interviewing.io review: real senior engineers for technical rounds, and little for anyone else

What is interviewing.io?

interviewing.io is a mock interview marketplace from Interviewing.io Inc. in San Francisco, founded in 2015 and led by founder and CEO Aline Lerner. It raised a $10M Series A led by M13, announced in October 2021. Candidates book anonymous mock interviews with Senior, Staff or Principal engineers and engineering managers from FAANG and similar companies, held over audio and chat in its own version of CoderPad, with no video. Focus areas include algorithms, system design, machine learning, front-end, behavioral and engineering management. Around that sit a free AI Interviewer for coding and system design, multi-session coaching programs for Amazon, Google and Meta, a public library of recorded mock interviews, and a jobs portal with intros for strong performers.

Who are the interviewers on interviewing.io?

interviewing.io's interviewers are senior engineers and engineering managers who, per its FAQ, have 4+ years of experience and have conducted 20+ interviews for their own company. You can request someone from a particular company, such as Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Stripe or Netflix, at a price that varies. This is the reason people pay: the person across the table has conducted real interviews at the kind of company you are aiming for.

Anonymity is built in. You appear under an anonymous handle, and you can unmask afterward if you choose. The public replays library, which interviewing.io says draws on 100K mock interviews hosted, lets you watch real sessions before booking one.

What can you see inside interviewing.io without paying?

A free interviewing.io account reaches the dashboard, the booking form and the AI Interviewer, but on September 18, 2026 our product manager persona could not practice anything. The free AI practice is coding and system design only, and onboarding asked for a LinkedIn profile before the booking form would respond. That is why this page is marked as checked rather than tested.

Why did onboarding stop at a LinkedIn field?

The homepage offers "Continue with Google" or email signup. We used email; an activation message from support@interviewing.io arrived in about a minute, and its link opened a short registration form for name and password. The dashboard then opened under a "Welcome, friend." modal asking for an anonymous handle, where we work, "How many years of experience do you have as a software engineer?" and a LinkedIn profile. We filled in the first three; with LinkedIn empty, Get started stayed disabled, so we stopped there rather than enter a profile for a test identity. The modal is shown below.

Which interviews does the free AI Interviewer offer?

The AI Interviewer page offered two choices, "Coding Interview" in CoderPad with problems from Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview, and "System Design Interview" in Excalidraw. There was no behavioral or product manager option, so none of our script questions fit, and we did not start a session. A banner offered AI Interviewer Premium at $20 a month to "Save and review your AI Interviewer sessions". interviewing.io says the AI gives feedback at the end of each interview; we did not see it.

What did the booking form show for a human mock?

Behind the modal, the booking form's default choice (a professional interviewer, a mock interview, algorithms and data structures, Senior+) showed "Price for this interview $189" and the line that unhappy candidates can email for a full refund. The first option in the form, peer-to-peer, reads "(get matched w/ a random user for free, quality not guaranteed)". We could not change the focus to behavioral to see its price, because the modal blocked clicks.

What remains unverified?

We did not see a human session, the written feedback afterward, the AI Interviewer's questions or feedback, peer matching, or how quickly slots open up. Treat the sections below on feedback quality as user reports, not our observation.

How much does an interviewing.io mock interview cost?

An interviewing.io mock interview with a professional interviewer starts at $179 per session, and the FAQ promises a full refund if you are unhappy, as of September 18, 2026. Its FAQ says: "Interviews start at $179, but the price varies depending on the subject matter and whether you want an interviewer from a specific company."

• Human mock interview: from $179 per session; the default Senior+ algorithms booking showed $189 when we checked. Company-specific interviewers cost more, at prices the site does not publish.
• Gift mock interviews: $179 per interview on the gift page, with 10% off for four or more.
• AI Interviewer: free after login; Premium at $20 a month saves sessions for review.
• Peer-to-peer mocks: free, matched with a random user.
• Dedicated coaching: packages of 3, 5 or 10 sessions for Amazon, Google or Meta with a custom lesson plan; prices are not published on the site.

Third-party reviews fill in some of the unpublished prices, which interviewing.io itself does not confirm: Lodely and DevInterview.AI report $225 to $339 for company-specific interviewers, and Lodely put a 3-session coaching package at about $2,000 on September 12, 2026.

There is no subscription for human sessions, so nothing renews unless you choose AI Interviewer Premium. The refund promise is short and unconditional in wording: "If you're unhappy with your interview(s), we'll issue a full refund." The booking form repeats it and says to email the team. We did not request a refund.

What do engineers on Blind and Reddit say about interviewing.io?

Engineers on Blind and Reddit mostly agree that a good interviewer is worth a lot and that the price is steep; most of the threads we found date from 2021 to 2023.

• Better feedback than peers: a Googler on Blind said they used Pramp for volume but "got much better/clearer feedback" on interviewing.io (Blind). The same thread also carries the advice "Just use pramp instead. Pramp is free".
• Session quality: an r/leetcode user praised the sound, console and chat, and said the interviewer gave one hint and then let them work; a comment in the same thread found "$120 to $180 is a little high" (Reddit).
• Uneven interviewers: one Blind commenter wrote "Expensive and quality of interviewers varies between poor and average" (Blind).
• Coaching packages: a 2021 Blind thread credits dedicated coaching with structuring answers, while one reply about the $4,000 list price cited for 10 sessions reads "4k is insane" (Blind).
• Pay Later: in a 2023 Blind thread, one user said they were charged the full $1,024 after four months without landing a job and could not reach support; another replied that support refunded them quickly (Blind). The program had been paused in September 2022.

interviewing.io's Trustpilot page was unclaimed with zero reviews on September 18, 2026, even though some third-party sites cite a Trustpilot rating for it.

Is interviewing.io worth it?

For a software engineer with a big-company loop ahead, interviewing.io is worth at least one paid session, and its free AI Interviewer is worth using regardless. Its core offer is something AI practice cannot give you: a senior interviewer from the kind of company you are targeting telling you, anonymously, whether you would pass. The full refund promise limits the downside of a bad match. Budget is the constraint: $179 or more per session adds up quickly if you want several.

For anyone outside engineering it is hard to recommend. Our product manager persona found no free practice, the onboarding assumes software engineering experience, and the human tracks stop at behavioral, engineering management and technical program management.

If your technical interview is in one to three days, open the free AI Interviewer tonight and run a coding or system design session under time pressure. A paid session only helps if you can book a slot before the interview, and we could not see availability.

Where else can engineers get mock interviews for less?

interviewing.io's price is set by its senior interviewers, so its alternatives either use peers, a curriculum or AI instead. Prices are as of September 18, 2026.

• Aced, formerly Exponent: a tech and PM prep membership with courses, a question bank, peer mock interviews and AI mocks, from $12 a month billed yearly; its free Basic plan includes 5 peer mocks a month, the closest free substitute for practicing with another person, and refunds are available within 5 days. See our Exponent review.
• Mock Interview Pro, our product: AI voice mock interviews for any role, built from your job posting, $39 once for 3 sessions with a 14-day refund; no coding environment and no human interviewer, so it suits the behavioral half of a loop. See Mock Interview Pro vs interviewing.io.
• Final Round AI: mainly a live interview copilot, with a practice mode that includes coding and system design scenarios, from $25 a month billed yearly (about $300 upfront). See our Final Round AI review.

The full list is on our interviewing.io alternatives page, and the wider field is in best AI mock interview tools.