HackerRank is a technology company that focuses on competitive programming challenges for both consumers and businesses, where developers compete by trying to program according to provided specifications.
HackerRank (hackerrank.com) has 19 customer reviews on Five Star Index, with an average rating of 1.6 out of 5.
Also known as
hackerrank.com
Website
hackerrank.com
Category
Internet & Software
Location
Palo Alto, California
Listed on Five Star Index
2026
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Latest
Most recent review: August 2026.
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Do not have a refund policy. Forgot to cancel my subscription and they do not allow for refunds even though I have not used it at all and it only charged me yesterday. I know Its my own fault for not checking but most places will refund you here and I find this scummy.
TR
Travis R.
This company and their awful tests are…
This company and their awful tests are the worst thing about the software industry. They make people learn the most useless parts of coding without caring about the overall structure or anything other than efficiency. Terrible company and the worst part of being a software developer is dealing with the degeneracy that they push as good.
AD
Akaash D A.
Asked to install spyware which wants…
Asked to install spyware which wants full disk access and what not!!
WB
Westgate B.
Poorly written testing inputs
The test inputs do not always align what is expected vs what is described. I waste too much time trying to get properly formatted test data. This really makes it difficult to cover the edge cases that are always "HIDDEN". It is just not worth it.
AK
Alex K.
Misleading Practice Material and Poorly Designed Assessment Experience
I was applying for a job and was given a link to complete an assessment powered by HackerRank. To prepare, I visited the HackerRank website to familiarise myself with their assessment process. I found their “Mock Interviews for Software Engineering,” which use AI to present problems and ask follow-up questions. The experience itself was good, but you only get one free attempt—any additional practice costs £10 per attempt, which I paid so I could be properly prepared.
However, on test day the real assessment was nothing like the practice material. There was no AI component at all, and the format was completely different. Instead of a single AI-driven problem, the assessment was split into multiple sections with a mix of multiple-choice and coding questions.
Although a Sample Test was provided, it only demonstrated a single section and didn’t explain how to navigate a multi-section assessment. Once I started the real test, I completed the first section but couldn’t immediately see how to move to the next. With only 5 minutes per section—and having used that time to answer the questions—I had to make a quick decision. Since the Sample Test had only shown a “Submit” button in the top corner, I clicked it, only to discover it submitted and exited the entire test, leaving the remaining five sections incomplete. As a result, I now will have to appeal to be allowed to retake the test.
Overall:
- The paid practice didn’t reflect the actual experience
- The Sample Test failed to cover essential steps needed to complete the real test
This led to a very confusing and frustrating experience.
MA
Marco
Questions are extremely unintuitive
Their questions are extremely unintuitive. It's like they are going out of their way to create challenges no one will ever see in their day to day work, ever.
D
Денис В.
Bugged, outdated tasks not balanced by time
Many tasks are very outdated and weird, almost each second - not balanced by time to complete, no propper logging while coding to check needed data, some tasks just bug during build and no styles provided, I was not able to properly complete react.js task - after running project all I got was black screen and 1 btn with default ugly styles. On gif in task explanation section there was a complete solid ui part, but nothing after build. Also it throws warning at you when you are trying to paste smth, even if it is 3 lines of yours code from 10 lines above of same file. Overall it is decently far away from being good product.
SE
Sean
Submitted this message to the helpdesk
Submitted this message to the helpdesk - after the UI failing about 10 times for multiple contact categories. Pretty whack for a company that gate-keeps jobs.
Please, please, can you improve this platform. I have to use it for an interview that's coming up.
Two main things:
1. Debugging.
Every IDE lets you debug. This doesn't. It's really painful when you get stuck scratching your head and can't easily figure out what debugging would instantly show you is the issue.
For example, test case 12 in the "Grid challenge" problem isn't a square matrix like the problem statement says. Read the discussion and see that lots of people are having issues with it. Nobody can debug easily so most people get stumped.
2. Test cases.
I can fail on test cases that are hidden. So I have no way of knowing how I'm failing. Just that I'm failing. Pretty unrealistic to not be given the inputs that you're failing on.
Both of these issues are things that you never encounter day to day because they're ridiculous issues that nobody would put up with. My IDE can debug. My tests have visible inputs (or what's the point).
Please don't hamstring people who are unfortunate enough to be assessed through this platform, rather than realistic day-to-day problems they actually work on.