Coding practice sites, ranked by what each is actually for
Ten sites, and they are not substitutes for each other. LeetCode is a searchable bank of 3,999 problems with no sequence; Codeforces is a competition with 11,311 problems and a rating that means something; Exercism is language fluency with a human reading your code. Picking the wrong one costs you months.
How we keep this current. 10 entries. Every link on this page is re-fetched by a checker that follows redirects and fails on a dead one; anything it cannot reach keeps its old date and stays on the review list rather than being quietly restamped. Most recent check: 24 Jul 2026. Oldest entry on the page: 24 Jul 2026. Our editorial standards explain what we refuse to publish.
Short version
Interview in three weeks
NeetCode, then LeetCode
LeetCode has 3,999 problems and no opinion about which to do first. NeetCode exists purely to impose an order on them, and its free roadmap is the ordering. Use LeetCode as the problem source, not the study plan.
Want to get genuinely good, not just hireable
Codeforces
A rating between 800 and 3500 is a real measurement, and 22 rated rounds in the last 90 days means you can get measured every four days. Nothing else on this list will tell you honestly how good you are.
Cannot write a for-loop yet
freeCodeCamp or Exercism
Problem sites assume you already know the language. Both of these are free forever from registered non-profits, and Exercism will put a human mentor on your submission, which is worth more at this stage than a thousand accepted solutions.
Sitting Indian campus and service-company drives
CodeChef and HackerEarth
This is a case where the practice site should match the assessment platform. Indian employers run a lot of hiring tests on these two, so the question format and the editor you practise in are the ones you will face.
Every option, with the catch
Ordered by how often we would actually recommend them, not by price or popularity. The “not for” line on each one is the part worth reading twice.
- 1
LeetCode
leetcode.comThe default problem bank for software interviews, organised by tag, company and study plan rather than by a syllabus.
- Free tier
- 3,224 of the 3,999 problems are open without paying. The other 775 are Premium-only, and so are the company-tagged filters most people actually want it for.
- Price
- Not verifiable. leetcode.com returns HTTP 403 to every automated request including its subscription page, so we will not quote a figure we could not read.
- Best for
- Grinding a named pattern before a specific interview, once somebody else has told you which patterns to grind.
- Not for
- Learning to program, or being told what to do next. It is a searchable index with no path through it, and roughly one problem in five is behind the paywall — including most of the company-specific sets.
- From India
- Works fine from India and is what most Indian product-company interviews are drawn from. Prices in USD with no INR tier we could confirm.
- Worth knowing
- Its public API at /api/problems/all/ answers even though the website does not: 3,999 problems, split 955 easy / 2,089 medium / 955 hard, with 775 flagged paid_only. You can check that number yourself in a browser tab.
Checked 24 Jul 2026 - 2
NeetCode
neetcode.ioA curated ordering of LeetCode problems — the NeetCode 150 and 250 lists — with video walkthroughs for each.
- Free tier
- The roadmap and problem lists are free to browse. We could not confirm exactly where the free line sits because the homepage blocks automated requests; the paid page lists what Pro adds, never what free lacks.
- Price
- Pro is $119 for one year (marked down from $199) or $297 lifetime (marked down from $599), in USD, read off neetcode.io/pro.
- Best for
- Someone with a date on the calendar who needs a sequence rather than a search box.
- Not for
- Breadth. It is 300-odd problems chosen to cover the common patterns, so once you have finished the list there is nothing more here and you are back on LeetCode anyway.
- From India
- USD pricing with no India tier we could see, which makes the $297 lifetime tier a hard sell next to the INR-priced courses further down this site.
- Worth knowing
- Solutions are written out in eight languages — Python, Java, C++, JavaScript, C#, Go, Swift and Kotlin — rather than Python only, which matters if your campus test is in Java.
Checked 24 Jul 2026 - 3
Codeforces
codeforces.comA competitive programming site built around rated contests, with the problem archive as a by-product.
- Free tier
- Everything. The 11,311-problem archive, the contest history and the editorials are all open, and we found no paid plan or payment wall anywhere on the site.
- Price
- Free. No paid tier was found on the site or in its API.
- Best for
- Finding out how good you actually are, and improving fastest for the least money.
- Not for
- Interview preparation. Problems are terse, maths-flavoured and rated 800 to 3500 on a scale calibrated to competition rather than to hiring, so a 1600-rated problem is nothing like a phone screen.
- From India
- Unusually well suited to Indian working hours: 46 of the 52 rated rounds in the last 180 days started at 20:05 IST, so a round fits after work without staying up.
- Worth knowing
- 11,006 of the 11,311 problems carry a difficulty rating, so you can pick a problem 200 points above your own rating and know roughly how hard it will be. That precision is the whole product.
Checked 24 Jul 2026 - 4
CodeChef
codechef.comAn Indian competitive-programming and learning site, run from Bengaluru, that pairs contests with guided practice paths.
- Free tier
- The free plan covers unlimited practice and contest participation, preview learning content, free practice paths and limited AI assistance. CodeChef has stated that practice and contests will stay free.
- Price
- CodeChef Pro exists and is priced in INR for India, but the plans page renders client-side and shows a plain fetch nothing but its title, so we are not quoting a figure. Check it in a browser before you buy.
- Best for
- Indian students who want contest practice with an editorial they can actually read, plus a structured path rather than a raw archive.
- Not for
- Anyone who wants to know the price before creating an account. The plans page is unreadable without running its JavaScript, which is a poor look for a paid product.
- From India
- The most India-native option here: Bengaluru head office, INR-denominated Pro tier, and contest timings built around Indian participants. Its own homepage claims 10M+ users across 150+ countries.
- Worth knowing
- The Pro pitch is unusually concrete about what you are buying — failing test cases for a wrong answer, hints, and video editorials — rather than a vague "premium content" bundle.
Checked 24 Jul 2026 - 5
Exercism
exercism.orgA non-profit practice platform where you solve small exercises in a language and a volunteer mentor reviews the code you wrote.
- Free tier
- All of it. The site describes itself as "100% free, forever" and as an independent, community-funded, not-for-profit organisation. Donations are optional and unlock nothing.
- Price
- Free. Donation-funded; no paid tier exists.
- Best for
- Becoming fluent in a language you have just picked up, and getting a human to tell you why your working code is bad.
- Not for
- Interview drilling. The exercises are about idiom and language feel, not about algorithmic difficulty, so finishing a whole track will not prepare you for a data-structures round.
- From India
- Free from anywhere, no payment step at all, which removes the card-and-currency friction that makes most of this list awkward from India.
- Worth knowing
- 8,586 exercises across 83 languages, and the per-language enrolment is public — 781,895 people on the Python track, 483,964 on JavaScript — so you can tell which tracks have an active mentor pool before you commit.
Checked 24 Jul 2026 - 6
Codewars
codewars.comCommunity-authored puzzles, called kata, ranked from 8 kyu up to 1 kyu, where you compare your solution against everyone else’s after solving.
- Free tier
- Kata practice is open without paying. You need 20 honour points before you can create collections, which is the only gate we hit.
- Price
- Codewars Red is $5 billed monthly, $24 every six months, or $40 annually, in USD.
- Best for
- Keeping your hand in on a language you already know, in short sessions, when a full contest problem is too much.
- Not for
- Structured interview preparation. Kata are written by users and skew towards clever one-liners, and the difficulty ranking reflects community voting rather than any hiring standard.
- From India
- USD-only pricing, but the free tier is the product for almost everybody — Red mostly buys statistics and an ad-free view.
- Worth knowing
- After you solve a kata you see every other accepted solution ranked by upvotes, which teaches idiom faster than any tutorial. The site reports 12,000+ kata and roughly a million completed each month.
Checked 24 Jul 2026 - 7
HackerRank
hackerrank.comPrimarily a hiring-assessment platform for employers, with a free practice section for candidates attached to it.
- Free tier
- The practice domains are browsable without paying. The site publishes no free-versus-paid feature table for the candidate side at all.
- Price
- No consumer pricing is published. HackerRank sells to employers, and nothing on the candidate side quotes a price.
- Best for
- Rehearsing in the exact editor an employer is going to test you in, which is a real and underrated advantage.
- Not for
- Depth. The practice domains are organised for coverage rather than difficulty, and neither the homepage nor the domain pages publish a total problem count, so you cannot tell how much is there.
- From India
- Very widely used by Indian employers for screening tests, which is the main argument for practising here rather than somewhere better.
- Worth knowing
- The SQL section is split into named subdomains — Basic Select, Advanced Select, Aggregation, Basic Join, Advanced Join, Alternative Queries — which is a more usable syllabus than its algorithms section gets.
Checked 24 Jul 2026 - 8
GeeksforGeeks
geeksforgeeks.orgAn Indian computer-science portal whose practice section is a large filterable problem bank sitting alongside its tutorials.
- Free tier
- The practice bank is open. Per-topic counts are shown on the page — Arrays 739, Strings 397 — and there is a curated sprint called GfG 160.
- Price
- No price appears on the practice pages. GeeksforGeeks does sell courses, but we could not read a figure off the site and are not going to invent one.
- Best for
- Looking up one specific topic, in Indian-syllabus terms, and drilling it before a semester exam or a campus round.
- Not for
- A single ordered path. It publishes per-topic counts but no sitewide total and no sequence, so it rewards people who already know what they are looking for and punishes people who do not.
- From India
- The most India-aligned explanation style on this list, matched to Indian university syllabi and campus placement rounds.
- Worth knowing
- The old practice.geeksforgeeks.org subdomain now permanently redirects to the main site — if you have bookmarks from a placement prep sheet, they will land you somewhere different from what you saved.
Checked 24 Jul 2026 - 9
freeCodeCamp
freecodecamp.orgA registered non-profit publishing a full learn-to-code curriculum with certifications, funded entirely by donations.
- Free tier
- The entire curriculum and every certification, permanently. The organisation states it is a donor-supported, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charity.
- Price
- Free. There is no paid tier to buy.
- Best for
- Getting from nothing to writing working code, without spending anything or making a decision about a subscription.
- Not for
- Anyone past the beginner stage. It is a curriculum, not a problem bank, so once you can build things it has little left to drill you on.
- From India
- No payment step at all, which matters more than it sounds when every other option wants a card in USD.
- Worth knowing
- The 501(c)(3) status is stated openly on the site, so the funding model is checkable rather than a marketing claim about being free.
Checked 24 Jul 2026 - 10
HackerEarth
hackerearth.comA developer assessment company whose practice section carries tutorials and problems grouped by topic.
- Free tier
- The practice section is browsable without paying, arranged into named tracks including Codemonk, Basic Programming, Data Structures, Algorithms and Math.
- Price
- No consumer pricing is published for the practice side. Like HackerRank, the money comes from employers.
- Best for
- Warming up on the platform before a company assessment that is being administered through it.
- Not for
- Choosing as your main practice site. It publishes neither a problem count nor any free-versus-paid boundary for candidates, so you are committing to something whose size you cannot see.
- From India
- Widely used by Indian employers for hiring assessments; its homepage claims 10M+ developers and 3K+ companies on the platform.
- Worth knowing
- The Codemonk track is a genuinely sequenced tutorial-plus-problems path, which is more than the rest of the practice section offers.
Checked 24 Jul 2026
What we checked
- — Every site here was opened, along with its pricing page where one exists, on the date printed against that entry.
- — LeetCode and Codeforces block automated page requests, so their problem counts come from their own public APIs — leetcode.com/api/problems/all/ and codeforces.com/api/problemset.problems — which are open to anyone and were queried on 25 July 2026.
- — The Codeforces start-time figure is derived from its contest.list endpoint: of the 52 rated rounds in the previous 180 days, 46 began at 20:05 IST.
- — Prices are quoted in the currency the vendor charges, exactly as displayed. Where a pricing page renders its figures in JavaScript and shows nothing to a plain fetch, we record the price as unverified instead of copying a number off a review site.
- — We bought nothing. Any claim about what a paid tier contains is the vendor describing its own product.
What we could not verify
- — LeetCode Premium. Every page on leetcode.com returns HTTP 403 to an automated request, including the subscription page, so we cannot quote a current price. The problem counts above came from its API, which does answer.
- — CodeChef Pro. The plans page loads a 9 KB shell and renders its prices client-side, so a fetch sees the page title and nothing else. CodeChef has published INR pricing on its own forum in the past; because that post carries no date we can compare against today, we are not repeating the figure.
- — HackerRank and HackerEarth publish no consumer pricing for the practice side at all, so the free-versus-paid boundary for a candidate is genuinely unclear on both.
- — NeetCode’s homepage 403s, so we could read the paid tier in full but not the free one. What free users get is the vendor’s word, not ours.
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Questions people actually ask
Is LeetCode still worth paying for in 2026?
The free tier gives you 3,224 of its 3,999 problems, which is more than most people finish. Premium mainly buys the company-tagged filters and the remaining 775 locked problems. If you are targeting one specific employer, that filter is the whole reason to pay; if you are preparing generally, the free tier is not the bottleneck — your ordering is. We could not verify the current Premium price because leetcode.com blocks automated requests.
What should I use instead of LeetCode?
For an ordering rather than a search box, NeetCode. For genuine skill growth measured by a rating, Codeforces, where 11,006 of the problems carry a difficulty score. For learning a language properly with human feedback, Exercism, which is free forever. None of these replaces LeetCode as a problem source; they replace the part of it you were using it wrong for.
Which coding practice site is best for Indian placement drives?
CodeChef and HackerEarth, because Indian employers run a large share of their screening tests on assessment platforms, and rehearsing in the same editor removes a real source of avoidable mistakes. GeeksforGeeks is the better reference for Indian university syllabus topics. Codeforces is better practice than all three but is calibrated to competition, not to placement rounds.
Can I prepare for coding interviews entirely for free?
Yes. Codeforces, Exercism and freeCodeCamp charge nothing at all, and LeetCode leaves four fifths of its problems open. The thing money actually buys on this list is sequencing and explanation — knowing which 150 problems to do, and watching someone talk through them. That is a real service, but it is not access to the problems.
How often do Codeforces contests run, and at what time in India?
There were 22 rated rounds in the 90 days to 25 July 2026, which works out at roughly one every four days. Of the 52 rounds in the previous 180 days, 46 started at 20:05 IST, so a typical round fits into an Indian evening without staying up late. Both figures come from the site’s own public contest API.
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