Coding Interview Prep in Two Weeks: What Actually Fits the Window
Affiliate disclosure: some links here are affiliate links and we may earn a commission at no cost to you. The order below follows the stated criterion and nothing else; no vendor paid for a position or saw this page before it went up.
Two weeks is not enough time to become good at algorithms. It is plenty of time to stop losing interviews for avoidable reasons, and the fastest route starts without paying anyone. Tech Interview Handbook’s Grind 75 tool converts the hours you actually have into a finite list — its default schedule is 75 questions and roughly 64 hours — and interviewing.io’s AI Interviewer runs FAANG-style coding and system design mocks free, with detailed feedback at the end. That is a plan and a microphone, for nothing, today.
Money helps in exactly two ways: it buys a term that matches your window, or an hour with someone who interviews for a living. It also sets traps, because several of the cheapest-looking numbers in this niche are annual rates printed as monthly ones, and almost nobody publishes what happens at renewal. This page ranks ten platforms by time to value for a fortnight buyer, using only what each vendor publishes on its own pages, all read on 2026-09-17.
What this ranking measures
This ranking measures three things and refuses to measure anything else. First, whether there is a structured path — a plan, a course, an ordered list — rather than a pile of problems you have to sequence yourself. Second, how fast you can start: is there a free tier you can open today, how much friction sits in front of it, and is the shortest purchasable term closer to a fortnight than a year. Third, whether the platform gives you speaking practice as well as coding, and whether the voice on the other end is a person or a model. It ignores library size, brand reputation, teaching quality, long-term value and employer-side hiring features. Where a vendor does not publish what the criterion needs — a renewal price, a free-tier limit, a refund window — that costs it places rather than earning it the benefit of the doubt. Every figure below comes from the vendor’s own pages, read on 2026-09-17. Nobody subscribed to anything or sat an interview on any of these.
The short answer
It is the only platform on this sheet where the speaking half is free and covers both coding and system design, with written feedback at the end and over 200 problems attached. If you then want a professional, interviews are bought one at a time starting at $179, so nothing keeps billing after your interview date, and the vendor promises a full refund if you are unhappy. For a fortnight, a per-interview purchase beats every subscription here.
The only tool here that converts your available hours into a finite plan: Grind 75 defaults to 75 questions and about 64 hours across eight weeks, and rebuilds the list when you shorten the schedule. It is free, needs no account, and its 18 cheatsheets are tagged High, Mid or Low priority so you know what to drop. It is second only because it publishes no mock interview at all and points you elsewhere for one.
The cheapest published route to speaking practice with an actual human. The $0 Basic card lists “5 peer mocks per month” with no credit card required, and sessions run 30-45 minutes with both people interviewing each other. Five live sessions is a realistic fortnight’s worth, and the cap resets monthly rather than being a lifetime allowance.
All 10 compared
| # | Product | Best for | Price from | What decides its place | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Practising talking, not just typing | Free account and AI Interviewer; human mock interviews start at $179, sold per interview | Free AI mocks; human ones from $179 with no subscription | Visit | |
| 2 | Building a two-week schedule for nothing | Free — the entire handbook, with no paid plan offered to readers | Grind 75 plan: 75 questions, 64 hours, 8-week default you compress | Visit | |
| 3 | System design on a non-renewing month | 1 Month Access $47 (struck-through $59); 1 Year Access $79; Lifetime Access $279 | $47 for one month, printed with “Does not auto-renew” | Visit | |
| 4 | Free live practice with a real person | Basic $0 / month; Pro $12 / month on the annual toggle, $79 / month billed monthly | 5 peer mocks per month on the $0 plan, no credit card | Visit | |
| 5 | Courses and peer mocks in one place | Basic $0 / month; Pro $79 / month monthly, $12 / month on the annual view; coaching from $249 | $12 / month is the annual rate; monthly billing is $79 / month | Visit | |
| 6 | Starting a mock interview in five minutes | Free AI mock; $49 AI pack (5 15-min simulations, 30-day validity); human coaches $50 - $300 (with an average price of $150) | $49 buys 5 15-min AI sims, 30-day validity, “No auto-renewals” | Visit | |
| 7 | Curated questions with video walkthroughs | $119 (struck-through $693), labelled “1 YEAR ACCESS” on the single All Access plan | $119 buys 1 year; no free tier and no readable refund policy | Visit | |
| 8 | Readers who learn from written explanations | Crunch Time $249 / 3 weeks access; Full Course $349 / 12 months; Lifetime Access $999 | $249 for 3 weeks access, and no mock interview in any plan | Visit | |
| 9 | Drilling a list somebody else gave you | Monthly $35 /mo (struck-through $39); Yearly $159 billed yearly, shown as $13.25 /mo | 4,055 problems browsable, and no published study plan | Visit | |
| 10 | Certifications, if an unpriced product is fine | No price published for the candidate product; the only published plan is Starter at $79 /mo — $948 billed annually, for hiring teams | No price at all published for the candidate-facing product | Visit |
1. interviewing.io
Why it sits at 1 Free AI mocks; human ones from $179 with no subscription
A marketplace for live mock interviews with engineers from FAANG and adjacent companies, wrapped around a free AI interviewer. The vendor’s own description is blunt: it is free, it simulates a FAANG-style interview, and it does both coding and system design, with detailed feedback at the end. The free account also opens over 200 problems from Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview.
It takes first place because the speaking half costs nothing and the paid half commits you to nothing — interviews are bought one at a time starting at $179, so there is no term running past your interview date. The public question database and the mock-interview replays are readable with no login and no paywall. What it does not give you is a schedule: 200-plus problems is a set, not a fortnight plan.
- The speaking practice is free, covers coding and system design, and the paid interviews are one-off purchases rather than a subscription.
- No pricing page exists at all — /pricing returns 404 — and the top of the “start at $179” range is never published, so an interviewer from a named company could cost far more than the entry figure.
2. Tech Interview Handbook
Why it sits at 2 Grind 75 plan: 75 questions, 64 hours, 8-week default you compress
“Free curated interview preparation materials for busy people”, and it means it: no account, no signup, no paywall and no published usage limit. It holds the Blind 75 and Grind 75 lists, 18 data-structure and algorithm cheatsheets each labelled High, Mid or Low priority, and the Grind 75 tool, which defaults to 8 weeks at 8 hours a week — 64 hours, 75 questions — and rebuilds the list when you change those numbers.
Nothing else on this list turns your available hours into an ordered plan, and nothing else starts this fast. It ranks second rather than first for one reason: there is no speaking practice anywhere in it. The handbook hosts no solutions either — each question links out to LeetCode — and every guide is text, with no video. It is the plan you run other things inside.
- The Grind 75 tool resizes the plan to the hours you genuinely have, and nothing is gated behind an account or a payment.
- It publishes no mock interview of any kind and hosts no solutions, so both the speaking half and the worked answers have to come from somewhere else.
3. Hello Interview
Why it sits at 3 $47 for one month, printed with “Does not auto-renew”
The written courses — System Design, Low-Level Design, Concurrency, Behavioral — are free to read in full, and the vendor says the premium add-ons are “in no way required for this course”. Locked items carry a lock icon: premium breakdowns, patterns, deep dives, advanced topics and videos. Guided Practice is free to start with named samples including Design Bitly and Connect Four, out of 34 system design, 8 low-level design and 12 AI-coding problems.
- One month costs $47 and the card says “Does not auto-renew”, so a fortnight buyer has nothing to cancel afterwards.
- The FAQ headings for the refund policy and the free trial exist but their answers are collapsed accordions whose text is absent from the page, and /terms-and-conditions returns 404, so no money-back window is published anywhere.
4. Pramp (now Exponent Practice / Aced)
Why it sits at 4 5 peer mocks per month on the $0 plan, no credit card
Peer-to-peer mock interviewing, still presented on pramp.com as free: “Exponent Practice aims to provide the complete tech interview practice you need, for free.” Sessions are live with another human, 30-45 minutes, with both people interviewing each other. On the parent pricing page the $0 Basic card lists “5 peer mocks per month” alongside sample lessons, sample questions and basic job referrals, with no credit card required.
Five live sessions inside a fortnight is more speaking practice than most candidates ever do, and it costs nothing, which is why it outranks paid platforms with bigger libraries. It ranks below Hello Interview because it supplies only half the criterion: there is no curriculum of its own, the lessons and questions on the free tier are samples, and www.pramp.com/courses returns 404.
- Five live 30-45 minute sessions a month with a person on the other end, for $0 and no card.
- Pramp publishes no pricing page and no course structure of its own; lifting the five-a-month cap means buying the parent platform’s subscription, where the advertised $12 / month is the annual rate.
5. Aced (formerly Exponent)
Why it sits at 5 $12 / month is the annual rate; monthly billing is $79 / month
The platform Pramp now lives inside. The free Basic tier is $0 / month for sample lessons, sample questions, 5 peer mocks per month and basic job referrals. Paid Pro adds all courses, video and written solutions, company-specific guides, unlimited peer mocks and the full question database, which the vendor puts at 5,305 questions with over 350 hours of expert-led video answers. The Expert tier adds AI mock interviews and AI feedback.
It has all three things the criterion asks for, and loses places on how it sells them. The Pro card reads $12 / month under the Annually toggle and $79 / month under Monthly, and the page never states the annual total it charges up front. The FAQ confirms membership renews automatically but names no renewal amount. Human coaching is a separate purchase again: $249 for one hour-long session, $675 for three, $999 for five.
- Paid membership removes the peer-mock cap entirely and adds video and written solutions across a claimed 5,305-question database.
- The headline $12 / month is the annual-toggle rate against a $79 / month monthly price, the annual total billed up front is never shown, and the auto-renewal amount is not published.
6. Prepfully
Why it sits at 6 $49 buys 5 15-min AI sims, 30-day validity, “No auto-renewals”
The fastest start on this list. Every AI interview card in the catalogue renders “FREE” against a struck-through $25, with “No signup needed” and “Instant start” beneath it, across eight role tracks and formats including Coding, System Design and Behavioral. No cap on the free interviews is published. The $49 pack buys “5 15-min simulations”, a written feedback report and the full transcript of each one, valid 30 days.
Human coaching is the real product — $50 - $300 per session with an average price of $150, paid at booking, from a marketplace the vendor sizes at roughly 1,939 verified coaches. It sits mid-table because there is no path at all: the question bank listing reports just over 955,000 results and no lesson or curriculum count is published. Two of the three AI tier prices would not render, so only the $49 card can be quoted.
- A free AI mock with no signup, and a $49 pack that expires after 30 days instead of auto-renewing.
- Refund requests close 24 hours after a session and are decided case by case, and cancelling or rescheduling an already-scheduled human session incurs “a fee starting from 25 USD”.
7. AlgoExpert
Why it sits at 7 $119 buys 1 year; no free tier and no readable refund policy
200 hand-picked coding questions across 15 categories and 4 difficulty levels, every one with a two-part video explanation — over 100 hours of video in total — plus written code in nine languages, 4 timed assessments, a data-structures crash course and an in-browser IDE. Mock coding interviews are included at no extra charge, though they are peer-to-peer with other AlgoExpert users rather than with a hired interviewer.
The content suits a fortnight; the purchase does not. There is one plan card, $119 for one year of a seven-product bundle, struck through from $693, carried under a flash-sale countdown when the page was read on 2026-09-17. There is no monthly option, no standalone AlgoExpert price, no free tier or sample, and you must log in before you can buy. What the product costs on an ordinary day is not published: $693 appears only as a struck-through comparison.
- All 200 questions carry a two-part video explanation, and peer-to-peer mock interviews are included at no extra charge.
- The only term sold is twelve months, there is no free tier, trial or sample to evaluate first, and no refund window could be read — the Help Centre’s answer panels would not expand.
8. Interview Cake
Why it sits at 8 $249 for 3 weeks access, and no mock interview in any plan
The only vendor here that sells a term shaped like the reader’s actual problem: “Crunch Time”, $249, 3 weeks access, one-time payment, no subscription to cancel. All readings, concept articles and the table of contents are free, with one question published fully worked as a preview. The vendor sizes the course at over 45 practice questions and 50+ hours. Verified GitHub Student Developer Pack holders get the full course free for one week.
It falls to eighth because the third axis is simply absent. No plan includes a mock interview, and the site’s own Coaching link sends you off-site to Exponent, so there is no Interview Cake price for talking to anyone. Solutions are written walkthroughs; no video is advertised. At $249 for 21 days it is also the steepest daily rate on this list, and re-buying later stacks at full list price.
- Crunch Time sells exactly three weeks for a one-time $249, with no subscription running on afterwards.
- No plan includes a mock interview of any kind, and the vendor’s own pages state two different refund windows — 5 days on the pricing page against 30 days on the homepage.
9. LeetCode Premium
Why it sits at 9 4,055 problems browsable, and no published study plan
The default answer in this niche, and the clearest example of what the criterion is against. The public problem set counter shows 4,055 problems browsable without an account, though that total includes premium-locked ones and the split is not published. Premium is $35 /mo billed monthly, or $159 billed yearly, displayed as $13.25 /mo. Free use is metered rather than blocked: capped Playgrounds, slower judging, and a smaller base of AI credits.
For a fortnight it is a pile, not a path. No study plan or lesson count is published — Explore cards sit behind a sign-in wall and are never counted — and the free Grind 75 list is itself a plan built over these same problems. The speaking axis is thin too: mock interviews are automated simulations against a timed question, and no human-interviewer product is published at any price.
- 4,055 problems are browsable without an account, so you can start drilling in seconds for nothing.
- All fees are non-refundable and never prorated, and no renewal price is published in the pricing page, Terms or Help Centre even though both plans display a struck-through higher figure.
10. HackerRank
Why it sits at 10 No price at all published for the candidate-facing product
The candidate side exists and looks generous: practice domains, 3 role certifications and 21 skill certifications on the Certify page, and seven AI mock-interview tracks — Technical Screen, Coding, System Design, AI Fluency, Behavioral, Frontend React, Backend Node — listed with durations. None of those pages carries a price, and none states a usage limit. The mock-interview page offers “Have a voucher code? Click here to redeem”, implying a paid route it never prices.
The only pricing HackerRank publishes is for employers: Starter at $79 /mo — $948 billed annually for 60 candidate attempts a year, Pro at $419 /mo — $5,028 billed annually, with extra attempts at $20 each. It ranks last on this criterion not because the practice product is weak but because a candidate cannot tell in advance what it costs, what it includes, or where the free use stops. The words renew and refund do not appear on the pricing page at all.
- Seven AI mock-interview tracks and 21 skill certifications are listed for candidates with no price attached to any of them.
- No price, no stated free tier and no usage limit is published for the candidate product, and the free-trial link leads to a lead-capture form with no published length or terms.
Which one fits your situation
Do not buy anything yet. Build a list in the Grind 75 tool with the hours you actually have, then run a free AI Interviewer session on interviewing.io to find out what breaks under pressure. Revisit paying on day three or four, when you know what you are buying a fix for.
The free tier is enough to start. Exponent Practice’s $0 Basic plan includes 5 peer mocks per month, 30-45 minutes each, with a person on the other end and no credit card required. If you want a professional after that, interviewing.io sells a single interview from $179 with no subscription behind it.
Hello Interview. The written system design course is free in full, Guided Practice is free to start with Design Bitly as a named free sample, and $47 buys one month of the locked material on a card that reads “Does not auto-renew”.
AlgoExpert at $119, with eyes open: that is one year of a seven-product bundle bought to use for a fortnight, there is no free sample of any kind, and no refund window is published. If you would rather read than watch, Interview Cake’s Crunch Time is $249 for 3 weeks access.
Take Interview Cake’s free week of the full course before you consider the $249 Crunch Time tier. It is the same course, and it makes one of your two weeks cost nothing.
What this market gets people for
- Reading a per-month figure as the amount you will be charged this month. Aced’s Pro card shows $12 / month with the Annually toggle selected and $79 / month with Monthly selected, and the page never publishes the annual total it bills up front. LeetCode’s Yearly plan is $159 billed yearly, displayed as $13.25 /mo, while the actual monthly-billed price is $35 /mo. For fourteen days the honest comparison is $35 against $159, not $35 against $13.25.
- Buying twelve months of access to use fourteen days of it. AlgoExpert sells exactly one plan card, “1 YEAR ACCESS” at $119, with no monthly option and no standalone product. Interview Cake’s Crunch Time sells 3 weeks for a one-time $249, and Hello Interview’s 1 Month Access is $47 and does not auto-renew. Match the term to the window, and treat anything longer as a purchase you are making for next time rather than for this interview.
- Assuming a bad purchase can be reversed. LeetCode’s Terms state that all fees are non-refundable and are never prorated. Prepfully’s refund process closes 24 hours after the session and is judged case by case, and rescheduling a booked session costs a fee starting from 25 USD. Interview Cake’s own site carries two different windows, 5 days on the pricing page and 30 days on the homepage. AlgoExpert’s and Hello Interview’s refund answers could not be read at all, and the word refund does not appear on HackerRank’s pricing page.
- Spending the whole fortnight typing and none of it talking. Every platform here that sells time with a professional sells it separately from the content: interviewing.io from $179 per interview, Prepfully at $50 - $300 with an average price of $150, Aced coaching at $249 for a single hour-long session. The free routes to a live human are narrow — 5 peer mocks per month on the $0 Basic plan, and AlgoExpert’s included peer-to-peer mocks. Everything else labelled “mock interview” on this list is an AI or an automated simulation.
Questions buyers ask
Can I prepare properly for two weeks without paying anyone?
For the plan and the problems, yes. Tech Interview Handbook is free with no account, no signup and no paywall, and includes the Grind 75 tool, 75 curated questions and 18 algorithm cheatsheets. interviewing.io’s AI Interviewer is free and covers coding and system design, and its question database and mock-interview replays render without a login. For live human practice, Exponent Practice’s $0 Basic plan includes 5 peer mocks per month with no credit card. What you cannot get free is a session with a professional interviewer — Prepfully’s FAQ answers “Is this free?” with “Short answer - no.”
Which of these actually put me in front of a human being?
Three sell it: interviewing.io from $179 per interview, Prepfully’s marketplace at $50 - $300 with an average price of $150 (the cheapest coach listed on the first directory page was $169.00), and Aced coaching at $249 for one session, $675 for three and $999 for five. Two give you a human peer instead of a professional: the 5 peer mocks per month on Exponent Practice’s free Basic tier, and AlgoExpert’s peer-to-peer mocks, included at no extra charge. LeetCode, Hello Interview and HackerRank publish AI or automated interviewers only, and no human-interviewer product at any price.
What will I pay when the term renews?
For most of them, nobody knows. LeetCode shows both plans against struck-through higher figures and states no renewal price on the pricing page, in its Terms, or in its Help Centre billing articles. Aced’s FAQ confirms membership “will renew automatically” without naming an amount, against struck-through list prices of $79 / month and $99 / month. HackerRank’s pricing page never uses the words renew or renewal. The clean cases are the non-recurring ones: Hello Interview prints “Does not auto-renew” on its cards, Prepfully’s AI pack states “No auto-renewals” and “30-day validity”, and AlgoExpert and Interview Cake sell fixed terms — though Interview Cake’s re-purchase is at full list price again.
Is a huge problem library better than a short curated list?
Not inside a fortnight. LeetCode’s public counter shows 4,055 problems and the vendor publishes no study plan or lesson count; Prepfully’s question bank listing reports just over 955,000 results; Aced claims 5,305 questions. Tech Interview Handbook publishes 75 curated questions with an estimate of 64 hours of work and 18 cheatsheets each labelled High, Mid or Low priority. The priority labels are the useful part: they tell you what to skip. The number that matters in two weeks is the one you can actually finish.
Do solutions come as video or as text?
It varies, and it is worth checking before you pay. AlgoExpert gives a two-part video explanation for every question, over 100 hours in total, plus written code in nine languages. Aced publishes video and written solutions and claims over 350 hours of expert-led video answers. Hello Interview leads with written breakdowns and layers premium video on top, quantifying its premium catalogue at 65 articles and 25 videos. Interview Cake is written only and advertises no video anywhere. Tech Interview Handbook hosts no solutions at all — questions link out to LeetCode. LeetCode itself sells “premium solutions” but never states whether any carries a video.
Why are some well-known interview platforms not on this list?
Three that we had verified pricing for did not fit the criterion. Yoodli publishes no coding content at all — it meters “roleplays” and its free Starter tier is 5 lifetime sessions. Big Interview publishes 170 video lessons across 12 categories and question sets covering 1,000+ jobs, but no coding problem set, and it has no free tier of the product. Final Round AI is positioned as real-time assistance during your own live interview rather than preparation before it, and its month-to-month price is $150.00 per month. Any vendor whose price we could not read is simply absent; we do not estimate prices.
What none of them publish
These are the questions a buyer would want settled that no vendor on this page answers in public. If one of them decides your purchase, ask the vendor and hold them to the answer.
- The upper end of interviewing.io’s interview pricing. The vendor says only that interviews “start at $179” and that the price varies by subject matter and by whether you want an interviewer from a specific company. There is no price list, no per-topic price, and https://interviewing.io/pricing returns 404.
- Whether the free AI Interviewer has a session cap. No limit is published on sessions per day, month or account, and the app itself returns no readable text, so a cap inside the product can neither be confirmed nor ruled out.
- What any discounted subscription costs at renewal. LeetCode displays both plans against struck-through figures and names no renewal price; Aced confirms automatic renewal without an amount; HackerRank’s pricing page never uses the word renewal.
- The amount Aced actually charges up front for an annual plan. Only “$12 / month” and “$20 / month” are shown, and the annual total is never printed.
- Two of Prepfully’s three AI tier prices — the Basic, Standard and Premium tabs did not render — and the length of a human 1:1 session, without which the $50 - $300 range cannot be turned into an hourly rate.
- Hello Interview’s refund policy and free-trial terms. Both FAQ headings exist but their answers are collapsed accordions absent from the page, and /terms-and-conditions returns 404.
- AlgoExpert’s refund window, what happens when the twelve months elapse, and whether there is a purchasable everyday price — $693 appears only as a struck-through comparison figure.
- Any price, free-tier definition or usage limit for HackerRank’s candidate-facing Prepare, Certify and Mock Interview products, and the length of its free trial.
- How many of LeetCode’s 4,055 problems are premium-only, and whether its “premium solutions” include video — the Editorial tab sits behind a sign-in wall.
- The price of interviewing.io’s 3, 5 and 10 session dedicated coaching programs with Amazon, Google or Meta interviewers, which are described on the homepage with no cost shown.
- Whether any of these prices localise outside the United States. LeetCode asserts “Prices are marked in USD” with a United States region footer and no currency selector, and AlgoExpert renders a bare “$” with none either.
Reading this from the other direction? LeetCode Alternatives Ranked by Teaching, Not Problem Count covers the same market against a different rule.