interviewer notes and code playback across 99+ languages and frameworks (CoderPad Interview). The same account covers Screen, its take-home tests, and Qualify, which collects recorded video answers for an AI reviewer. Every plan includes "AI Assist" in the pad, and CoderPad says prompts are captured so you can see how a candidate used it. Agentic interviews and Claude Code or Codex in the pad start at Frontier Lite. Its cheating prevention page lists copy-paste tracking, IDE exit detection, plagiarism detection against previous candidates' code and AI follow-up questions; it does not offer photo ID verification, and webcam proctoring with AI behavior analysis is an Enterprise feature (CoderPad). Prices: Starter $80 a month billed annually for 60 tests or interviews a year, or $120 monthly for 5 a month; Team $400 or $500 for 360 a year or 30 a month; Frontier Lite $1,000 a month, annual only; Enterprise by quote; extra tests or interviews $30 each. The pricing table lists ATS integrations under Enterprise. Best for: engineering teams that run their own live rounds and want to watch how a candidate works with AI. Trade-off: interview quotas on the lower plans.

HackerRank

HackerRank sells three products on one attempt allowance: Screen (take-home tests), Interview (live pair programming) and Chakra, an AI interviewer that runs a conversational screen and returns a transcript, session replay and scores. In Interview, the candidate gets a real codebase, an agentic IDE, terminal access and file navigation; interviewers can watch the candidate's exchanges with an unguarded AI assistant in real time, and Scorecard Assist fills the rubric from the transcript, code and test cases (HackerRank Interview). Every plan lists candidate model selection (Claude, Gemini, GPT), guarded or unguarded AI, multi-file questions, AI plagiarism detection and a Screen-to-Interview Identity Match that uses facial recognition. Prices: Starter $79 a month billed annually ($948 a year, 60 candidate attempts) or $99 monthly for 5 a month; Pro $419 a month billed annually ($5,028, 360 attempts) or $529 monthly for 30; Enterprise custom; extra attempts $20 each. ATS integrations start on Pro with Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby (HackerRank pricing). Best for: teams that want take-homes, live rounds and an AI interviewer on one bill. Trade-off: no ATS link on Starter, and facial recognition brings biometric consent questions.

CodeSignal

CodeSignal's live interviews run in a cloud IDE with build tools, package managers, filesystems, interactive preview and mobile emulators, plus built-in video, audio, chat and whiteboarding, using 4,000+ questions across 70+ languages and frameworks (CodeSignal). Its pricing table puts live interviews, AI interviewers for product, design and engineering roles, agentic assessments with Claude and Codex, AI proctoring, ID verification and a Suspicion Score on every plan; letting candidates use AI during an assessment starts on Grow, and live interview proctoring is Pro only. CodeSignal says its proctoring records video, audio and screen and that human reviewers validate flagged activity (CodeSignal). Prices: Build $79 a month billed annually or $99 monthly (60 or 5 credits); Grow $479 or $599 (420 or 35 credits); Pro custom; extra credits $20. ATS integrations start on Grow with Gem and Ashby; Workday, iCIMS and Oracle are Pro (CodeSignal pricing). Best for: consistent first-round screens at volume, with an AI interviewer when engineers are short of time.

Which platforms are strongest for take-home assessments?

Codility

Codility includes Screen (assessments) and Interview (live) in every plan, from one invite allowance. Candidates work in real multi-file projects with an AI Assistant on models up to Sonnet class and with Claude Code and Codex set up in the terminal, and every prompt, command and code change is saved; you switch AI on or off per task or interview, and Enterprise adds frontier models in live interviews. Its FAQ says "no AI or machine learning makes hiring decisions" and that selected task types are scored against fixed rules. Online plans include plagiarism detection, proctoring with snapshots and task leakage protection; ID verification, video proctoring, interview recording and an environment with databases, caches and queues are Enterprise features. Prices: online plans from $4,800 a year for 200 invites or $800 a month for 25, up to 1,400 invites a year; Enterprise by quote. Online plans include one ATS integration, such as Greenhouse, Lever or Ashby (Codility pricing). Best for: teams that want to see how engineers work with coding agents, in both take-home and live rounds. Trade-off: the highest entry price here among self-serve plans.

HackerEarth

HackerEarth sells assessments in 40+ programming languages, FaceCode for live interviews and OnScreen, an AI interviewer. FaceCode supports panels of up to five interviewers, a private interviewer chat, a diagram board for system design, code replay, and an AI-compiled report drawing on the code, interviewer scores and transcript; you can hide a candidate's name and photo during the session (FaceCode). For proctored tests, its Smart Browser blocks virtual machines, screen sharing, copy-paste and generative AI tools, and video and audio proctoring use AI snapshots, eye tracking and face recognition (HackerEarth proctoring). Prices: Growth $99 a month (10 credits) or $990 a year (120 credits); Scale $399 a month (25 credits) or $3,990 a year (300 credits), adding ATS and calendar integrations; Enterprise custom; a 30-day free trial (HackerEarth pricing). Best for: budget-conscious teams that want tests and panel interviews together. Trade-off: eye and audio tracking can flag ordinary behavior, so plan for accommodations.

TestGorilla

TestGorilla is an assessment platform, not a live coding tool. On its Core and Plus plans, a built-in coding IDE runs algorithmic, debugging and language-specific challenges with code playback and automated scoring; custom coding challenges, the full AI interview library, ID verification and ATS integrations (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, BambooHR, Ashby and more) are on Plus. Every plan includes a behavior monitor, webcam snapshots, disabled copy-paste, full-screen mode and timed tests. Prices: Free with 10 credits a month; Core from $215 a month and Plus from $520 a month, billed annually (TestGorilla pricing). Best for: hiring teams that test coding alongside other skills for many roles. Trade-off: no live pair-programming round. Our guide to types of pre-employment assessments explains what each kind of test measures.

Which platform will run the technical interview for you?

Karat

Karat is interviewing as a service: you invite a candidate, and one of Karat's trained Interview Engineers runs a live technical interview using Karat's content, with scheduling 24/7, including evenings and weekends, across a library of over 100 languages and frameworks (Karat Interview). Karat Qualify, its screen, is a 15-question adaptive multiple-choice exercise that Karat describes as intentionally not a code test (Karat Qualify). Karat announced in January 2025 that it had acquired Byteboard, a project-based assessment, and byteboard.dev now redirects to Karat (Karat). Its customer FAQ says some interview modules include a built-in AI assistant, some allow outside tools including generative AI, and some allow none; interviewers flag suspected cheating, and a second interviewer reviews flagged interviews. Every interview is recorded, video and code playback can only be viewed on Karat's platform, and Karat keeps candidate data as its own controller for up to five years (Karat FAQ). Its help center lists Greenhouse, Lever, Jobvite, iCIMS, Ashby and Workday integrations. Price: not published; sales quote. Best for: companies whose engineers cannot give up hours to first-round interviews. Trade-off: your team does not meet the candidate in that round.

Should candidates be allowed to use AI in a coding interview?

The platforms have mostly answered yes, as long as you choose per round and can see what happened. CoderPad, HackerRank and Codility record the candidate's AI conversations; Codility lets you switch AI on or off per task, HackerRank offers guarded or unguarded AI, CodeSignal lists in-session AI assistance from its Grow plan, and Karat sells modules with and without AI. HackerEarth's Smart Browser makes the opposite choice. A sensible design:

• Match the job. If engineers on the team use AI tools daily, a no-AI round tests a skill they will not use. Keep one round without AI only if the job needs it, such as reasoning about fundamentals under no assistance.
• Give tasks AI cannot finish alone: a bug in a multi-file repository, a vague requirement to clarify, AI-generated code to review and fix.
• Score the judgment, not the typing: did the candidate check the output, test it and explain why it works?
• Write the rule down and tell candidates before the round, the same way for everyone. Our AI use policy template for interviews has wording.

How do these platforms detect AI help and proxy candidates?

Inside their own environments they flag signals: copy-paste, tab switching or IDE exits (CoderPad, HackerRank), plagiarism checks (CoderPad, HackerRank, Codility, HackerEarth), webcam or video proctoring (CodeSignal, HackerEarth, TestGorilla snapshots, and Codility and CoderPad on Enterprise), and identity checks: CodeSignal matches a government photo ID to the person on camera, and HackerRank compares the face from the screening test with the interview. None of this covers a video call you run yourself, and a flag is a lead, not proof. The FBI's January 23, 2025 alert described North Korean IT workers "using artificial intelligence and face-swapping technology during video job interviews" and recommended identity verification during interviewing and onboarding (FBI IC3). Our comparison of tools to detect AI use in interviews covers live-call detectors, and the candidate identity verification checklist sets out when and how to check ID as its own step. For a take-home, a short live follow-up where the candidate walks through and changes their own code is still the simplest authorship check.

Do you need a platform, or will a video call and a shared editor do?

A video call plus a free shared editor works when you make a few engineering hires a year, the round is mostly conversation (system design, past projects), or a senior engineer runs every interview the same way. A platform earns its price when several interviewers need the same questions and rubric, when you want code playback and prompt history to review later, when you screen more candidates than engineers can meet, or when results must land in the ATS. If you stay with your own video call, Interview Signal can run beside it on the interviewer's computer, with no bot on the call, to keep a live transcript and fill a scorecard; it hears the conversation but does not see the code (how it works in technical interviews). We make Interview Signal; everything about the other products on this page comes from their own sites, linked and dated.

How do you choose by company size and hiring volume?

• First technical hires, a handful of candidates a month: HackerRank Starter, CodeSignal Build, CoderPad Starter or HackerEarth Growth, all priced on their sites. Pick by format: CoderPad if most rounds are live.
• Growing teams hiring across several roles: HackerRank Pro, CodeSignal Grow, CoderPad Team or Codility's online plans; check that your ATS is on the plan you buy.
• Engineering time is the bottleneck: Karat for first-round interviews, or an AI interviewer from HackerRank or CodeSignal for the first screen.
• Many non-engineering roles too: TestGorilla, adding a coding test where needed.
• Agencies screening developers for clients: a take-home platform with ATS write-back, then a recruiter screen. Our AI tools for technical recruiters covers sourcing and interview notes.

What rules apply to technical interview platforms?

Timed tests and disability accommodations. Under ADA regulations, employment tests must be given so that results reflect the skill being measured rather than a sensory, manual or speaking impairment, unless that skill is what the test measures (29 CFR 1630.11). The EEOC's "Job Applicants and the ADA" gives the example that a 30-minute timed written test "may pose a problem for a person whose learning disability requires additional time," and says an employer may tell applicants what the process involves and ask whether they will need a reasonable accommodation for it (EEOC). Before you buy, confirm you can extend or remove a time limit for one candidate and that the proctoring will not penalize assistive technology. Our guide to ADA accommodations in interviews covers how to offer and arrange them.

AI scoring in New York City. Local Law 144 covers a tool that issues a score, classification or recommendation used to "substantially assist or replace discretionary decision making" (NYC Admin. Code § 20-870), so AI grading and AI interviewers are the features to check. Such a tool needs a bias audit within one year of use, a published summary of results, and notice to candidates 10 business days before use (NYC DCWP, checked November 2026). CodeSignal lists "validated content & bias audits" on its Pro plan; ask any vendor for its audit, and see our Local Law 144 bias audit guide for what it must contain. Facial recognition identity checks, such as HackerRank's identity match or HackerEarth's face recognition, can also bring state biometric privacy laws into play, such as Illinois' BIPA. This is not legal advice.

Setup checklist for a technical interview platform

1. Decide the format of each round: take-home, live, or outsourced, and how long each takes.
2. Set the AI rule per round (allowed, recorded, or off) and put it in the invitation.
3. Pick or write tasks that mirror the job; avoid puzzles the team never solves at work.
4. Write the rubric before the first candidate, with anchors for each score.
5. Connect the ATS on a test record and confirm results land where recruiters look.
6. Offer accommodations in every invitation and know how to extend a timer.
7. Decide who reviews integrity flags and what follow-up question they ask before anyone is rejected.
8. Run two engineers through the test yourself, then track pass rates by round after the first month.