Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Exercism VS HackerRank

Compare Exercism VS HackerRank and see what are their differences

Exercism logo Exercism

Download and solve practice problems in over 30 different languages.

HackerRank logo HackerRank

HackerRank is a platform that allows companies to conduct interviews remotely to hire developers and for technical assessment purposes.
  • Exercism Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-28
  • HackerRank Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-23

Exercism features and specs

  • Free Access
    Exercism provides free access to a wide range of coding exercises and learning resources, making it accessible to everyone regardless of their financial situation.
  • Mentorship
    Offers personalized mentorship from experienced developers who can provide feedback and guidance on your code submissions.
  • Wide Variety of Languages
    Supports numerous programming languages, which allows users to learn and practice coding in multiple languages.
  • Structured Learning Tracks
    Organizes exercises into structured tracks, guiding learners through progressively challenging problems in a logical order.
  • Community Support
    Has an active community forum where users can discuss problems, share insights, and ask for help.
  • Open Source Contributions
    Encourages contributions to the platform itself, offering an opportunity for users to give back and improve the resources available to others.
  • Focus on Clean Code
    Emphasizes writing clean, well-documented code, which is beneficial for developing best practices.

Possible disadvantages of Exercism

  • Variable Mentorship Quality
    The quality of mentorship can vary, as it depends on the availability and expertise of volunteer mentors.
  • Learning Curve
    There can be a steep learning curve for beginners who may find some exercises too challenging without sufficient initial guidance.
  • Limited Interactivity
    Exercises are primarily text-based without interactive or visual learning aids, which might be less engaging for some users.
  • Dependence on Volunteers
    The platform relies heavily on volunteer mentors, which can lead to delays in getting feedback and may affect the consistency of support.
  • Interface Complexity
    Some users find the interface and workflow somewhat complex and unintuitive, particularly for those new to the platform.
  • No Real-Time Collaboration
    Lacks real-time collaboration features, meaning users cannot code together or get instant feedback.
  • Focus on Individual Learning
    The platform predominantly focuses on individual learning rather than collaborative projects, which can be a downside for those looking to develop team-working skills.

HackerRank features and specs

  • Skill Assessment
    HackerRank provides a structured way to assess coding skills through a wide range of programming challenges and problems.
  • Wide Range of Languages
    Supports numerous programming languages, making it versatile for users with different preferences and expertise.
  • Interview Preparation
    Offers various interview preparation kits and company-specific challenges to help candidates prepare for job interviews.
  • Community and Collaboration
    A community of coders where users can discuss problems, share solutions, and collaborate on coding projects.
  • Company Recruitments
    Many companies use HackerRank for recruitment, and performing well on the platform can lead to job opportunities.
  • Leaderboard and Gamification
    Features like leaderboards and gamification elements motivate users to improve their rankings and skills continuously.
  • Educational Resources
    Provides tutorials and explanations that help users understand algorithms and data structures better.

Possible disadvantages of HackerRank

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Beginners may find some problems too challenging, which can be discouraging if they lack foundational knowledge.
  • Potential Focus on Competitive Programming
    The platform may emphasize competitive programming skills, which are not always directly applicable to all real-world software development scenarios.
  • Quality Variance in Problems
    The quality and difficulty of problems can vary, which may affect the consistency of the learning experience.
  • Limited Real-World Project Experience
    The focus on algorithms and coding challenges means there's less emphasis on full-scale project development experience.
  • Limited Feedback
    Automated grading provides limited feedback, which may not be enough for users to understand their mistakes fully.
  • Subscription Costs
    Access to some premium content and features requires a subscription, which may not be affordable for all users.
  • Network Dependency
    Requires a good internet connection to participate in coding challenges and access resources, which may be a limitation for some users.

Exercism videos

Learn with Exercism.io

More videos:

  • Review - JavaScript Exercise | Learn JavaScript with Exercism | #0 Setup
  • Review - exercism.io 01 hello-world

HackerRank videos

Is HackerRank A Good Idea?

More videos:

  • Review - LeetCode vs HackerRank
  • Review - Difference between HackerRank, LeetCode, topcoder and Codeforces

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Exercism and HackerRank)
Online Learning
57 57%
43% 43
Hiring And Recruitment
0 0%
100% 100
Online Education
49 49%
51% 51
Online Courses
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Exercism and HackerRank

Exercism Reviews

LeetCode Alternatives: Top platforms for coding practice
What are LeetCode and LeetCode alternatives good for?LeetCode💡Interested in leveling up your career? Apply to the Formation Fellowship today!ApplyHackerRankCodeSignalAlgoExpertCodewarsGeeksforGeeksEdabitExercismTopCoderShould you use LeetCode for advanced interview prep?Get holistic interview prep with Formation
Source: formation.dev
8 Best LeetCode Alternatives and Similar Platforms
Exercism is the alternative to LeetCode learning platform, with over 4000 activities in up to 52 popular programming languages. It is very different from other comparable programming websites in that it emphasizes solo practice and also mentor-based learning. The greatest part about this software is to have an active developer community that assists novices all around the...
The 10 Most Popular Coding Challenge Websites [Updated for 2021]
Exercism is a coding challenge website that offers 3100+ challenges spanning 52 different programming languages. After picking a language that you'd like to master, you tackle the coding challenges right on your machine (Exercism has their own command line interface that you can download from GitHub).
Top 25 websites for coding challenge and competition [Updated for 2021]
Best qualities: Exercism starts off with language tracks that allow users to choose their preferred languages. Moreover, there are human mentors who will check your code and help you improve as you progress. This makes the platform perfect for total beginners who want to deepen their understanding of a new programming language.

HackerRank Reviews

LeetCode Alternatives: Top platforms for coding practice
What are LeetCode and LeetCode alternatives good for?LeetCode💡Interested in leveling up your career? Apply to the Formation Fellowship today!ApplyHackerRankCodeSignalAlgoExpertCodewarsGeeksforGeeksEdabitExercismTopCoderShould you use LeetCode for advanced interview prep?Get holistic interview prep with Formation
Source: formation.dev
Top 10 Developer Communities You Should Explore
HackerRank’s challenges cover a wide range of topics and difficulty levels, allowing developers to enhance their problem-solving skills and learn new algorithms and data structures. The competitive nature of HackerRank challenges adds a fun element to the learning process. Developers can track their progress, compete with others, and participate in company-sponsored coding...
Source: www.qodo.ai
Discover the Top Leetcode Alternatives
HackerRank offers a wide array of challenges across various domains such as algorithms, mathematics, SQL, and functional programming. Its interface is user-friendly, and the platform provides detailed feedback on submissions, which is ideal for beginners and experienced coders alike.
Source: codenquest.com
Best Alternatives to LeetCode For Data Science
HackerRank is another valuable alternative to LeetCode. They're not very "niche" but I had to include them on this list because they're a great resource for data science practice. On HackerRank, you can learn and test your competitive programming skills. If you have basic knowledge of Python and SQL and you're looking to sharpen your skills for an interview, then this...
15 Best LeetCode Alternatives 2023
HackerRank is a platform that matches developers with companies. The platform has two options. The first one is for companies looking to hire developers. The second option is for job seekers looking to improve their coding skills, prepare for interviews, and get hired.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Exercism should be more popular than HackerRank. It has been mentiond 313 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Exercism mentions (313)

  • Build Code-RAGent, an agent for your codebase
    The only thing left to do then was to build something that could showcase the power of code ingestion within a vector database, and it immediately clicked in my mind: "Why don't I ingest my entire codebase of solved Go exercises from Exercism?" That's how I created Code-RAGent, your friendly coding assistant based on your personal codebases and grounded in web search. It is built on top of GPT-4.1, powered by... - Source: dev.to / 4 days ago
  • I Finished The Odin Project's Foundation Track
    This is where sources like freeCodeCamp or Scrimba absolutely shine. With Odin, you read an article and may follow along with examples. But it’s unlikely you develop the muscle memory to implement the concepts on your own. Odin does offer some in-house exercises and often assigns external ones too. Still, I believe it’s not enough. You don’t lift weight only 5 times and say I’ve got this! You keep lifting until... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Exercism 48in24 Recap
    If I get the time I would very much like to share my notes on adopting the various languages and perhaps even my solutions to some of the exercises. I have some reservations to doing the latter, since it does spoil the fun of solving the exercises for you. I have made some basic tooling which could be of interest/inspiration to you if you are in on Exercism. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Ask HN: Platform for senior devs to learn other programming languages?
    I think you are looking for Exercism: https://exercism.org/ Great website! - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Top FP technologies
    Appeared at 2012. Built on top of BEAM to make Erlang\OTP runtime more accessible, because Erlang is not user friendly really; and shares the same abstractions and OTP framework for building distributed, fault-tolerant applications. Though initially designed with dynamic typing, Elixir is actively developing static typing capabilities cnrs. As Joe Armstrong said about types "no good type system save you from node... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
View more

HackerRank mentions (66)

  • Pick up new languages faster this way!
    Firstly, solve some common data structure problems with it. Implement some data structures like arrays, linked lists, stacks, queues, etc. You can check common problems on LeetCode, Hackerank or some other resources. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Offline alternative of hackerrank.com to practice coding offline
    I don't have a consecutive internet connection and I can't keep up learning process so I started practicing in hackerrank.com I have started some challenges in python and c++ there. Thus I have no internet connection so I cannot practice if anyone know any alternative that works like Working: Gives a challange User sumbits code and it test into testcases. Source: over 1 year ago
  • 6 Key Tips for Beginners Learning JavaScript
    An effective way to improve your JavaScript skills is working through coding challenges and exercises. Sites like ReviewNPrep, FreeCodeCamp, and HackerRank have tons of challenges that allow you to practice JavaScript concepts by building mini-projects and solving problems. These hands-on challenges force you to apply what you learn. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Help needed for selecting Colleges.
    I'm 18M Indian. Growing up I've always been a daydreamer, if you may. Since 8th grade - I'm fascinated by programming. And I'm good at it too. But I'm not cocky too. I wouldn't say I'm at an advanced level, but I can most probably solve any problem - in time - with my skills. I also keep my skills brushed by solving problems on Hacker Rank (every day or alternate days) and try my best to contribute on... Source: over 1 year ago
  • Which is best, i didn't have clue what is c language, programing is this is the best video on YouTube , which should i chose or tell me in comments for a better course
    You can try Jenny's lectures. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdo5W4Nhv31a8UcMN9-35ghv8qyFWD9_S if you like classroom style teaching with whiteboard. For programming ,apart from tutorials the thing that helps best is practice , If you want to practice then I recommend hackerrank.com to test your understanding of programming concepts. Source: almost 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Exercism and HackerRank, you can also consider the following products

Codecademy - Learn the technical skills you need for the job you want. As leaders in online education and learning to code, we’ve taught over 45 million people using a tested curriculum and an interactive learning environment.

LeetCode - Practice and level up your development skills and prepare for technical interviews.

Free Code Camp - Learn to code by helping nonprofits.

Codility - Codility provides a SaaS platform with advanced validation, security and protection features to evaluate the skills of software engineers.

Treehouse - Treehouse is an award-winning online platform that teaches people how to code.

CodeSignal - CodeSignal is the leading assessment platform for technical hiring.