Hello Interview: Our take (review, pricing, alternatives)

Hello Interview is a popular tech interview prep platform for candidates who want to land a job at FAANG and other top tech companies. If you don’t mind paying a premium, it’s a decent choice for accessing structured courses, practice questions, AI-powered tools, and other interview prep resources.

The platform previously offered 1:1 mock interviews and mentoring with experienced tech professionals, but wound down these services in May 2026 to focus on its self-guided interview prep resources.

Below, we give an overview of what you should know about Hello Interview, how much it costs, and whether people seem to think it's worth it. We’ll also compare some of the best alternatives to help you decide whether Hello Interview is right for you or another type of interview prep would better suit your needs.

Here’s an overview:

• Hello Interview services
• Hello Interview review (pros and cons)
• Hello Interview pricing
• Hello Interview alternatives (Top 3)
• More Hello Interview alternatives (by category)
• Hello Interview FAQs

1. Hello Interview services↑

Before we go through the pros and cons of signing up for Hello Interview, let’s first take a look at its primary services:

1.1 AI-guided system design practice 

Hello Interview's practice tool provides guided, step-by-step practice for system design questions. It simulates a real interview environment, allowing you to illustrate solutions on a virtual whiteboard while explaining your thought process through audio or text. Upon completion, you receive immediate AI feedback on your response quality.

The AI-guided system design practice is included with a Hello Interview Premium account. 

1.2 Access to all premium learning resources

Hello Interview offers both free and premium interview preparation resources. Free resources include limited access to training courses on system design, data structures, and behavioral interviews, as well as a blog and YouTube channel hosted by experts.

A premium subscription unlocks full access to all training courses, guided practice questions, a curated question bank, and interview insights from verified users who’ve gone through the process. Premium users can also filter content by company, level, and question type to find relevant prep material.

1.3 AI tutor

Premium subscribers also get unlimited access to Hello Interview’s AI tutor. You can ask it questions about interview prep, get personalized explanations and real-time feedback, or use it to work through concepts and problems you’re having trouble with.

One feature that has been well received is its lack of sycophancy. Unlike general-purpose LLMs such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, which can sometimes be overly agreeable, Hello Interview’s AI Tutor is built to give direct, well-reasoned answers.

1.4 Community support

Through ‘Ask the Community’, you can post questions, share advice, and discuss interview topics with other users. You can also join Hello Interview’s Discord community to connect with other candidates preparing for interviews.

2. Hello Interview review↑

The first thing to say is that Hello Interview is completely legitimate and credible, and based on our research in forums like Reddit, most customer experiences are positive. That said, some users on Blind have shared mixed feedback, so it may not be the best option or best value for everyone.

Let's run through a few pros and cons of the service.

2.1 Hello Interview pros

Extensive interview prep resources: Hello Interview offers a large library of courses, guides, practice problems, and recent interview questions from top companies such as Google, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

Interactive system design practice: If you learn better by doing, Hello Interview's Guided Practice tool lets you work through system design questions. You can access some of its practice questions for free, or pay for Premium to unlock the full library and AI-powered feedback.

Free resources available: You can access a good amount of Hello Interview's content for free, which gives you a chance to see whether you like its teaching style before upgrading to Premium.

Option for lifetime access: On top of its monthly and annual subscriptions, Hello Interview offers a lifetime plan that gives you access to all Premium content, including any new content added in the future. This could be a great option if you're planning to prepare for multiple interview cycles or expect to use the platform again later.

2.2 Hello Interview cons

No expert feedback: Hello Interview no longer offers mock interviews or mentorship sessions. The only feedback available now comes from its AI tools for self-guided practice. 

Hello Interview’s annual Premium plan costs $99. For a little more, you can book a one-on-one session with an IGotAnOffer coach and get personalized feedback from someone with experience in the role or company you’re targeting.

Not ideal for beginners: The platform is best suited for candidates with some interview experience. If you’re new to technical interviews, you may need to familiarize yourself with the format beforehand to get the most value out of their practice tools. For example, the Guided System Design practice assumes a basic understanding of system architecture, which could be challenging if you're just starting out.

Limited resources for non-SWE roles: Hello Interview’s resources are largely focused on SWE interviews. If you’re preparing for a different tech role, such as data science or product management, you may find fewer relevant resources. You also can’t easily filter content by role, company, or interview type, which makes finding relevant prep material more difficult.

Non-refundable: Hello Interview’s Premium subscriptions are generally non-refundable, although refunds may be granted at the company’s sole discretion. We suggest trying some of its free resources first before signing up for a paid subscription.

3. Hello Interview Pricing↑

Hello Interview currently offers three Premium plans: one-month, one-year, and lifetime access.

One month of Premium costs $59, while one year costs $99. Both plans include access to Hello Interview’s courses, Guided Practice, interview question library, and AI tutor. Neither plan auto-renews.

Lifetime access costs $349 and includes all current Premium resources, as well as any new content added in the future.

Hello Interview also offers discounts from time to time. At the time of writing, for example, the monthly plan is discounted to $47, the annual plan to $79, and lifetime access to $279.

4. Hello Interview alternatives (top 3)↑

With these Hello Interview limitations in mind, we’ve drawn up a shortlist of what we think are the three best tech interviewing coaching services available right now for candidates who want to improve their interviewing skills.

#IGotAnOffer

Okay, we may be biased here, but a 4.93 average star rating from over 23k reviews is hard to ignore.

IGotAnOffer is a coaching platform where you can book mock interview sessions. It also offers career mentoring, leadership coaching, resume review, and salary negotiation coaching sessions.

If you prefer personalized feedback from a real coach rather than self-guided or AI-based practice, IGotAnOffer may be a better fit than Hello Interview.

There are over 300 coaches on the platform, and they’ve all worked at the very top companies in tech (e.g., Google, Meta, Amazon, etc.). Most of the coaches specialize in product management or engineering interviews, so they will be well-equipped with real-world insights to guide you through the interview process in your chosen role and target company.

Click on a coach’s profile, and you can instantly see their hourly availability. Prices are clearly displayed before you book, and if you’re not satisfied with your session, you get a full refund.

IGotAnOffer also offers well-researched interview prep guides and free mock interviews on YouTube for engineering, consulting, product management, and finance roles.

#Aced (formerly Exponent)

Exponent, now rebranding as Aced, is one of the leading platforms for tech candidates looking to land their dream job. The site is packed full of resources and is mainly known for its interview prep courses. 

Unlike Hello Interview, it also offers interview coaching, with a good range of software engineer and PM coaches who have experience at top FAANG companies.

However, the price is a bit high. In fact, if you go to IGotAnOffer instead, you can often book a session with the exact same coach for $100 less!

If you’re committed to improving your interviewing skills and have the budget for it, you can get the Ace the Interview Program, which includes a readiness assessment, 5 mock sessions, 1-year access to courses, and 20% off other coaching services for $1,499. You can also join scheduled mocks with other candidates in the Peer Mocks section for free practice.

Check out our article on Aced to learn more about its services and alternatives.

#Prepfully

Prepfully offers anonymous live mock interviews with experienced interviewers from top tech companies. It also has free interview prep resources, including a user-verified question bank and an AI answer review tool that gives you feedback on your responses.

Its coaching and mock interview sessions, however, are on the expensive side. Prepfully offers 20% off your first session (if you link your LinkedIn profile), as well as bulk discounts when you book multiple sessions. But single sessions with more experienced coaches generally cost around $199 to $399.

You can find some coaches charging around $89 per session, but these tend to be coaches with few or no sessions and reviews. That makes it harder to know what kind of coaching experience you’ll get.

Check out our article on Prepfully to learn more about its services and alternatives. 

5. More Hello Interview alternatives (categorized)↑

5.1 Best Hello interview alternatives for question databases

#Aced (formerly Exponent)

Aced’s question bank is one of its better free resources. You can browse interview questions for software engineering, product management, investment banking, data science, data analytics, and several other roles. 

According to Aced, the questions have been verified by hiring managers and candidates. You can filter questions by role and question type for free, which is useful if you already know the kind of interview you’re preparing for. Filtering by company, however, requires a paid subscription.

#IGotAnOffer

 

IGotAnOffer also has a large library of free, role- and company-specific interview guides. These include example questions sourced from real candidate reports on Glassdoor and reviewed by coaches we work with, who are often former interviewers or experts from the companies and roles we’re writing about.

What’s great about these question lists is that some also include sample answers, proven answer frameworks, links to high-quality solutions, and tips from experts. You can easily filter the guides by topic, role, company, or mock interview type, or search by keyword.

#Prepfully

Prepfully also has a free interview question bank similar to Aced for a wide range of tech roles. The questions come from candidate submissions, and you can filter them by role, company, and question type.

The platform also offers a free AI answer review tool where you can type or record your response and get automated feedback on areas such as structure and use of the STAR framework.

If you want to practice a full interview with AI, you’ll have to pay for a subscription. Plans start at $49 for five 15-minute sessions, $99 for fifteen sessions, and $199 for forty sessions.

This could be a good option if you’re on a budget and mainly want to work on your delivery. 

However, the higher-priced plans cost about as much as a one-on-one coaching session, where you can get personalized feedback from an experienced interviewer.

#LeetCode

LeetCode is where almost every engineer starts. Its massive library of problems, difficulty filters, and company-specific tags make it the closest thing to a real coding interview question bank.

LeetCode is also where you’ll find the biggest online community. It’s full of discussion threads with thousands of engineers sharing patterns, shortcuts, and pitfalls, so you stand to learn a lot from firsthand experiences too.

The discussion sections vary in quality, though. You'll find detailed explanations with time/space complexity analysis alongside basic solutions. It’s much more effective to focus on patterns rather than grinding through all problems.

Another downside is that compared to Hello Interview, LeetCode is almost entirely focused on coding. If you also need to prepare for system design or behavioral interviews, you’ll likely need to use it alongside another platform. 

5.2 Best Hello Interview alternatives for depth of theory

#GeeksforGeeks

GeeksforGeeks is a powerhouse if you want access to a massive library of coding problems and tutorials. Its strength is sheer depth: you can drill every topic from arrays and strings to advanced graphs and dynamic programming. Its problems are tagged by difficulty, so you can scale your practice systematically.

One standout feature is the company-specific problem sets. If you’re targeting Google, Amazon, Meta, or another big tech firm, you can practice the types of questions those companies tend to ask, which makes your prep far more targeted than just grinding random problems. Add in regular coding contests and daily challenges, and you get a way to test yourself under semi-real conditions while tracking progress over time.

The trade-offs are mostly around usability. The interface isn’t as slick as newer platforms, and some tutorials can feel inconsistent in clarity. But if you’re willing to look past the clutter, GeeksforGeeks gives you unmatched breadth and a structured way to cover all the core topics and patterns.

#ByteByteGo

ByteByteGo offers coding and behavioral interview prep courses, but it’s best known for system design. It’s best for solo entry-level interview prep, as it makes difficult concepts seem visually easy to understand and offers a less intimidating approach. Instead of dumping theory, it uses visuals and case studies to show how real systems are built.

It’s great for building mental models and “seeing the big picture,” though some engineers say it doesn’t go deep enough on edge cases if you’re aiming for very senior-level interviews.

#DesignGurus

DesignGurus is designed for those who have already covered the basics and want something more advanced for their interview preparation, especially in system design.

They do have a budget-friendly option, but if you want a coach from your target company, you’ll have to shell out more. But with its reputation for advanced system design practice, it’s a platform worth checking out if you don’t mind the price.

5.3 Best Hello Interview alternatives for behavioral interview prep

#IGotAnOffer

IGotAnOffer has hundreds of ex-interviewer coaches who have done behavioral interviews at all the top tech companies. You can easily find one to help you tailor your answers to your target companies.

To find a coach who fits the bill, you can easily filter our roster based on your requirements: service, role, or company. You can learn more about the coach by clicking on their profile.

To book a coaching session, you’ll first need to buy credits. Each credit starts at $50. Coaches cost 2, 3, 4, or 5 credits per 1-hour coaching session. If you don’t find your session helpful, you can get a full refund.

#Tech Mock Interview

Tech Mock Interview offers mock interviews with experts in tech, along with mentoring, salary negotiation consultation, and resume reviews for tech candidates. Its interview coaches offer different rates based on their years of experience, expertise, and session duration.

5.4 Best Hello Interview alternatives for structured learning

#Interview Kickstart

Interview Kickstart is an online platform that offers comprehensive tech interview prep courses. They offer 18 different courses for key roles in tech, including various domains in engineering, tech management, data, and systems.

Each course program will include a live or self-paced course, mock interview sessions, placement assistance, a visa guide, unlimited coaching, and other services. The fastest program is less than 2 months. Before enrolling, you’ll have to join a webinar to learn more about their offerings and the cost.

Interview Kickstart does not offer single mock interview sessions, so they’re a good option only if you have the time and money. 

Read our review of Interview Kickstart and its service here.

#Educative.io

Educative is best known for its system design courses, but it also offers courses on coding, generative AI, and other technical topics.

Its Grokking the System Design Interview course is one of its most well-known offerings among software engineers. It walks you through common design patterns and gives you a framework to approach different questions. It also guides you through examples like designing a URL shortener or a news feed, which could be reassuring if you’re starting your prep from scratch.

Depending on the plan you choose, you may also have access to extra features, such as projects, code feedback, AI mock interviews, and other AI-powered tools.

However, some users report that it can feel too rigid or formulaic. Once you outgrow the beginner stage, you might want more freedom to explore your own approach rather than following a script.

5.4 Best Hello Interview alternatives for AI-powered interview prep

#Codemia

Codemia is another option if you prefer practicing with AI. While it’s best known for system design, it also has data structures and algorithms, object-oriented design, ML system design, and agentic AI practice.

You can use Codemia for free to try selected problems and some of its AI-powered features. If you want more access, a paid plan unlocks the full problem library, editorial solutions, courses, unlimited AI practice, feedback history, and peer solution sharing. 

You can also practice with peers, but the quality of feedback will naturally vary depending on who you’re matched with. If you want consistent, personalized feedback from someone with real interviewing experience, a human coach is still the best option.

#InterviewBit AI

Of course, there’s a lot of good to be gained with AI interviewers, too. The main advantage is cost. AI mock interviews are typically much cheaper than working with human interviewers, making them accessible for frequent practice sessions. Plus, they're available whenever you need them, so you can fit practice into your schedule without booking ahead. 

We’d advise pairing it with human mock interviews to get the best of both worlds.

5.5 Best budget-friendly alternatives to Hello Interview

#Pramp

Pramp is a free peer-to-peer mock interview platform, now hosted on Aced (formerly Exponent). You’re paired with another candidate, and you take turns being the interviewer and interviewee.

It’s a great way to get real-time practice under interview conditions without spending a dime. However, the quality of feedback can vary depending on who you’re matched with. Some peers may give useful, detailed feedback, while others may have less interview experience.

Even so, practicing with another person gives you something AI practice can’t fully replicate: live follow-up questions and feedback on how clearly you communicate your thinking.

Read our article on Pramp to learn more about its services and alternatives.

#System Design Primer, GitHub

This system design primer on GitHub is probably the most recommended starting resource among engineers looking to brush up on system design concepts.

It’s community-built and has been starred hundreds of thousands of times, so you know it’s widely used. It goes over the core concepts of system design interviews and provides tons of links for additional reading on relevant concepts, like caching, load balancing, consistency models, etc.

That said, it can be overwhelming to go through the entire database. There’s no built-in structure or timeline, so it’s best if you already have a rough plan for what you want to cover.

#CodePath Technical Interview Course

CodePath is a nonprofit organization that offers technical courses to Black, Latino/a, Indigenous, and low-income students at no cost. The goal of the organization is to help these students get ready for internships and job search by filling in the gaps in their education with hands-on technical training, access to the latest tech, and support from industry experts.

CodePath offers a course specifically on technical interviews, as well as other specializations such as cybersecurity, web development, and iOS and Android development, among others. Computer science students and interns on Reddit have excellent things to say about the program.

Joining a course is a bit of a time commitment, though the program schedules are designed so that you can take a course while on an internship.

Do note that their programs, as of this writing, are only available if you’re in the U.S. or Puerto Rico and/or currently enrolled in a college or university in the U.S. or Puerto Rico.

6. Hello Interview FAQs↑

6.1 Who is the founder of Hello Interview?

Hello Interview was co-founded by Evan King and Stefan Mai. King is a former Meta Staff Engineer and ML engineering leader, while Mai is a former senior engineering manager at Meta and a software development manager at Amazon. Both have years of experience conducting tech interview prep sessions at various big tech companies and startups.

6.2 Does Hello Interview offer mock interviews?

Hello Interview no longer offers live mock interviews or mentorship sessions with human coaches. These services ended in May 2026.

You can still practice through its AI-powered tools, including Guided Practice and AI mock interviews, but you won’t be matched with a real interviewer for live feedback.

6.3 What happened to unused Hello Interview coaching credits?

When Hello Interview ended its live coaching and mentorship services in May 2026, it processed refunds for unexpired coaching credits.

Your previous session notes, written feedback, and other historical coaching data remain saved in your account. You can still log in and review them as part of your ongoing interview prep.

7. Conclusion↑

Hello Interview is a reputable tech interview prep platform, offering intensive tech interview training courses, AI-guided practice, an AI tutor, and a large library of interview questions and learning resources.

But is it the best option for you? Only you can decide that, although hopefully in this article we’ve helped you make a more informed decision.

If you want to know more about mock interviews in general, read our deep dive, "What is a Mock Interview?" where you'll find tips, sample questions, and videos to help you maximize your session.

If you want to learn more about other job prep services (interview, mentoring, resume review), check out some of our reviews:

• Interviewing.io alternatives
• Pathrise alternatives
• MentorCruise alternatives
• Prepfully alternatives
• TopResume review
• Pramp alternatives
• Interview Kickstart review
• Big Interview alternatives
• PrepLounge review
• RocketBlock alternatives
• Wall Street Prep alternatives
• Levels.fyi review
• Formation.dev review
• MeetAPro review
• Land a PM Job review
• Leland alternatives
• Maven alternatives
• Financial Edge review
• LHH Outplacement alternatives

Whichever interview prep platform you choose, we hope you’ll consider IGotAnOffer.

You’ll find over 300 mock interview coaches on our platform, and you can search by industry, role, or company to get the right match for you. You can see the coaches' hourly availability and book your online session in a couple of clicks. 

To book a coaching session, you’ll first need to buy credits. Each credit starts at $50. Coaches cost 2, 3, 4, or 5 credits per 1-hour coaching session.